Chinese room argument

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 pages 555, 557, 560, 575

Also known as Chinese room