The Chinese Room Argument Flashcards
Explain the difference between syntax and semantics in physical symbol systems. Also explain how the physical symbol system hypothesis attempts to bridge to gap from syntax to semantics.
The symbols, states and rules are syntax of the PSS.
The interpretation given to these symbols, states and rules are its semantics. It tells us what it is about.
The PSSH explain the aboutness of the mental: mental states can be about things because they are symbolic states. Computational states can be about things because they are symbolic states. Therefore computers might have a similar kind of “aboutness” when it comes to mental states.
Briefly explain the Chinese room thought experiment, and also explain why it poses an argument against machines having an understanding about anything.
A man is confined in a room and is given a set of rules to manipulate Chinese symbols. The man does not understand Chinese himself. An outside person gives the man a set of input symbols that the man is able to translate using these rules. The translations are then given back to the person outside the room. From the outside it might seem that the man inside the room understands Chinese, and can get very good at translating Chinese. However, the man is just performing rule-based operations and actually does not understand the meaning of the symbols he processes. Searle claims therefore that physical symbol systems do not truly ‘understand’ anything in the same way humans do. Physical systems do not know what anything is about.
What are the two classes of criteria that the Chinese Room argument presents challenges to?
The argument challenges behavioral criteria like the Turing Test.
- Behaving “as if” there is understanding is (arguably) insufficient for understanding.
The argument also challenges **computational criteria* like the Physical Symbol System Hypothesis:
- Rule-based symbol-manipulation is (arguably) insufficient for
understanding.
What is the “Systems Reply” to Searle’s Chinese Room argument? Also provide Searle’s response.
Although the man in the room does not understand Chinese, the system composed of the man, the rule book and symbols understands Chinese. Focusing only on the man is like focusing only on the brain’s frontal lobe or on a digital computer’s CPU.
Reply: The rule book and symbols do not provide knowledge of what the symbols are actually about. But, that’s what’s required for understanding! (Combining multiple systems together will not provide knowledge about the symbols.)
What is the “Robot Reply” to Searle’s Chinese Room argument? Also provide Searle’s response.
The Robot Reply: Although inputs and outputs consisting of symbols are insufficient, inputs and outputs consisting of perceptual stimuli (sensors) and behavioral responses are sufficient.
Reply: The man does not actually receive the things being perceived or acted upon; he only receives Chinese transcriptions thereof. It’s still only symbols! Like a computer with a webcam: the computer does not engage with the external world itself, but only the webcam’s transcriptions thereof
What is the “Brain Simulator Reply” to Searle’s Chinese Room argument? Also provide Searle’s response.
The Brain Simulator Reply: Although rules for transforming Chinese symbols into other Chinese symbols are insufficient for understanding, rules that simulate the brain activity of a native Chinese speaker are sufficient.
Reply: “The problem with the brain simulator is that it is simulating the wrong things about the brain. As long as it simulates only the formal structure of the sequence of neuron firings at the synapses, it won’t have simulated what matters about the brain, namely its causal properties, its ability to produce intentional states.
Explain the “Fairness Principle” in relation to the Chinese Room Argument.
Any criterion for attributing understanding should not be so stringent that humans fail to satisfy it. This is called the fairness principle. An example from the slides:
The brain receives stimuli via its sensory organs
and effects behavioral responses. Its contact with objects in the environment is always indirect. Thus, we have no more knowledge of hamburgers than the man in the room
Although we may associate thoughts about hamburgers with images, smells, taste, and touch, these are also just symbols, rather than the real thing.
Searle’s criterion for understanding therefore violates the fairness principle (according to proponents of the PSSH, I presume).
What is meant with Weak AI and strong AI, and what is the difference between them?
Weak AI: Computer programs that simulate intelligence.
Strong AI: Computer programs that are intelligent.
To assume that there is a difference between weak AI and strong AI is to assume that there is a difference between simulating intelligence and being intelligent.
Searle claims that a simulation which replicates only syntax omits the properties that matter for semantics: the “causal powers” of biological brains
Actually for some phenomena, there simply may be no difference between simulation and reality: a simulated decision is a decision, a simulated chess game is a chess game.
