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    Searle's failure to understand Chinese while operating th... — Carmelics
    Home/Consciousness & Mind
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Searle's failure to understand Chinese while operating the Chinese Room does not show that understanding of Chinese is not being created.

    Consciousness & MindTruth & Knowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Functionalist accounts (Putnam, Block) identify mental states with functional roles, not with the substrate or individual implementing them.
      ?

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    • 2.The Chinese Room system as a whole instantiates the correct functional organization for Chinese understanding, regardless of Searle's ignorance.
      ?

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    • 3.Searle's introspective report about his own understanding is irrelevant to whether the system-level functional organization constitutes understanding.
      ?

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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Dennett's heterophenomenology holds that conscious understanding is properly attributed at the level of the whole intentional system, not its components.
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    • 2.No single neuron in a human brain 'understands' English, yet their collective organization produces genuine understanding in the person.
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    • 3.By parity of reasoning, Searle's lack of Chinese understanding no more defeats system-level understanding than a neuron's ignorance defeats human cognition.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Searle's argument requires that the agent of understanding be the computer itself or the person operating the Chinese Room.
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    • 2.The answers to Chinese questions are not Searle's answers — Searle is not the author of those answers.
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    • 3.Searle's beliefs, desires, memories, and personality traits are causally inert in producing the answers to Chinese questions.
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    Topics

    Consciousness & MindTruth & Knowledge

    Connections

    3 topics

    Moral Responsibility3 linkedPhilosophy of Language1 linkedPersonal Identity1 linked

    Related

    A failure of understanding by the room operator does not entail a failure of und...By parity of reasoning, Searle's lack of Chinese understanding no more defeats s...Dennett's heterophenomenology holds that conscious understanding is properly att...Functionalist accounts (Putnam, Block) identify mental states with functional ro...
    +7 moreShow less
    If understanding of Chinese is created by running the program, the mind understa...No single neuron in a human brain 'understands' English, yet their collective or...

    Similar

    The Chinese Room does not genuinely understand Chinese84%The Chinese Room fails to produce understanding because it operates on...83%Searle's failure to understand Chinese is irrelevant because he is mer...83%The failure of the Axiom of Choice in NF is not caused by NF's compreh...81%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: chinese-room
    View source passageHide passage
    Cole (1991, 1994) develops the reply and argues as follows: Searle’s argument requires that the agent of understanding be the computer itself or, in the Chinese Room parallel, the person in the room. However Searle’s failure to understand Chinese in the room does not show that there is no understanding being created. One of the key considerations is that in Searle’s discussion the actual conversation with the Chinese Room is always seriously under specified. Searle was considering Schank’s progr
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Searle's argument requires that the agent of understanding be the computer itsel...
    Searle's beliefs, desires, memories, and personality traits are causally inert i...
    Searle's introspective report about his own understanding is irrelevant to wheth...
    The Chinese Room system as a whole instantiates the correct functional organizat...
    The answers to Chinese questions are not Searle's answers — Searle is not the au...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit