The Chinese Room

These are some musings written in 2010 on the subject of John Searle’s Chinese Room Argument.

A man has no knowledge of Chinese, only English. He is locked in a room, and follows a series of written instructions in English for the manipulation of Chinese characters. An appropriate series of instructions will allow him to converse in Chinese, even though he has no understanding of Chinese at all.

In summary –

1. P1 – a computer works through [programmed movement of semantically neutral pieces of information] (or insert anything else you like here which you think differs between computers and minds).
2. P2 – [Programmed movement of semantically neutral pieces of information] can never be described as “understanding”
3. Therefore computers cannot understand anything
4. Therefore computers differ from minds

Or

1. Computers differ from minds
2. Therefore, computers are not minds

Which is a circular argument, I think.