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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese room | 2/11 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:31:21.147536+00:00 | kb-cron |
Searle's version appeared in his 1980 article "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 had continued to defend and refine the argument in multiple 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 Behavioral and Brain Sciences 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 one. 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 1957, the economist and psychologist 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. Recent philosophical discussions have revisited the implications of computationalism for artificial intelligence. Goldstein and Levinstein explore whether large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can possess minds, focusing on their ability to exhibit folk psychology, including beliefs, desires, and intentions. The authors argue that LLMs satisfy several philosophical theories of mental representation, such as informational, causal, and structural theories, by demonstrating robust internal representations of the world. However, they highlight that the evidence for LLMs having action dispositions necessary for belief-desire psychology remains inconclusive. Additionally, they refute common skeptical challenges, such as the "stochastic parrots" argument and concerns over memorization, asserting that LLMs exhibit structured internal representations that align with these philosophical criteria. David Chalmers suggests that while current LLMs lack features like recurrent processing and unified agency, advancements in AI could address these limitations within the next decade, potentially enabling systems to achieve consciousness. This perspective challenges Searle's original claim that purely "syntactic" processing cannot yield understanding or consciousness, arguing instead that such systems could have authentic mental states.