Who Is John Searle: The Experimental Philosopher

John Searle: The Experimental Philosopher Strong artificial intelligence does not exist, as proven by Searle’s thought experiment.

According to the “Chinese Room,” strong artificial intelligence is “the appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds.”

In 1980, John Searle proposed the Chinese Room thought experiment to challenge the concept of strong artificial intelligence. He imagined himself locked in a room where there is a box of Chinese characters that he does not understand as well as a book of English instructions, which he does. A Chinese speaker passes him messages (with Chinese characters) under the door and he uses the instruction

He argues that a computer would also lack in understanding of the conversation. Searle argues that with a lack of “understanding” and “intentionality” we cannot describe the functions of a machine as ‘ “thinking” ’ and because it is not capable of thinking, “it does not have a ‘ “mind” ’in anything like the normal sense of the word.” From this argument, he draws the conclusion that strong artificial intelligence is untrue.

In the “Chinese Room,” Searle’s philosophy of the “biological naturalism” explains that consciousness and understanding require specific biological machinery that is found in brains. He writes “brains cause minds” and that “actual human mental phenomena [are] dependent on actual physical–chemical properties of actual human brains”. Searle argues that this machinery (known to neuroscience as the "neural correlates of consciousness") must have some (unspecified) “causal powers” that permit the human experience of consciousness.

He explains that the brain is a machine which uses “non-computational” machinery to