Chinese room argument

Page numbers are for draft copy at present; they will be replaced with correct numbers when final book is formatted. Chapter numbers are correct and will not change now.

The Chinese room is a thought experiment created by the philosopher Searle, John to argue that true machine intelligence is impossible, In partcular it seeks to counter the physical symbol hypothesis, and deminstrate that intelligent behaviour is not the same as {{intelligence}. Searle posits a sealed room wthin which a person who has no understanding of the Chinese languge manipulates tables of symbols using written rules. The rules are such that whenever a question in Chinese is posted into the room, the person is able to use the rules to create a meaningful response in Chinese to be posted back out. Those outside the room might believe that someone in the room understands Chienses because the room as whole behaves like this. However, there is no intentionality, no true meaning. The person can perform manipulations that appear to understand Chinese, but there is no actual understanding. Counters to this are based laregly on the system response, that the room as a whole can 'understand' even of the person does not.

Used on Chap. 23: pages 555, 557, 560, 574

Also known as Chinese room