Analysis Of John Searle's Chinese Room Argument

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John Searle’s Chinese Room argument is a thought experiment in which Searle tries to refute the Turing Test and Strong AI. It involves a person, a room, 2 slots labeled A and B, and 3 pieces of paper. The Chinese Room argument was aimed at the position called “Strong AI” (Cole), also known as Representational Theory of the Mind, and against the Turing Test created by Alan Turing. The problem with the Chinese Room argument is that it misses the point entirely – Searle compares a CPU or computer to a person, a non-conscious object with a conscious agent (Cole). The argument also gets extrapolating the functions of the brain from a greater whole to a smaller part of the brain wrong – as a whole you may know things, but certain areas of the brain will always know more than we consciously do. Because of these issues, Searle fails to properly damage the “Strong AI” theory.

The Representational Theory …show more content…

Syntax by itself is neither constitutive of nor sufficient for minds. 4. Therefore, programs are neither constitutive of nor sufficient for minds. (Searle, 1993)

The Chinese Room argument was also made specifically for the position of what he calls “Strong AI”. Strong AI is the Representational Theory of the Mind and the view that sufficiently programmed computers or systems have the ability to understand natural language and seriously have other mental faculties similar to the people that their behavior mimic. With this view, a computer or artificial intelligence could actually play a game intelligently, make clever moves, and understand a natural language (Cole).

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Searle’s Chinese Room Argument damages Strong AI according to this logic structure: If Strong AI is true, then there is a program for Chinese that if a computing system runs that program, the system therefore comes to understand Chinese. Someone could run a program for Chinese without learning to understand Chinese. Therefore, Strong AI is false