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Chinese room

The Chinese room argument holds that a digital computer executing a computer program cannot have a "mind", "understanding", or "consciousness", regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave. Philosopher John Searle presented the argument in his paper "Minds, Brains, and Programs", published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in 1980. Gottfried Leibniz (1714), Anatoly Dneprov (1961), Lawrence Davis (1974) and Ned Block (1978) presented similar arguments. Searle's version has been widely discussed in the years since. The centerpiece of Searle's argument is a thought experiment known as the Chinese room.

The argument is directed against the philosophical positions of functionalism and computationalism, which hold that the mind may be viewed as an information-processing system operating on formal symbols, and that simulation of a given mental state is sufficient for its presence. Specifically, the argument is intended to refute a position Searle calls the strong AI hypothesis: "The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds."

Although its proponents originally presented the argument in reaction to statements of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, it is not an argument against the goals of mainstream AI research because it does not show a limit in the amount of "intelligent" behavior a machine can display. The argument applies only to digital computers running programs and does not apply to machines in general.

Chinese room thought experiment
Searle's thought experiment begins with this hypothetical premise: suppose that artificial intelligence research has succeeded in constructing a computer that behaves as if it understands Chinese. It takes Chinese characters as input and, by following the instructions of a computer program, produces other Chinese characters, which it presents as output. Suppose, says Searle, that this computer performs its task so convincingly that it comfortably passes the Turing test: it convinces a human Chinese speaker that the program is itself a live Chinese speaker. To all of the questions that the person asks, it makes appropriate responses, such that any Chinese speaker would be convinced that they are talking to another Chinese-speaking human being.

The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese? Searle calls the first position "strong AI" and the latter "weak AI".

Searle then supposes that he is in a closed room and has a book with an English version of the computer program, along with sufficient papers, pencils, erasers, and filing cabinets. Searle could receive Chinese characters through a slot in the door, process them according to the program's instructions, and produce Chinese characters as output, without understanding any of the content of the Chinese writing. If the computer had passed the Turing test this way, it follows, says Searle, that he would do so as well, simply by running the program manually.

Searle asserts that there is no essential difference between the roles of the computer and himself in the experiment. Each simply follows a program, step-by-step, producing behavior that is then interpreted by the user as demonstrating intelligent conversation. However, Searle himself would not be able to understand the conversation. ("I don't speak a word of Chinese", he points out.) Therefore, he argues, it follows that the computer would not be able to understand the conversation either.

Searle argues that, without "understanding" (or "intentionality"), we cannot describe what the machine is doing as "thinking" and, since it does not think, it does not have a "mind" in anything like the normal sense of the word. Therefore, he concludes that the "strong AI" hypothesis is false.

History
Gottfried Leibniz made a similar argument in 1714 against mechanism (the idea that everything that makes up a human being could, in principle, be explained in mechanical terms. In other words that a person, including their mind, is merely a very complex machine). Leibniz used the thought experiment of expanding the brain until it was the size of a mill. Leibniz found it difficult to imagine that a "mind" capable of "perception" could be constructed using only mechanical processes.

Peter Winch made the same point in his book The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (1958), where he provides an argument to show that "a man who understands Chinese is not a man who has a firm grasp of the statistical probabilities for the occurrence of the various words in the Chinese language" (p.108).

Soviet cyberneticist Anatoly Dneprov made an essentially identical argument in 1961, in the form of the short story "The Game". In it, a stadium of people act as switches and memory cells implementing a program to translate a sentence of Portuguese, a language that none of them know. The game was organized by a "Professor Zarubin" to answer the question "Can mathematical machines think?" Speaking through Zarubin, Dneprov writes "the only way to prove that machines can think is to turn yourself into a machine and examine your thinking process" and he concludes, as Searle does, "We've proven that even the most perfect simulation of machine thinking is not the thinking process itself."

In 1974, Lawrence Davis imagined duplicating the brain using telephone lines and offices staffed by people, and in 1978 Ned Block envisioned the entire population of China involved in such a brain simulation. This thought experiment is called the China brain, also the "Chinese Nation" or the "Chinese Gym".

Searle's version appeared in his 1980 paper "Minds, Brains, and Programs", published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. It eventually became the journal's "most influential target article", generating an enormous number of commentaries and responses in the ensuing decades, and Searle has continued to defend and refine the argument in many papers, popular articles and books. David Cole writes that "the Chinese Room argument has probably been the most widely discussed philosophical argument in cognitive science to appear in the past 25 years".

Most of the discussion consists of attempts to refute it. "The overwhelming majority", notes BBS editor Stevan Harnad, "still think that the Chinese Room Argument is dead wrong". The sheer volume of the literature that has grown up around it inspired Pat Hayes to comment that the field of cognitive science ought to be redefined as "the ongoing research program of showing Searle's Chinese Room Argument to be false".

Searle's argument has become "something of a classic in cognitive science", according to Harnad. Varol Akman agrees, and has described the original paper as "an exemplar of philosophical clarity and purity".

Philosophy
Although the Chinese Room argument was originally presented in reaction to the statements of artificial intelligence researchers, philosophers have come to consider it as an important part of the philosophy of mind. It is a challenge to functionalism and the computational theory of mind, and is related to such questions as the mind–body problem, the problem of other minds, the symbol-grounding problem, and the hard problem of consciousness.

Strong AI
Searle identified a philosophical position he calls "strong AI": "The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds." The definition depends on the distinction between simulating a mind and actually having a mind. Searle writes that "according to Strong AI, the correct simulation really is a mind. According to Weak AI, the correct simulation is a model of the mind."

The claim is implicit in some of the statements of early AI researchers and analysts. For example, in 1955, AI founder Herbert A. Simon declared that "there are now in the world machines that think, that learn and create". Simon, together with Allen Newell and Cliff Shaw, after having completed the first program that could do formal reasoning (the Logic Theorist), claimed that they had "solved the venerable mind–body problem, explaining how a system composed of matter can have the properties of mind." John Haugeland wrote that "AI wants only the genuine article: machines with minds, in the full and literal sense. This is not science fiction, but real science, based on a theoretical conception as deep as it is daring: namely, we are, at root, computers ourselves."

Searle also ascribes the following claims to advocates of strong AI:
 * AI systems can be used to explain the mind;
 * The study of the brain is irrelevant to the study of the mind; and
 * The Turing test is adequate for establishing the existence of mental states.

Strong AI as computationalism or functionalism
In more recent presentations of the Chinese room argument, Searle has identified "strong AI" as "computer functionalism" (a term he attributes to Daniel Dennett). Functionalism is a position in modern philosophy of mind that holds that we can define mental phenomena (such as beliefs, desires, and perceptions) by describing their functions in relation to each other and to the outside world. Because a computer program can accurately represent functional relationships as relationships between symbols, a computer can have mental phenomena if it runs the right program, according to functionalism.

Stevan Harnad argues that Searle's depictions of strong AI can be reformulated as "recognizable tenets of computationalism, a position (unlike "strong AI") that is actually held by many thinkers, and hence one worth refuting." Computationalism is the position in the philosophy of mind which argues that the mind can be accurately described as an information-processing system.

Each of the following, according to Harnad, is a "tenet" of computationalism:
 * Mental states are computational states (which is why computers can have mental states and help to explain the mind);
 * Computational states are implementation-independent—in other words, it is the software that determines the computational state, not the hardware (which is why the brain, being hardware, is irrelevant); and that
 * Since implementation is unimportant, the only empirical data that matters is how the system functions; hence the Turing test is definitive.

Strong AI vs. biological naturalism
Searle holds a philosophical position he calls "biological naturalism": that consciousness and understanding require specific biological machinery that are 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 causal powers that permit the human experience of consciousness. Searle's belief in the existence of these powers has been criticized.

Searle does not disagree with the notion that machines can have consciousness and understanding, because, as he writes, "we are precisely such machines". Searle holds that the brain is, in fact, a machine, but that the brain gives rise to consciousness and understanding using specific machinery. If neuroscience is able to isolate the mechanical process that gives rise to consciousness, then Searle grants that it may be possible to create machines that have consciousness and understanding. However, without the specific machinery required, Searle does not believe that consciousness can occur.

Biological naturalism implies that one cannot determine if the experience of consciousness is occurring merely by examining how a system functions, because the specific machinery of the brain is essential. Thus, biological naturalism is directly opposed to both behaviorism and functionalism (including "computer functionalism" or "strong AI"). Biological naturalism is similar to identity theory (the position that mental states are "identical to" or "composed of" neurological events); however, Searle has specific technical objections to identity theory. Searle's biological naturalism and strong AI are both opposed to Cartesian dualism, the classical idea that the brain and mind are made of different "substances". Indeed, Searle accuses strong AI of dualism, writing that "strong AI only makes sense given the dualistic assumption that, where the mind is concerned, the brain doesn't matter".

Consciousness
Searle's original presentation emphasized "understanding"—that is, mental states with what philosophers call "intentionality"—and did not directly address other closely related ideas such as "consciousness". However, in more recent presentations, Searle has included consciousness as the real target of the argument. "Computational models of consciousness are not sufficient by themselves for consciousness. The computational model for consciousness stands to consciousness in the same way the computational model of anything stands to the domain being modelled. Nobody supposes that the computational model of rainstorms in London will leave us all wet. But they make the mistake of supposing that the computational model of consciousness is somehow conscious. It is the same mistake in both cases."

- John R. Searle

David Chalmers writes, "it is fairly clear that consciousness is at the root of the matter" of the Chinese room.

Colin McGinn argues that the Chinese room provides strong evidence that the hard problem of consciousness is fundamentally insoluble. The argument, to be clear, is not about whether a machine can be conscious, but about whether it (or anything else for that matter) can be shown to be conscious. It is plain that any other method of probing the occupant of a Chinese room has the same difficulties in principle as exchanging questions and answers in Chinese. It is simply not possible to divine whether a conscious agency or some clever simulation inhabits the room.

Searle argues that this is only true for an observer outside of the room. The whole point of the thought experiment is to put someone inside the room, where they can directly observe the operations of consciousness. Searle claims that from his vantage point within the room there is nothing he can see that could imaginably give rise to consciousness, other than himself, and clearly he does not have a mind that can speak Chinese. In Searles' words, "the computer has nothing more than I have in the case where I understand nothing".

Applied ethics

Patrick Hew used the Chinese Room argument to deduce requirements from military command and control systems if they are to preserve a commander's moral agency. He drew an analogy between a commander in their command center and the person in the Chinese Room, and analyzed it under a reading of Aristotle's notions of "compulsory" and "ignorance". Information could be "down converted" from meaning to symbols, and manipulated symbolically, but moral agency could be undermined if there was inadequate 'up conversion' into meaning. Hew cited examples from the USS Vincennes incident.

Computer science
The Chinese room argument is primarily an argument in the philosophy of mind, and both major computer scientists and artificial intelligence researchers consider it irrelevant to their fields. However, several concepts developed by computer scientists are essential to understanding the argument, including symbol processing, Turing machines, Turing completeness, and the Turing test.

Strong AI vs. AI research
Searle's arguments are not usually considered an issue for AI research. The primary mission of artificial intelligence research is only to create useful systems that act intelligently and it does not matter if the intelligence is "merely" a simulation. AI researchers Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig wrote in 2021: "We are interested in programs that behave intelligently. Individual aspects of consciousness -- awareness, self-awareness, attention -- can be programmed and can be part of an intelligent machine. The additional project making a machine conscious in exactly the way humans are is not one that we are equipped to take on."

Searle does not disagree that AI research can create machines that are capable of highly intelligent behavior. The Chinese room argument leaves open the possibility that a digital machine could be built that acts more intelligently than a person, but does not have a mind or intentionality in the same way that brains do.

Searle's "strong AI hypothesis" should not be confused with "strong AI" as defined by Ray Kurzweil and other futurists, who use the term to describe machine intelligence that rivals or exceeds human intelligence -- that is, artificial general intelligence, human level AI or superintelligence. Kurzweil is referring primarily to the amount of intelligence displayed by the machine, whereas Searle's argument sets no limit on this. Searle argues that a superintelligent machine would not necessarily have a mind and consciousness.

Turing test
The Chinese room implements a version of the Turing test. Alan Turing introduced the test in 1950 to help answer the question "can machines think?" In the standard version, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All participants are separated from one another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test.

Turing then considered each possible objection to the proposal "machines can think", and found that there are simple, obvious answers if the question is de-mystified in this way. He did not, however, intend for the test to measure for the presence of "consciousness" or "understanding". He did not believe this was relevant to the issues that he was addressing. He wrote: "I do not wish to give the impression that I think there is no mystery about consciousness. There is, for instance, something of a paradox connected with any attempt to localise it. But I do not think these mysteries necessarily need to be solved before we can answer the question with which we are concerned in this paper."

To Searle, as a philosopher investigating in the nature of mind and consciousness, these are the relevant mysteries. The Chinese room is designed to show that the Turing test is insufficient to detect the presence of consciousness, even if the room can behave or function as a conscious mind would.

Symbol processing
The Chinese room (and all modern computers) manipulate physical objects in order to carry out calculations and do simulations. AI researchers Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon called this kind of machine a physical symbol system. It is also equivalent to the formal systems used in the field of mathematical logic.

Searle emphasizes the fact that this kind of symbol manipulation is syntactic (borrowing a term from the study of grammar). The computer manipulates the symbols using a form of syntax rules, without any knowledge of the symbol's semantics (that is, their meaning).

Newell and Simon had conjectured that a physical symbol system (such as a digital computer) had all the necessary machinery for "general intelligent action", or, as it is known today, artificial general intelligence. They framed this as a philosophical position, the physical symbol system hypothesis: "A physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means for general intelligent action." The Chinese room argument does not refute this, because it is framed in terms of "intelligent action", i.e. the external behavior of the machine, rather than the presence or absence of understanding, consciousness and mind.

Twenty-first century AI programs (such as "deep learning") do mathematical operations on huge matrixes of unidentified numbers and bear little resemblance to the symbolic processing used by AI programs at the time Searle wrote his critique in 1980. Nils Nilsson describes systems like these as "dynamic" rather than "symbolic". Nilsson notes that these are essentially digitized representations of dynamic systems -- the individual numbers do not have a specific semantics, but are instead samples or data points from a dynamic signal, and it is the signal being approximated which would have semantics. Nilsson argues it is not reasonable to consider these signals as "symbol processing" in the same sense as the physical symbol systems hypothesis.

Chinese room and Turing completeness
The Chinese room has a design analogous to that of a modern computer. It has a Von Neumann architecture, which consists of a program (the book of instructions), some memory (the papers and file cabinets), a CPU that follows the instructions (the man), and a means to write symbols in memory (the pencil and eraser). A machine with this design is known in theoretical computer science as "Turing complete", because it has the necessary machinery to carry out any computation that a Turing machine can do, and therefore it is capable of doing a step-by-step simulation of any other digital machine, given enough memory and time. Alan Turing writes, "all digital computers are in a sense equivalent." The widely accepted Church–Turing thesis holds that any function computable by an effective procedure is computable by a Turing machine.

The Turing completeness of the Chinese room implies that it can do whatever any other digital computer can do (albeit much, much more slowly). Thus, if the Chinese room does not or can not contain a Chinese-speaking mind, then no other digital computer can contain a mind. Some replies to Searle begin by arguing that the room, as described, cannot have a Chinese-speaking mind. Arguments of this form, according to Stevan Harnad, are "no refutation (but rather an affirmation)" of the Chinese room argument, because these arguments actually imply that no digital computers can have a mind.

There are some critics, such as Hanoch Ben-Yami, who argue that the Chinese room cannot simulate all the abilities of a digital computer, such as being able to determine the current time.

Complete argument
Searle has produced a more formal version of the argument of which the Chinese Room forms a part. He presented the first version in 1984. The version given below is from 1990. The Chinese room thought experiment is intended to prove point A3.

He begins with three axioms:
 * (A1) "Programs are formal (syntactic)."
 * A program uses syntax to manipulate symbols and pays no attention to the semantics of the symbols. It knows where to put the symbols and how to move them around, but it does not know what they stand for or what they mean. For the program, the symbols are just physical objects like any others.

 * (A2) "Minds have mental contents (semantics)."
 * Unlike the symbols used by a program, our thoughts have meaning: they represent things and we know what it is they represent.

 * (A3) "Syntax by itself is neither constitutive of nor sufficient for semantics."
 * This is what the Chinese room thought experiment is intended to prove: the Chinese room has syntax (because there is a man in there moving symbols around). The Chinese room has no semantics (because, according to Searle, there is no one or nothing in the room that understands what the symbols mean). Therefore, having syntax is not enough to generate semantics.

Searle posits that these lead directly to this conclusion:

 * (C1) Programs are neither constitutive of nor sufficient for minds.
 * This should follow without controversy from the first three: Programs don't have semantics. Programs have only syntax, and syntax is insufficient for semantics. Every mind has semantics. Therefore no programs are minds.

This much of the argument is intended to show that artificial intelligence can never produce a machine with a mind by writing programs that manipulate symbols. The remainder of the argument addresses a different issue. Is the human brain running a program? In other words, is the computational theory of mind correct? He begins with an axiom that is intended to express the basic modern scientific consensus about brains and minds:

 * (A4) Brains cause minds.

Searle claims that we can derive "immediately" and "trivially" that:

 * (C2) Any other system capable of causing minds would have to have causal powers (at least) equivalent to those of brains.
 * Brains must have something that causes a mind to exist. Science has yet to determine exactly what it is, but it must exist, because minds exist. Searle calls it "causal powers". "Causal powers" is whatever the brain uses to create a mind. If anything else can cause a mind to exist, it must have "equivalent causal powers". "Equivalent causal powers" is whatever else that could be used to make a mind.

And from this he derives the further conclusions:

 * (C3) Any artifact that produced mental phenomena, any artificial brain, would have to be able to duplicate the specific causal powers of brains, and it could not do that just by running a formal program.
 * This follows from C1 and C2: Since no program can produce a mind, and "equivalent causal powers" produce minds, it follows that programs do not have "equivalent causal powers."

 * (C4) The way that human brains actually produce mental phenomena cannot be solely by virtue of running a computer program.
 * Since programs do not have "equivalent causal powers", "equivalent causal powers" produce minds, and brains produce minds, it follows that brains do not use programs to produce minds.

Refutations of Searle's argument take many different forms (see below). Computationalists and functionalists reject A3, arguing that "syntax" (as Searle describes it) can have "semantics" if the syntax has the right functional structure. Eliminative materialists reject A2, arguing that minds don't actually have "semantics" -- that thoughts and other mental phenomena are inherently meaningless but nevertheless function as if they had meaning.

Replies
Replies to Searle's argument may be classified according to what they claim to show:
 * Those which identify who speaks Chinese
 * Those which demonstrate how meaningless symbols can become meaningful
 * Those which suggest that the Chinese room should be redesigned in some way
 * Those which contend that Searle's argument is misleading
 * Those which argue that the argument makes false assumptions about subjective conscious experience and therefore proves nothing

Some of the arguments (robot and brain simulation, for example) fall into multiple categories.

Systems and virtual mind replies: finding the mind
These replies attempt to answer the question: since the man in the room does not speak Chinese, where is the "mind" that does? These replies address the key ontological issues of mind vs. body and simulation vs. reality. All of the replies that identify the mind in the room are versions of "the system reply".

System reply

 * The basic version of the system reply argues that it is the "whole system" that understands Chinese. While the man understands only English, when he is combined with the program, scratch paper, pencils and file cabinets, they form a system that can understand Chinese. "Here, understanding is not being ascribed to the mere individual; rather it is being ascribed to this whole system of which he is a part" Searle explains.

 * Searle notes that (in this simple version of the reply) the "system" is nothing more than a collection of ordinary physical objects; it grants the power of understanding and consciousness to "the conjunction of that person and bits of paper" without making any effort to explain how this pile of objects has become a conscious, thinking being. Searle argues that no reasonable person should be satisfied with the reply, unless they are "under the grip of an ideology;" In order for this reply to be remotely plausible, one must take it for granted that consciousness can be the product of an information processing "system", and does not require anything resembling the actual biology of the brain.

 * Searle then responds by simplifying this list of physical objects: he asks what happens if the man memorizes the rules and keeps track of everything in his head? Then the whole system consists of just one object: the man himself. Searle argues that if the man does not understand Chinese then the system does not understand Chinese either because now "the system" and "the man" both describe exactly the same object.

 * Critics of Searle's response argue that the program has allowed the man to have two minds in one head. If we assume a "mind" is a form of information processing, then the theory of computation can account for two computations occurring at once, namely (1) the computation for universal programmability (which is the function instantiated by the person and note-taking materials independently from any particular program contents) and (2) the computation of the Turing machine that is described by the program (which is instantiated by everything including the specific program). The theory of computation thus formally explains the open possibility that the second computation in the Chinese Room could entail a human-equivalent semantic understanding of the Chinese inputs. The focus belongs on the program's Turing machine rather than on the person's. However, from Searle's perspective, this argument is circular. The question at issue is whether consciousness is a form of information processing, and this reply requires that we make that assumption.

More sophisticated versions of the systems reply try to identify more precisely what "the system" is and they differ in exactly how they describe it. According to these replies, the "mind that speaks Chinese" could be such things as: the "software", a "program", a "running program", a simulation of the "neural correlates of consciousness", the "functional system", a "simulated mind", an "emergent property", or "a virtual mind" (described below).

Virtual mind reply

 * Marvin Minsky suggested a version of the system reply known as the "virtual mind reply". The term "virtual" is used in computer science to describe an object that appears to exist "in" a computer (or computer network) only because software makes it appear to exist. The objects "inside" computers (including files, folders, and so on) are all "virtual", except for the computer's electronic components. Similarly, Minsky argues, a computer may contain a "mind" that is virtual in the same sense as virtual machines, virtual communities and virtual reality.

 * To clarify the distinction between the simple systems reply given above and virtual mind reply, David Cole notes that two simulations could be running on one system at the same time: one speaking Chinese and one speaking Korean. While there is only one system, there can be multiple "virtual minds," thus the "system" cannot be the "mind".

 * Searle responds that such a mind is, at best, a simulation, and writes: "No one supposes that computer simulations of a five-alarm fire will burn the neighborhood down or that a computer simulation of a rainstorm will leave us all drenched." Nicholas Fearn responds that, for some things, simulation is as good as the real thing. "When we call up the pocket calculator function on a desktop computer, the image of a pocket calculator appears on the screen. We don't complain that 'it isn't really a calculator', because the physical attributes of the device do not matter." The question is, is the human mind like the pocket calculator, essentially composed of information, where a perfect simulation of the thing just is the thing? Or is the mind like the rainstorm, a thing in the world that is more than just its simulation, and not realizable in full by a computer simulation? For decades, this question of simulation has led AI researchers and philosophers to consider whether the term "synthetic intelligence" is more appropriate than the common description of such intelligences as "artificial."

These replies provide an explanation of exactly who it is that understands Chinese. If there is something besides the man in the room that can understand Chinese, Searle cannot argue that (1) the man does not understand Chinese, therefore (2) nothing in the room understands Chinese. This, according to those who make this reply, shows that Searle's argument fails to prove that "strong AI" is false.

These replies, by themselves, do not provide any evidence that strong AI is true, however. They do not show that the system (or the virtual mind) understands Chinese, other than the hypothetical premise that it passes the Turing Test. Searle argues that, if we are to consider Strong AI remotely plausible, the Chinese Room is an example that requires explanation, and it is difficult or impossible to explain how consciousness might "emerge" from the room or how the system would have consciousness. As Searle writes "the systems reply simply begs the question by insisting that the system must understand Chinese" and thus is dodging the question or hopelessly circular.

Robot and semantics replies: finding the meaning
As far as the person in the room is concerned, the symbols are just meaningless "squiggles." But if the Chinese room really "understands" what it is saying, then the symbols must get their meaning from somewhere. These arguments attempt to connect the symbols to the things they symbolize. These replies address Searle's concerns about intentionality, symbol grounding and syntax vs. semantics.

Robot reply

 * Suppose that instead of a room, the program was placed into a robot that could wander around and interact with its environment. This would allow a "causal connection" between the symbols and things they represent. Hans Moravec comments: "If we could graft a robot to a reasoning program, we wouldn't need a person to provide the meaning anymore: it would come from the physical world."

 * Searle's reply is to suppose that, unbeknownst to the individual in the Chinese room, some of the inputs came directly from a camera mounted on a robot, and some of the outputs were used to manipulate the arms and legs of the robot. Nevertheless, the person in the room is still just following the rules, and does not know what the symbols mean. Searle writes "he doesn't see what comes into the robot's eyes." (See Mary's room for a similar thought experiment.)

Derived meaning

 * Some respond that the room, as Searle describes it, is connected to the world: through the Chinese speakers that it is "talking" to and through the programmers who designed the knowledge base in his file cabinet. The symbols Searle manipulates are already meaningful, they're just not meaningful to him.

 * Searle says that the symbols only have a "derived" meaning, like the meaning of words in books. The meaning of the symbols depends on the conscious understanding of the Chinese speakers and the programmers outside the room. The room, like a book, has no understanding of its own.

Commonsense knowledge / contextualist reply

 * Some have argued that the meanings of the symbols would come from a vast "background" of commonsense knowledge encoded in the program and the filing cabinets. This would provide a "context" that would give the symbols their meaning.

 * Searle agrees that this background exists, but he does not agree that it can be built into programs. Hubert Dreyfus has also criticized the idea that the "background" can be represented symbolically.

To each of these suggestions, Searle's response is the same: no matter how much knowledge is written into the program and no matter how the program is connected to the world, he is still in the room manipulating symbols according to rules. His actions are syntactic and this can never explain to him what the symbols stand for. Searle writes "syntax is insufficient for semantics."

However, for those who accept that Searle's actions simulate a mind, separate from his own, the important question is not what the symbols mean to Searle, what is important is what they mean to the virtual mind. While Searle is trapped in the room, the virtual mind is not: it is connected to the outside world through the Chinese speakers it speaks to, through the programmers who gave it world knowledge, and through the cameras and other sensors that roboticists can supply.

Brain simulation and connectionist replies: redesigning the room
These arguments are all versions of the systems reply that identify a particular kind of system as being important; they identify some special technology that would create conscious understanding in a machine. (The "robot" and "commonsense knowledge" replies above also specify a certain kind of system as being important.)

Brain simulator reply

 * Suppose that the program simulated in fine detail the action of every neuron in the brain of a Chinese speaker. This strengthens the intuition that there would be no significant difference between the operation of the program and the operation of a live human brain.

 * Searle replies that such a simulation does not reproduce the important features of the brain—its causal and intentional states. Searle is adamant that "human mental phenomena [are] dependent on actual physical–chemical properties of actual human brains." Moreover, he argues:

"[I]magine that instead of a monolingual man in a room shuffling symbols we have the man operate an elaborate set of water pipes with valves connecting them. When the man receives the Chinese symbols, he looks up in the program, written in English, which valves he has to turn on and off. Each water connection corresponds to a synapse in the Chinese brain, and the whole system is rigged up so that after doing all the right firings, that is after turning on all the right faucets, the Chinese answers pop out at the output end of the series of pipes.

Now where is the understanding in this system? It takes Chinese as input, it simulates the formal structure of the synapses of the Chinese brain, and it gives Chinese as output. But the man certainly doesn't understand Chinese, and neither do the water pipes, and if we are tempted to adopt what I think is the absurd view that somehow the conjunction of man and water pipes understands, remember that in principle the man can internalize the formal structure of the water pipes and do all the "neuron firings" in his imagination."

Two variations on the brain simulator reply are the China brain and the brain-replacement scenario.

China brain

 * What if we ask each citizen of China to simulate one neuron, using the telephone system to simulate the connections between axons and dendrites? In this version, it seems obvious that no individual would have any understanding of what the brain might be saying. It is also obvious that this system would be functionally equivalent to a brain, so if consciousness is a function, this system would be conscious.

Brain replacement scenario

 * In this, we are asked to imagine that engineers have invented a tiny computer that simulates the action of an individual neuron. What would happen if we replaced one neuron at a time? Replacing one would clearly do nothing to change conscious awareness. Replacing all of them would create a digital computer that simulates a brain. If Searle is right, then conscious awareness must disappear during the procedure (either gradually or all at once). Searle's critics argue that there would be no point during the procedure when he can claim that conscious awareness ends and mindless simulation begins. (See Ship of Theseus for a similar thought experiment.)

Connectionist replies

 * Closely related to the brain simulator reply, this claims that a massively parallel connectionist architecture would be capable of understanding. Modern deep learning is massively parallel and has successfully displayed intelligent behavior in many domains. Nils Nilsson argues that modern AI is using digitized "dynamic signals" rather than "symbols" of the kind used by AI in 1980. Here it is the sampled signal which would have the semantics, not the individual numbers manipulated by the program. This is a different kind of machine than the one that Searle visualized.

Combination reply

 * This response combines the robot reply with the brain simulation reply, arguing that a brain simulation connected to the world through a robot body could have a mind.

Many mansions / wait till next year reply

 * Better technology in the future will allow computers to understand. Searle agrees that this is possible, but considers this point irrelevant. Searle agrees that there may be other hardware besides brains that have conscious understanding.

These arguments (and the robot or commonsense knowledge replies) identify some special technology that would help create conscious understanding in a machine. They may be interpreted in two ways: either they claim (1) this technology is required for consciousness, the Chinese room does not or cannot implement this technology, and therefore the Chinese room cannot pass the Turing test or (even if it did) it would not have conscious understanding. Or they may be claiming that (2) it is easier to see that the Chinese room has a mind if we visualize this technology as being used to create it.

In the first case, where features like a robot body or a connectionist architecture are required, Searle claims that strong AI (as he understands it) has been abandoned. The Chinese room has all the elements of a Turing complete machine, and thus is capable of simulating any digital computation whatsoever. If Searle's room cannot pass the Turing test then there is no other digital technology that could pass the Turing test. If Searle's room could pass the Turing test, but still does not have a mind, then the Turing test is not sufficient to determine if the room has a "mind". Either way, it denies one or the other of the positions Searle thinks of as "strong AI", proving his argument.

The brain arguments in particular deny strong AI if they assume that there is no simpler way to describe the mind than to create a program that is just as mysterious as the brain was. He writes "I thought the whole idea of strong AI was that we don't need to know how the brain works to know how the mind works." If computation does not provide an explanation of the human mind, then strong AI has failed, according to Searle.

Other critics hold that the room as Searle described it does, in fact, have a mind, however they argue that it is difficult to see—Searle's description is correct, but misleading. By redesigning the room more realistically they hope to make this more obvious. In this case, these arguments are being used as appeals to intuition (see next section).

In fact, the room can just as easily be redesigned to weaken our intuitions. Ned Block's Blockhead argument suggests that the program could, in theory, be rewritten into a simple lookup table of rules of the form "if the user writes S, reply with P and goto X". At least in principle, any program can be rewritten (or "refactored") into this form, even a brain simulation. In the blockhead scenario, the entire mental state is hidden in the letter X, which represents a memory address—a number associated with the next rule. It is hard to visualize that an instant of one's conscious experience can be captured in a single large number, yet this is exactly what "strong AI" claims. On the other hand, such a lookup table would be ridiculously large (to the point of being physically impossible), and the states could therefore be extremely specific.

Searle argues that however the program is written or however the machine is connected to the world, the mind is being simulated by a simple step-by-step digital machine (or machines). These machines are always just like the man in the room: they understand nothing and do not speak Chinese. They are merely manipulating symbols without knowing what they mean. Searle writes: "I can have any formal program you like, but I still understand nothing."

Speed and complexity: appeals to intuition
The following arguments (and the intuitive interpretations of the arguments above) do not directly explain how a Chinese speaking mind could exist in Searle's room, or how the symbols he manipulates could become meaningful. However, by raising doubts about Searle's intuitions they support other positions, such as the system and robot replies. These arguments, if accepted, prevent Searle from claiming that his conclusion is obvious by undermining the intuitions that his certainty requires.

Several critics believe that Searle's argument relies entirely on intuitions. Ned Block writes "Searle's argument depends for its force on intuitions that certain entities do not think." Daniel Dennett describes the Chinese room argument as a misleading "intuition pump" and writes "Searle's thought experiment depends, illicitly, on your imagining too simple a case, an irrelevant case, and drawing the 'obvious' conclusion from it."

Some of the arguments above also function as appeals to intuition, especially those that are intended to make it seem more plausible that the Chinese room contains a mind, which can include the robot, commonsense knowledge, brain simulation and connectionist replies. Several of the replies above also address the specific issue of complexity. The connectionist reply emphasizes that a working artificial intelligence system would have to be as complex and as interconnected as the human brain. The commonsense knowledge reply emphasizes that any program that passed a Turing test would have to be "an extraordinarily supple, sophisticated, and multilayered system, brimming with 'world knowledge' and meta-knowledge and meta-meta-knowledge", as Daniel Dennett explains.

Speed and complexity replies

 * Many of these critiques emphasize speed and complexity of the human brain, which processes information at 100 billion operations per second (by some estimates). Several critics point out that the man in the room would probably take millions of years to respond to a simple question, and would require "filing cabinets" of astronomical proportions. This brings the clarity of Searle's intuition into doubt.

 * An especially vivid version of the speed and complexity reply is from Paul and Patricia Churchland. They propose this analogous thought experiment: "Consider a dark room containing a man holding a bar magnet or charged object. If the man pumps the magnet up and down, then, according to Maxwell's theory of artificial luminance (AL), it will initiate a spreading circle of electromagnetic waves and will thus be luminous. But as all of us who have toyed with magnets or charged balls well know, their forces (or any other forces for that matter), even when set in motion produce no luminance at all. It is inconceivable that you might constitute real luminance just by moving forces around!" Churchland's point is that the problem is that he would have to wave the magnet up and down something like 450 trillion times per second in order to see anything.

 * Stevan Harnad is critical of speed and complexity replies when they stray beyond addressing our intuitions. He writes "Some have made a cult of speed and timing, holding that, when accelerated to the right speed, the computational may make a phase transition into the mental. It should be clear that is not a counterargument but merely an ad hoc speculation (as is the view that it is all just a matter of ratcheting up to the right degree of 'complexity.')"

Searle argues that his critics are also relying on intuitions, however his opponents' intuitions have no empirical basis. He writes that, in order to consider the "system reply" as remotely plausible, a person must be "under the grip of an ideology". The system reply only makes sense (to Searle) if one assumes that any "system" can have consciousness, just by virtue of being a system with the right behavior and functional parts. This assumption, he argues, is not tenable given our experience of consciousness.

Other minds and zombies: meaninglessness
Several replies argue that Searle's argument is irrelevant because his assumptions about the mind and consciousness are faulty. Searle believes that human beings directly experience their consciousness, intentionality and the nature of the mind every day, and that this experience of consciousness is not open to question. He writes that we must "presuppose the reality and knowability of the mental." The replies below question whether Searle is justified in using his own experience of consciousness to determine that it is more than mechanical symbol processing. In particular, the other minds reply argues that we cannot use our experience of consciousness to answer questions about other minds (even the mind of a computer), the epiphenoma replies question whether we can make any argument at all about something like consciousness which can not, by definition, be detected by any experiment, and the eliminative materialist reply argues that Searle's own personal consciousness does not "exist" in the sense that Searle thinks it does.

Other minds reply

 * The "Other Minds Reply" points out that Searle's argument is a version of the problem of other minds, applied to machines. There is no way we can determine if other people's subjective experience is the same as our own. We can only study their behavior (i.e., by giving them our own Turing test). Critics of Searle argue that he is holding the Chinese room to a higher standard than we would hold an ordinary person.

 * Nils Nilsson writes "If a program behaves as if it were multiplying, most of us would say that it is, in fact, multiplying. For all I know, Searle may only be behaving as if he were thinking deeply about these matters. But, even though I disagree with him, his simulation is pretty good, so I'm willing to credit him with real thought."

 * Alan Turing anticipated Searle's line of argument (which he called "The Argument from Consciousness") in 1950 and makes the other minds reply. He noted that people never consider the problem of other minds when dealing with each other. He writes that "instead of arguing continually over this point it is usual to have the polite convention that everyone thinks." The Turing test simply extends this "polite convention" to machines. He does not intend to solve the problem of other minds (for machines or people) and he does not think we need to.

Replies considering that Searle's "consciousness" is undetectable

 * If we accept Searle's description of intentionality, consciousness, and the mind, we are forced to accept that consciousness is epiphenomenal: that it "casts no shadow" i.e. is undetectable in the outside world. Searle's "causal properties" cannot be detected by anyone outside the mind, otherwise the Chinese Room could not pass the Turing test—the people outside would be able to tell there was not a Chinese speaker in the room by detecting their causal properties. Since they cannot detect causal properties, they cannot detect the existence of the mental. Thus, Searle's "causal properties" and consciousness itself is undetectable, and anything that cannot be detected either does not exist or does not matter.

 * Mike Alder calls this the "Newton's Flaming Laser Sword Reply". He argues that the entire argument is frivolous, because it is non-verificationist: not only is the distinction between simulating a mind and having a mind ill-defined, but it is also irrelevant because no experiments were, or even can be, proposed to distinguish between the two.

 * Daniel Dennett provides this illustration: suppose that, by some mutation, a human being is born that does not have Searle's "causal properties" but nevertheless acts exactly like a human being. (This sort of animal is called a "zombie" in thought experiments in the philosophy of mind). This new animal would reproduce just as any other human and eventually there would be more of these zombies. Natural selection would favor the zombies, since their design is (we could suppose) a bit simpler. Eventually the humans would die out. So therefore, if Searle is right, it is most likely that human beings (as we see them today) are actually "zombies", who nevertheless insist they are conscious. It is impossible to know whether we are all zombies or not. Even if we are all zombies, we would still believe that we are not.

Eliminative materialist reply

 * Several philosophers argue that consciousness, as Searle describes it, does not exist. Daniel Dennett describes consciousness as a "user illusion".

 * This position is sometimes referred to as eliminative materialism: the view that consciousness is not a concept that can "enjoy reduction" to a strictly mechanical (i.e. material) description, but rather is a concept that will be simply eliminated once the way the material brain works is fully understood, in just the same way as the concept of a demon has already been eliminated from science rather than enjoying reduction to a strictly mechanical description. Other mental properties, such as original intentionality (also called “meaning”, “content”, and “semantic character”), are also commonly regarded as special properties related to beliefs and other propositional attitudes. Eliminative materialism maintains that propositional attitudes such as beliefs and desires, among other intentional mental states that have content, do not exist. If eliminative materialism is the correct scientific account of human cognition then the assumption of the Chinese room argument that "minds have mental contents (semantics)" must be rejected.

Searle disagrees with this analysis and argues that "the study of the mind starts with such facts as that humans have beliefs, while thermostats, telephones, and adding machines don't ... what we wanted to know is what distinguishes the mind from thermostats and livers." He takes it as obvious that we can detect the presence of consciousness and dismisses these replies as being off the point.

Other replies
Margaret Boden argued in her paper "Escaping from the Chinese Room" that even if the person in the room does not understand the Chinese, it does not mean there is no understanding in the room. The person in the room at least understands the rule book used to provide output responses.

In popular culture
The Chinese room argument is a central concept in Peter Watts's novels Blindsight and (to a lesser extent) Echopraxia. Greg Egan illustrates the concept succinctly (and somewhat horrifically) in his 1990 short story Learning to Be Me, in his collection Axiomatic.

It is a central theme in the video game Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, and ties into the game's narrative.

A similar human computer is imagined in Liu Cixin's novel The Three-Body Problem, described thus by Philip Steiner: "a massive human-computer by instrumentalizing millions of soldiers [who] take the role of signal input and signal output and are instructed to perform different logical circuits, like an AND gate and an OR gate".

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Talk:Chinese room

can someone please explain, in HS english, why this isn't total nonsense?
so searle doesn't understand chinese, but the program does; what is the big deal ? that is like saying you can't do sign language cause your hands don't understand ASL I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be rude, but this seems like a total waste of time; I must be missing something — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.245.17.105 (talk) 22:12, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid that you're not going to get a satisfying reply, because there isn't one. I don't remember who it was exactly, but I remember one philosopher saying that the Chinese room argument is so profoundly and intricately stupid, that the whole field of philosophy of mind was reorganized around explaining why it's so completely wrong. In my experience, most philosophers think this argument is really terrible, but there can be value in articulating why. Other than that, yeah, Searle is mostly wasting everyone's time. Also "Chinese" isn't a language, but that's beside the point.--ScreamingRobot (talk) 07:19, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree with your main point, but I'd say that Chinese actually is a language. The word refers to Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin, or, rarely, Standard Mandarin. The word "Chinese" sometimes is used to mean a particular group of languages associated with China, but it's going too far to say "Chinese is not a language". Polar Apposite (talk) 17:37, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Plenty of experts consider it to be weak, giving a similar argument. Our own brain consists of "parts using parts", so to speak. I'm actually surprised how little this is represented in this article. I study Artificial Intelligence and you'd think it was already disproved after hearing all the counter-arguments. Wikipedia seems pretty out of date here. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 17:59, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, there is not even a criticism section in the article. Searching the article for "criticism" reveals a "further reading" section, where there are some links to works containing criticism of the Chinese Room thought experiment. None of the criticism linked to is in the article. Surely it should be? Polar Apposite (talk) 17:41, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
 * There used to be a criticism section but it was removed. Look at older versions for revisions by user "likebox". SilverCity1 (talk) 05:12, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I looked at some lists of old revisions and used ctrl + f to search them for "likebox" without quotes and I couldn't find them? Is there a better way to search for "likebox"? How old approximately are the versions that you are referring to? Polar Apposite (talk) 15:47, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chinese_room&oldid=161355774 SilverCity1 (talk) 21:35, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Although the "Critisms" section nailed it, it could have done with a bit of NPV and/or a citation or two. As it is, it looks more suitable to be a talk page comment, and even then would look too much like discussion of the topic rather than discussion of the article. I'm not surprised it was removed. But it should have been improved, not removed completely. This is really weird. Is Searle some kind of sacred cow? If so, why? Polar Apposite (talk) 13:13, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think the issue comes from the use of "understand". Take the statement "Searle can't translate words from chinese to English but the program can". As opposed to "Searle can understand the poem is beautiful but a program can't". If the poem is in chinese then English-only speakers can't really do anything with it. But, if you know chinese then you can understand what is being communicated in the poem and realize that it's beautiful. The thought exercise was initially proposed as a means of separating the syntax of words from the thought processes those words convey. Does that help? Padillah (talk) 15:06, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

 * Smart computer scientists will tell you the argument is irrelevant to artificial intelligence.This is not the same as saying that it has been refuted. Searle would agree that this argument doesn't try to put any limits on how intelligent or human-like machines will be in the future.

 * Contrary to the post above, philosophers take the argument very seriously, because it is an illustration of the hard problem of consciousness, which may the single most important problem in philosophy today. See also Mary's room for another illustration.

 * Re "parts using parts": the question at issue is how could a program create consciousness? What is it about the "whole" that might make it different than the parts? There is no easy answer to this, and as long as there isn't, the argument remains unrefuted. CharlesGillingham (talk) 05:50, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Which philosophers take the argument very seriously? Polar Apposite (talk) 17:51, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
 * If the Room says it thinks the poem is beautiful and can explain why in an impressive way while passing the Turing test then what does it even mean to say the Room doesn't understand the poem, including the beauty of the poem. Yes, inside the Room we can see that's a man, who doesn't understand a word of Chinese, with a rule book moving cards around, but if we look inside the head of a Chinese poetry lover, we see a bunch of molecules obeying the laws of physics. Polar Apposite (talk) 17:49, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

 * These are my thoughts on the matter. I think the main question is about consciousness, i.e "is the system conscious"? Now "consciousness" is not well defined and can only be understood in the intuitive sense. Is there a reason to think that a system composed of cards, a man dealing them, the rule book etc. is consciously understanding Chinese, while the parts of the system don't? Even if you apply it to directly to computers, we know computers are nothing more than high-voltage, low-voltage signaling machines - everything else one might say about computation is just interpretation. And this could be replaced by anything which were able to reliably represent two distinct values (I figure instead of electricity you could use another type of energy). Is there a reason to think this sequence of two distinct values might, as a system, become conscious?
 * The only thing we intuitively know is conscious, is us human beings, and for a variety of reasons we infer that this consciousness emerges from and depends on the brain. Or, you might say, the brain is conscious. Now the brain is also a heap of cells, and we can agree this heap of cells somehow becomes conscious. Seeing as this is the only conscious entity we are really sure of, it would be the safest to infer that another entity is conscious only if it contains the same causal mechanism that the brain has to create consciousness. So, It would be intellectually honest to say, that a computer (however implemented) is conscious, only if fulfills the requirement stated above. The problem is (it seems) no one knows what are those causal mechanisms. This question I think might only be answered by advances in the field of neuroscience, if it turns out that the mechanism which creates consciousness is computational, i.e that the part of the brain which creates consciousness is a computer.
 * Until this happens I see no honest reason to assume that computers are conscious.
 * So you think that the safest is the only intellectually honest thing one can argue? --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 09:00, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 * We don't actually know that we are conscious, from our intuitive, subjective impressions. We can define any talking, living, human as conscious, provides he makes sense, but that's all. We believe we are. Or we are sure we are. We can't prove that we are, and so we cannot, as scientists, say that we know we are. Likewise we could define consciousness as something only humans have, or even something only nonhumans have, but that is obviously arbitrary and sheds no light on the question. You are doing likewise when you 'infer' that only brains or machines that work the same way as the human brain are conscious. It is equally arbitrary and circular.
 * We haven't got a clear definition of consciousness, only of a claim that something/someone makes about itself/himself that it/he is conscious.
 * If it acts conscious, then the burden is on you to say why it is not conscious, and not vice versa. You need to show why it is disqualified despite having jumped through all the hoops by passing the Turing test. You need some rule that you can use to supplement the Turing test. But if it's arbitrary, it proves nothing.
 * Let me repeat, my subjective impression of being conscious, or even of the sensation of the color red, is not proof that I really have that sensation. It is a belief, even if I believe it utterly. So is my belief that I can intuitively, directly experience my own consciousness, while other people's consciousness is something I have less reason to believe in, even if they say they are conscious just as eloquently as I do.
 * You are not using an *operational definition* of consciousness. Polar Apposite (talk) 18:18, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
 * My personal opinion is that computers (or computer programs) are not conscious, so Searle's argument holds. At the very least, there is no reason to assume that they are.
 * On a different note, I think the root cause of this problem is actually the subjectivity vs. objectivity problem, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion .. Dannyfonk (talk) 09:18, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
 * It's more of an assertion than an argument at this point. If you and others hold the unfalsifiable opinion that computers can't be "conscious", that's fine, but the Chinese Room scenario is so poorly constructed and interpreted that it's baffling to me that an adult with a PhD was able to pass it off as academic work. One day the page intro will point this out, but for now we have to take this garbage seriously. Let me be clear: As an opinion, the idea is fine (albeit unoriginal) and I would entertain the idea as part of my own personal philosophy; as academic work published in a journal, it is garbage by modern standards.

 * I am a physicist by trade, so I 2001:480:91:FF00:0:0:0:15 (talk) 17:04, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The quality of the argument isn't really all that relevant to how it should be treated. It is influential and notable. I'm not certain I have ever met anyone who had a high opinion of the argument or Searle, but I've certainly heard a lot of people talk about it a lot, and the body of published work discussing it speaks for itself.
 * The notability is really the only relevant factor, but as an aside I would add that there can be a lot of value in a simple, well-expressed presentation of a bad argument. It can make explicit a bad but intuitive idea that others are merely hand waving at, and thus make it easier to refute. See, for example, What Mary Didn't Know. Ncsaint (talk) 12:34, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The notability of an argument depends to a large extent on the quality of the argument, I would have thought. Polar Apposite (talk) 15:40, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, I’m a philosopher. It’s not garbage, it’s a good argument. Philosophy being a discipline dealing with the basics, sometimes basicness is confounded for silliness. --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 16:56, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Spelling nitpicking: minuscule "r" for room? Or uppercase R?
I've noticed that for "Chinese Room argument" there are many representaions in this article, spelling-wise. "Chinese Room", "Chinese room", "Chinese Room Argument", "Chinese room argument" and "Chinese Room argument". Now some of these mentions are directly quoted from research papers and might be represented in their correct spelling, whereas the article in general uses "Chinese room" or "Chinese room argument" with a minuscule r for room. Not wanting to stir things up I left things as they are, however I do wonder if you think the usage is consistent as-is (I think maybe it is not), or if anyone can decide because they read all the relevant referenced articles that they indeed are (not me, its been too long since I read Searle). Any pointers? Or too much meta already? Vintagesound (talk) 20:08, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

 * I would support either convention. "Chinese Room Argument" is the name of the argument. The "Chinese room" is something that appears in the thought experiment. But I imagine that there isn't a super reliable source. What does the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy do? CharlesGillingham (talk) 08:07, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Good question, but the SEP article is a mess. It starts of using 'Chinese Room Argument' but later slips into 'Chinese Room argument'; it mostly refers to the room as 'the room' but sometimes refers to it as 'the Chinese Room'.
 * So I think Wikipedia is on its own, and your first instinct seems best -- 'Chinese Room Argument', 'Chinese room', 'room'. Ncsaint (talk) 12:25, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

The Game (1961) is a philosophical argument
You deleted my text and wrote: "The Game is not an argument in the philosophy of mind, and this article is about Searle's argument, not one element of his thought experiment". This is incorrect, because The Game (1961) is "an argument in the philosophy of mind". Possibly you are not familiar with this style of writing of philosophical arguments --- it is called Socratic dialogue, originates from Greece and is popular in East Europe including Bulgaria and Russia. I am familiar with these facts because Bulgaria is neighboring country of Greece. Thus, The Game (1961) is the original argument in Russian that contains both the Chinese room and the China brain arguments. Obviously, the American philosophers have plagiarized The Game as they have not cited it. I do not know any of the two philosophers who are credited separately for the Chinese room (1980) and the China brain (1978) to have stated publicly that they know to read and understand Russian language. During the cold war between the Soviet Union and USA, ideas were stolen by both sides without referencing the other. This ended in the 1990s with the end of the Soviet Union. In the course of 20 years (from 1960s to 1980s) after the publication of Dneprov's work, his story The Game was split into two arguments, although in the original it was combined into a single experiment. I would advise you to go and read the whole story before making further edits. In case you do not understand Russian, here is the full tri-lingual version (Russian-English-Bulgarian) prepared by me (I understand perfectly Russian and have verified every word in all 3 languages) of Dneprov A. The game. Knowledge—Power 1961; №5: 39-41. PDF. A direct quote from the article shows that it is a philosophical argument: "I think our game gave us the right answer to the question `Can machines think?' We've proven that even the most perfect simulation of machine thinking is not the thinking process itself." The original scan of the Russian journal is added as appendix to my translation. The Game is published in the May 1961 issue, just when the Soviet Union beat the USA to send the first human in the outer space -- that is why Yuri Gagarin is on the journal cover. p.s. Please include back the material that you deleted. I would not object if you edit it to suit your own vision of neutrality. Danko Georgiev (talk) 17:46, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

 * Nevertheless, this is an article about Searle's argument, not about all arguments of this form.  CharlesGillingham (talk) 21:07, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

 * I added Dneprov's name to the first paragraph (along with the other precursors mentioned in the history section). Is this acceptable? You may have noticed that, in my last edit, I made sure the article no longer gave any precedence to Searle for this kind of critique. It just says that he is the author of this specific critique.

 * But I still don't agree that your edits were good idea. Since my previous answer was a bit glib, so I thought I would flesh it out.

 * My goal here is strictly editorial. Every article has a topic, and it's an editor's job to keep all the material in the article on topic. The title of this article is "Chinese Room", which is a specific thought experiment, not a general approach to these problems. "The Game" and the "Chinese Room" are two different critiques of AI. This article is about only one of them.

 * Everything in this article is specific to the "Chinese Room" version of this idea. Nothing in this article is about "the Game", or other similar arguments or thought experiments (except the two paragraphs in "History"). The Replies are all from people who replied to Searle's argument, not "The Game". The clarifications in the Philosophy and Computer Science were made by people trying to clarify Searle's version of the idea, not "The Game". Searle's Complete Argument is made by Searle, not by Dnepov. There is hardly a sentence in this article that isn't reporting some bit of academic dialog about Searle's version. None of this academic dialog was about Dneprov's version.

 * Perhaps American academics should have paid more attention to Dnepov's version. Like you, I have no idea if any of the participants in this 40 year long argument even knew the Dneprov version existed. Perhaps Dneprov's version deserved a bigger footprint in the philosophy of mind, or the history of philosophy. Perhaps one day it will receive that kind of attention. All that might be true. But:

 * We are merely editors. We report, we do not correct. We can't rewrite academic history from Wikipedia. This article summarizes the 10,000 pages of academic argument that his been published in reaction to Searle's version. That's what the article is. Thanks to you, now it mentions Dnepov as one of the people who had the same idea, quite a bit earlier. But Dneprov's version is not the topic of the article. CharlesGillingham (talk) 21:41, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

 * Finally, would you object to moving this conversation to the talk page of Chinese Room? I think it belongs there. CharlesGillingham (talk) 21:41, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Dear Charles, thank you very much for the explanations of your thoughts on the editing process. I will not mind if you move the conversation to another talk page if you want. Because I work daily on scientific projects, my thought process is focused mainly on veracity of ideas or arguments. Consequently, I can give you reasons for or against some proposition, but I will leave it up to you to decide what to do. In regard to your general attitude to separate Dneprov's argument and Searle's argument, it is factually incorrect because the Chinese language is not essential to characterize Searle's argument! Consider this: The Chinese room makes no sense to 1.5 billion Chinese citizens who are native speakers of Chinese! All these Chinese people will perform the manipulations and they will understand Chinese, thereby invalidating Searle's conclusion! Only from this global viewpoint that Searle's argument is meaningless to 1.5 billion native Chinese (i.e. 1/3 of all people on Earth!), you can understand the importance of my original edit in Wikipedia where I stated that Searle "proposed Americanized version" of the argument. "Americanized version" means that it makes sense to Americans, but may not make sense to people living in other parts of the world. In particular, if Chinese philosophers want to teach Searle's Chinese room in their philosophy textbooks, the only way to achieve the goal intended by the author is to change the language to some language that they do not understand like the "American room". Now, after I have demonstrated to you that the word "Chinese" in the "Chinese" room is not defining the argument, it is clear that Dneprov's argument is exactly the same argument written for Russians and using Portuguese language that Russians do not understand. What matters from historical viewpoint and in terms of attribution is that it precedes by ~20 years Searle's publication. A philosophical argument is defined by the general idea of proof and the final conclusion. Dneprov uses (1) people to simulate the working of an existing 1961 Soviet computing machine named "Ural", which translates a sentence from some language A to another language B. (2) The people do not understand language A, neither before, nor after they perform the translation algorithm. (3) Therefore, the executing of the translation algorithm does not provide understanding. Final conclusion intended by Dneprov using the technique of Socratic dialogue (i.e. the words are spoken by the main story character "Prof. Zarubin") is that machines cannot think. Searle's argument is identical except for the number of people involved in the translation (1 or many it does not matter) and the specific choices of languages A and B. My general attitude to contribute to Wikipedia is that the English version is for all mankind, and not only for Americans. Therefore, articles should be written from a country neutral perspective and sensitivity to the fact that most Wikipedia users are non-native English speakers across the globe. p.s. If you find a version of Searle's argument written by someone before 1961, then definitely send me a copy of the original text and I will advocate for the attribution of "Chinese room" to the first person who clearly formulated steps (1), (2) and (3) in the argument. Danko Georgiev (talk) 05:57, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

 * I still think you're misunderstanding our role here.

 * This is an encyclopedia article about a historically notable conversation in philosophy. The historical conversation has already happened. We can only report what the conversation was. We can't report what the conversation should have been.

 * We don't write what we, ourselves, think is true. We report what notable philosophers said. We don't try to put words into their mouth, or rebuild the subject for them. We try to explain what they said, who they said it to, and what the context was, without putting our own spin on it.

 * So it actually doesn't matter if you're right about this -- if Dnepov was making exactly the same argument. This article can't give the impression that the entire field of philosophy says the same things you do, even if you're right. Again, none of the other people cited in this article think they were writing about Dneprov. Harnad, Dennett, Dreyfus, Chalmers, McGinn, all of them --- they weren't writing about Dneprov. That might not even have heard of Dneprov. They were writing about Searle.

 * That's what we have to report -- what they thought. We can't take into account what we think. What we think has no place in Wikipedia. So you don't need to keep arguing for this -- no matter how good you're argument is, it doesn't effect the 'editorial' issue. CharlesGillingham (talk) 06:49, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

 * Dear Charles, I think you have a problem with understanding the meaning of jargon (technical words) used in philosophy, which means that you should probably refrain from editing articles on philosophical subjects. The sense in which the term "argument" is used in philosophy is the same as proof, not as conversation. The intended meaning (semantics) of the expression "Chinese room argument" is the same as "Chinese room proof" and NOT as "Chinese room conversation"! P.S. I have just seen the new revision of the article and do agree with it. A sentence in the introduction on the history of the proof was all that was needed to make things right. Danko Georgiev (talk) 15:45, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
 * To other wiki editors: The main issue that I had with the article is the removal of the text on the first documented discoverer Anatoly Dneprov of the Chinese room argument (proof/theorem). I do not object that Searle has come up (possibly independently) with the same proof, and that he is widely mis-credited as the originator of the argument. However, now we have a documentary record of Dneprov's 1961 work and high quality scan of the Soviet journal. So, this historic fact should be mentioned in the wiki article. For the type of wiki edit that I am proposing, I give a concrete example with the Pythagorean theorem, which bears the name of Pythagoras. For a long time, it was taught in Europe that Pythagoras discovered the general theorem, while Babylonians only knew of some special cases called Pythagorean triples (like 3,4,5). However, we now have historic evidence that Indians in the 8th to 6th centuries BCE already knew the Pythagorean theorem as it is recorded in Baudhāyana Sulbasūtra. This information on earliest proof is included in the wiki article on the Pythagorean theorem. The Chinese room argument is a proof or theorem providing negative answer to the question whether machines can think. Dneprov's proof is published in 1961, which is almost two decades earlier than Searle's proof in 1980. Therefore, Dneprov's work has to be mentioned in the article with respect to historic attribution. Dneprov was a Soviet physicist and working on cybernetics. His publication was intended to prove that machines cannot think to anyone interested in science. Danko Georgiev (talk) 16:19, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Just to put this to rest -- Dneprov is now credited (in the history section) with having come up with the exact same argument 20 years earlier, but the article as a whole is still about Searle's version and the replies to it. CharlesGillingham (talk) 09:27, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Brain replacement scenario
I don't particularly see how this (or any other reply involving an artificial brain) actually is a reply to the Chinese Room, a thought experiment involving a set of instructions and a processor. More specifically though, the quote from Searle in this section is certainly wildly out of context; it's framed here as Searle's prediction of why brain replacement could not result in a machine consciousness, but in Rediscovery of the Mind, the source of the quote, Searle brings up brain replacement to illustrate the difficulty in inferring subjective mental states from observable behaviour, and this description of brain replacement resulting in gradually shrinking consciousness is alongside two alternative scenarios in which consciousness is entirely preserved (one in which behaviour is also preserved, and one in which it is not). It's not a prediction, or a reply to a reply to the Chinese Room argument — except perhaps thematically. LetsEditConstructively (talk) 14:14, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

 * I think we should cut the Searle quote. Or we could remove the word "predicts" and give a more accurate context of the quote, if you're up for it.
 * However, I think we should leave the scenario in, as one more item in the list, even if Searle himself wouldn't call it a "reply". Three reasons:
 * Russell and Norvig (the leading AI textbook) brings it up while discussing the Chinese Room, so we are justified in bringing it up here.
 * The scenario is on topic. You said that Searle brings it up while discussing "The difficulty in inferring subjective mental states from observable behaviour". This is a key issue in the Chinese Room argument. (Some would say it's the only issue. Colin McGinn, for one.)
 * The scenario is a legitimate problem for the CRA, at least as much as the other replies in this section. We know that: (1) Brains have subjective mental states. (2) A brain replaced by tiny, parallel digital machinery is equivalent to a digital computer running a program. (3) Searle thinks that the Chinese Room shows that it is impossible for a digital computer running a program to have subjective mental states. So, if Searle is right, then (1+2+3) consciousness must be present at the start of the procedure and absent at the end. It's hard to say exactly how and when it disappears, and it's easy to imagine that it just doesn't disappear and that Searle is wrong. It's an argument from intuition, like most of the other replies.
 * That's my two cents. Let me know if you agree. CharlesTGillingham (talk) 07:47, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

 * I have incorporated your thoughts into the article CharlesTGillingham (talk) 01:41, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I probably should have left the first sentence off my initial post, because my main concern was how the quote from Searle was incorporated into the section. I think the new text/footnotes are much better, thank you!
 * It isn't relevant to the article but I have to ask: do we know (2)? They might be computationally equivalent, in that the same operations can be performed on either one (or on a very large piece of paper, for that matter), but they certainly aren't physically equivalent. Treating them as the same thing seems like begging the CRA's question. LetsEditConstructively (talk) 12:51, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I suppose I mean that they aren't equivalent structurally, rather than physically. An artificial brain's ability to converse in Chinese is intrinsic to the arrangement of its neurons rather than depending on the program its neurons execute, while a program that converses in Chinese (even one that functions by simulating neurons) should be able to do so regardless of the specifics of the hardware it's run on. Anyway this is getting fairly forumish so I'll drop it. LetsEditConstructively (talk) 23:00, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Paragraph in the wrong place?
This paragraph: "Searle argues that his critics are also relying on intuitions, however his opponents' intuitions have no empirical basis. He writes that, in order to consider the "system reply" as remotely plausible, a person must be "under the grip of an ideology". The system reply only makes sense (to Searle) if one assumes that any "system" can have consciousness, just by virtue of being a system with the right behavior and functional parts. This assumption, he argues, is not tenable given our experience of consciousness." seems to be out of place in the Churchland Luminous Room argument section. Does it belong elsewhere, or does it need to edited to make it refer specifically to Churchland? Polar Apposite (talk) 08:45, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

 * Churchland's luminous room is not supposed to be a section header, it's just a boldface name of the argument given in that one paragraph, which is a weird layout, used throughout the article.

 * The final two paragraphs are both in reply to any of the arguments in this section (that is, arguments that say Searle's argument depends only on people's intuitions).

 * We should probably remove all those "boldface argument name" things and just introduce the name of the argument in the first sentence of each paragraph. CharlesTGillingham (talk) 00:24, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

 * I went ahead and removed the "boldface argument name / indented description" form in a few sections, but looking at it again, I'm not sure if my edits are an improvement. Does anyone have an opinion?

 * The structure of each section is this:
 * introduction to this kind of reply
 * three or four replies of this form
 * summary with Searle's counterargument against any reply of this form.
 * Right now, some of the sections use the old format (where each argument gets it's own header, and is indented, so that the un-indent indicates that we're now talking about all these arguments) and some of them are just flat. Which is better? CharlesTGillingham (talk) 01:11, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Okay, I have given all the replies and a consistent format. It might not be the best, but at least it highlights the structure of the dialog. --- CharlesTGillingham (talk) 17:06, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Chinese room