This post consists of a detailed description of the analogy of the Chinese Room by Prof John Searle. It concerns the difference between a computer thinking and human intentions. It then describes Searle's wider orientation as a member of the group of philosophers who argued the case known as The Identity Hypothesis.
My post was made on 29 Jun 2008 at 09:30 am:
Hi Richard, sorry to be a while replying - life got a bit busy.
I'm not sure whether we are both referring to the same Chinese room analogy. I think we probably are, but, for the sake of clarity I'll go through the whole story. The scenario was invented by Prof John Searle who was a trendy philospher in my student days. Alas, he is now 75 and no longer on the "A" list. Perhaps he should have a word with Pete Townsend to see how to become an everlasting hero! Anyway, to quote from his wikipedia entry (to save me explaining it myself):
"Searle asks his audience to imagine that many years from now, people have constructed a computer that behaves as if it understands Chinese. The computer takes Chinese characters as input and, following a program, produces other Chinese characters, which it presents as output. Suppose that this computer performs this task so convincingly that it easily passes the Turing test. In other words, it convinces a human Chinese speaker that the program is itself a human Chinese speaker. All the questions the human asks are responded to appropriately, such that the Chinese speaker is convinced that he or she is talking to another Chinese-speaking human. The conclusion that proponents of artificial intelligence would like to draw is that the computer understands Chinese, just as the person does.
Now, Searle asks the audience to suppose that he is in a room in which he receives Chinese characters, consults a book containing an English version of the computer program, and processes the Chinese characters according to the instructions in the book. Searle notes that he does not understand a word of Chinese. He simply manipulates what to him are meaningless squiggles, using the book and whatever other equipment is provided in the room, such as paper, pencils, erasers, and filing cabinets. After manipulating the symbols, Searle will produce the answer in Chinese. Since the computer passed the Turing test, so does Searle running its program by hand: "Nobody just looking at my answers can tell that I don't speak a word of Chinese," Searle writes.
Searle argues that his lack of understanding goes to show that computers do not understand Chinese either, because they are in the same situation as he is. They are mindless manipulators of symbols, just as he is. They don't understand what they're "saying", just as he doesn't. Since they do not have conscious mental states like "understanding", they can not properly be said to have minds."
Searle was interested in the idea of intentionality and, indeed, wrote a book called "Intentionality". As you can see he is saying that it is one thing to look at process and quite another to to look at understanding and intentions. No matter how sophisicated the science, can it ever be more than process? In my view the answer has to be "No". I think the point here is that science is invented by people to understand the processes of the real world. But it in no way explains anything beyond "How?"
I have noticed that many of the writers in this forum seem to think that science and matter are one and the same. If we accept that matter is a reality, that still leaves open the question of what science is and how accurate it is. I would suggest that science can never be more than a set of constructs attempting to explain a process. Moreover, it does not really require us to exclude other languages which explain other phenomena. For example, poetry, art, love, human experiences all have well developed means of communication. If they are just processes, like the chinese characters, then what is the point of them?
I suppose the obvious question which this line of thinking poses is "What is the point of science?"
Just to head off those out and out materialists who lurk around this forum, Searle is one of a group of philosophers, myself included, who believe what has come to be known as "The Identity Hypothesis". The idea is that once a line of thinking has developed into a permanent body it cannot be pushed back into its former identity. So, if you try to explain a crackling fire in scientific terms then you lose the point of it in a poem. Another like-minded philosopher called it the Humpty Dumpty Argument because once Humpty was broken into thousands of pieces "...not all the King's horses, nor all the King's men, could put Humpty together again."
So the science of material reality is just one of many ways of explaining the world around us and the experiences we have. No one language is sufficient.
All that without even considering the implications of consciousness as "non scientific" but still very real. I think I had better pause there to get some reactions.
Peter Rayner
Richard's response is to distinguish between "objective essence" and "formal essence" which seems to be another way of describing the difference between computer and human thinking.
He also considers meaning and science as things that happen in life which need to be explained.
Richard's post was made on 29 Jun 2008 at 06:21 pm:
Hi Peter, reading all of the last post I can safely say we're thinking of the same one. I have a few questions and answers of my own in response to it.
I still think that regardless of whether the person in the Chinese room understands Chinese or not, he can still relate to a human language that he can speak, this gives the Chinese language some form of meaning, instead of meaningless "squiggles". This contrasts with the case involving computers, as they are merely regurgitating what humans have programmed them to do. Computers can know grammar, spelling and dictionary meanings of words, but they have no mind or instinct to actually relate to how a language works in everyday life, slang words for example would seem like nonsense to computers, but some people abide by it by talking their own way. The best way to describe this in philosophical terms is that computers hold the "objective essence", knowing the idea of a language, but never have the "formal essence" of the language, which is what the language actually is.
I also find that scientific definitions and poetry can work together, because if you read a poem and you come across the word "fire", and you didn't understand what it was, and never experienced fire, then you would only look up its meaning in a dictionary or ask someone to find out it's meaning. Therefore, you have to have a sound understanding about what the poem's words mean to understand the point of the poem, which without scientific definitions or a working understanding of "fire", then it would just seem like a crazy random rambling that someone decided to put together.
Another response I have is that one concept we have to grasp in order to understand science, is to know things can happen above anyone's understanding. An example that comes to mind are radio waves that we send out to space. Law of gravity says on Earth "what goes up must come down", however we have sent radio signals into space for a long time, and the radio waves never bounce back to Earth, they continue to run deeper into space, this contradicts the law of gravity. If we didn't know what radio waves were and went out into space, received an alien signal and it turned out to be british world war II songs for example, it would be very hard and quite baffling to work out how it got into space without knowing that radio waves defy the law of gravity.
This continues onto my conclusion of what the point of science is, well.. It's a way of understanding what happens, and it is everyday life, without science unexplained things would be happening every second of the day, and people would react differently to how these random acts occur. It is from these reactions of the people that poetry lies, meaning "what happens+understanding of meaning=reaction" and equally, "what happens+reaction=understanding of meaning" However much this is juggled about it still all remains balanced and equal, you can't have one without the other.
Science and reactions are part of what happens in life, they just happen naturally, sometimes without a meaning, and most certainly without responsibility sometimes. I see science and reactions as a spectrum, at opposite ends they work together to form what we do, and how we live our lives... I apologise if this is too long-winded, but I look forward to seeing your response to mine all the same.
Richard Debnam
My reply is self-explanatory. It was made on 30 Jun 2008 at 06:34 am:
Richard you never cease to amaze me. None of this is what I expected and yet I can't dismiss it even though it is not standard philosophical response to the points I have made. Once again I find myself needing to think before replying to you. Long may it continue. I will think awhile before replying. Stay right there, buddy.
Peter Rayner
Richard's reply is also self-explanatory. It was made on 30 Jun 2008 at 11:50 am:
Hi Peter, yeh.. I found that I tend not to agree with the standard philosophical responses I read and come across, instead I try to think up what my mind tells me is right and I come up with alternate ones that are "outside the box" so to speak. No worries mate, patience is a virtue so they say. In the mean time, I have decided to add you as a friend, because I haven't come across a discussion as interesting as ours for a while.
Speak to you soon.
Richard Debnam
Tags: afterlife Chinese Room John Searle Identity Hypothesis computer artificial intelligence intentionality science process objective essence formal essence meaning
My post was made on 29 Jun 2008 at 09:30 am:
Hi Richard, sorry to be a while replying - life got a bit busy.
I'm not sure whether we are both referring to the same Chinese room analogy. I think we probably are, but, for the sake of clarity I'll go through the whole story. The scenario was invented by Prof John Searle who was a trendy philospher in my student days. Alas, he is now 75 and no longer on the "A" list. Perhaps he should have a word with Pete Townsend to see how to become an everlasting hero! Anyway, to quote from his wikipedia entry (to save me explaining it myself):
"Searle asks his audience to imagine that many years from now, people have constructed a computer that behaves as if it understands Chinese. The computer takes Chinese characters as input and, following a program, produces other Chinese characters, which it presents as output. Suppose that this computer performs this task so convincingly that it easily passes the Turing test. In other words, it convinces a human Chinese speaker that the program is itself a human Chinese speaker. All the questions the human asks are responded to appropriately, such that the Chinese speaker is convinced that he or she is talking to another Chinese-speaking human. The conclusion that proponents of artificial intelligence would like to draw is that the computer understands Chinese, just as the person does.
Now, Searle asks the audience to suppose that he is in a room in which he receives Chinese characters, consults a book containing an English version of the computer program, and processes the Chinese characters according to the instructions in the book. Searle notes that he does not understand a word of Chinese. He simply manipulates what to him are meaningless squiggles, using the book and whatever other equipment is provided in the room, such as paper, pencils, erasers, and filing cabinets. After manipulating the symbols, Searle will produce the answer in Chinese. Since the computer passed the Turing test, so does Searle running its program by hand: "Nobody just looking at my answers can tell that I don't speak a word of Chinese," Searle writes.
Searle argues that his lack of understanding goes to show that computers do not understand Chinese either, because they are in the same situation as he is. They are mindless manipulators of symbols, just as he is. They don't understand what they're "saying", just as he doesn't. Since they do not have conscious mental states like "understanding", they can not properly be said to have minds."
Searle was interested in the idea of intentionality and, indeed, wrote a book called "Intentionality". As you can see he is saying that it is one thing to look at process and quite another to to look at understanding and intentions. No matter how sophisicated the science, can it ever be more than process? In my view the answer has to be "No". I think the point here is that science is invented by people to understand the processes of the real world. But it in no way explains anything beyond "How?"
I have noticed that many of the writers in this forum seem to think that science and matter are one and the same. If we accept that matter is a reality, that still leaves open the question of what science is and how accurate it is. I would suggest that science can never be more than a set of constructs attempting to explain a process. Moreover, it does not really require us to exclude other languages which explain other phenomena. For example, poetry, art, love, human experiences all have well developed means of communication. If they are just processes, like the chinese characters, then what is the point of them?
I suppose the obvious question which this line of thinking poses is "What is the point of science?"
Just to head off those out and out materialists who lurk around this forum, Searle is one of a group of philosophers, myself included, who believe what has come to be known as "The Identity Hypothesis". The idea is that once a line of thinking has developed into a permanent body it cannot be pushed back into its former identity. So, if you try to explain a crackling fire in scientific terms then you lose the point of it in a poem. Another like-minded philosopher called it the Humpty Dumpty Argument because once Humpty was broken into thousands of pieces "...not all the King's horses, nor all the King's men, could put Humpty together again."
So the science of material reality is just one of many ways of explaining the world around us and the experiences we have. No one language is sufficient.
All that without even considering the implications of consciousness as "non scientific" but still very real. I think I had better pause there to get some reactions.
Peter Rayner
Richard's response is to distinguish between "objective essence" and "formal essence" which seems to be another way of describing the difference between computer and human thinking.
He also considers meaning and science as things that happen in life which need to be explained.
Richard's post was made on 29 Jun 2008 at 06:21 pm:
Hi Peter, reading all of the last post I can safely say we're thinking of the same one. I have a few questions and answers of my own in response to it.
I still think that regardless of whether the person in the Chinese room understands Chinese or not, he can still relate to a human language that he can speak, this gives the Chinese language some form of meaning, instead of meaningless "squiggles". This contrasts with the case involving computers, as they are merely regurgitating what humans have programmed them to do. Computers can know grammar, spelling and dictionary meanings of words, but they have no mind or instinct to actually relate to how a language works in everyday life, slang words for example would seem like nonsense to computers, but some people abide by it by talking their own way. The best way to describe this in philosophical terms is that computers hold the "objective essence", knowing the idea of a language, but never have the "formal essence" of the language, which is what the language actually is.
I also find that scientific definitions and poetry can work together, because if you read a poem and you come across the word "fire", and you didn't understand what it was, and never experienced fire, then you would only look up its meaning in a dictionary or ask someone to find out it's meaning. Therefore, you have to have a sound understanding about what the poem's words mean to understand the point of the poem, which without scientific definitions or a working understanding of "fire", then it would just seem like a crazy random rambling that someone decided to put together.
Another response I have is that one concept we have to grasp in order to understand science, is to know things can happen above anyone's understanding. An example that comes to mind are radio waves that we send out to space. Law of gravity says on Earth "what goes up must come down", however we have sent radio signals into space for a long time, and the radio waves never bounce back to Earth, they continue to run deeper into space, this contradicts the law of gravity. If we didn't know what radio waves were and went out into space, received an alien signal and it turned out to be british world war II songs for example, it would be very hard and quite baffling to work out how it got into space without knowing that radio waves defy the law of gravity.
This continues onto my conclusion of what the point of science is, well.. It's a way of understanding what happens, and it is everyday life, without science unexplained things would be happening every second of the day, and people would react differently to how these random acts occur. It is from these reactions of the people that poetry lies, meaning "what happens+understanding of meaning=reaction" and equally, "what happens+reaction=understanding of meaning" However much this is juggled about it still all remains balanced and equal, you can't have one without the other.
Science and reactions are part of what happens in life, they just happen naturally, sometimes without a meaning, and most certainly without responsibility sometimes. I see science and reactions as a spectrum, at opposite ends they work together to form what we do, and how we live our lives... I apologise if this is too long-winded, but I look forward to seeing your response to mine all the same.
Richard Debnam
My reply is self-explanatory. It was made on 30 Jun 2008 at 06:34 am:
Richard you never cease to amaze me. None of this is what I expected and yet I can't dismiss it even though it is not standard philosophical response to the points I have made. Once again I find myself needing to think before replying to you. Long may it continue. I will think awhile before replying. Stay right there, buddy.
Peter Rayner
Richard's reply is also self-explanatory. It was made on 30 Jun 2008 at 11:50 am:
Hi Peter, yeh.. I found that I tend not to agree with the standard philosophical responses I read and come across, instead I try to think up what my mind tells me is right and I come up with alternate ones that are "outside the box" so to speak. No worries mate, patience is a virtue so they say. In the mean time, I have decided to add you as a friend, because I haven't come across a discussion as interesting as ours for a while.
Speak to you soon.
Richard Debnam
Tags: afterlife Chinese Room John Searle Identity Hypothesis computer artificial intelligence intentionality science process objective essence formal essence meaning
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