Luke Roberts
Chris Kam
Reference Information
Title: Minds, Brains, and Programs
Author: John R. Searle
Presentation Venue: Behavioral and Brain Sciences;
Date: 1980
Location: Cambridge University Press;
Summary
In this paper, John Searle describes his "Chinese Room" experiment to confront those of the opinion that a computer can successfully carry out intelligent conversations. The people he challenges in particular are experts in the field of Artificial Intelligence(AI). In particular, there is the example of the paper that describes a machine that can hear a story and make inferences about the story, by Roger Schank at Yale. Searle uses the Chinese Room argument to challenge Schank’s claims.
The Chinese experiment is as follows: Searle is locked in a room and given a stack of pages with Chinese writing. He doesn’t know any Chinese. He is then given another stack of pages of Chinese script and a set of rules written in English that correlate to the first stack of Chinese pages. With these instructions, he is able to work with the symbols given to him in Chinese and effectively respond to questions. With this, he makes the argument that he can fathom the understanding of English, but that a computer being instanciated to answer questions does not prove dynamic cognitive awareness. As shown earlier in the experiment, he is merely following instructions to answer questions, but that does not prove knowledge of the language.
The author concludes by saying that only true machines, i.e: human brains, not programs, can truly think. Since the machine cannot truly understand, it cannot truly be thinking when it takes in a story.
Discussion
This paper was interesting and I would have to take sides with Searle. Searle does a good job of not leaving any rock unturned in his arguments. His does that essentially by responding to his critcs.
This paper was written in 1980, however it is has become Behaviorial and Brain Sciences' most influential target article.
I think that Searle needs to expand on what makes a "true machine" when he says that the brain is the only true machine and not a program. I kept thinking this was pretty subjective defining on his part. What did you think about Searle's different definitions?
ReplyDeleteHe does seem at times subjective and condescending, I have to admit especially when responding to his critics. Some definitions like "strong AI" seem to have been established by him, and then used to support his arguments. However, I agree with his general idea that some functions of the brain are only unique to the brain.
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