Summary Of Is The Chinese Room Argument By John Searle

Q: Is the Chinese Argument flawed? In Reason and Responsibility, John Searle presents his “Chinese Room Argument” that doubts “Strong A.I.”, or artificial intelligence. “Strong A.I.” is a theory that a computer is as genuine and accurate by virtue of those who programmed it. Essentially, a system that has a mental state, M, and follows a set of programmed rules as if it behaves as M. Searle wishes to prove that a mechanical application of communication rules to a system does not give the machine the ability to understand the language. The Chinese Room Argument states the following: Searle is sitting inside a room, which is known as the Chinese room. From the outside of the room, a Chinese speaker writes Chinese questions onto a piece of paper, and slides them through the door slot. Searle doesn’t know Chinese, and cannot read what is written on the paper. However, Searle has a rulebook that tells him how to respond to each paper in Chinese. When Searle sends the …show more content…
Searle makes sure his argument guarantees that each message is given a response in accordance to the message that comes in. In other words, he is sending Chinese responses based off of Chinese signs, using his Chinese rule book. Searle does not say if he (or the Chinese room) is capable of having a conversation. By conversation, I mean that the messages that are inputted and outputted are related. Furthermore, Searle does not infer that the input messages are even related to the output. For instance, I could say “Hello, how are you?” and you can say “Computers are bad.” But those two sentences are not related, as if we were just saying random things, just like what Searle is assuming to do. Searle fails to guarantee that the responses he outputs are related, or in a sequence. Therefore, we can conclude that the room is not capable of having a Chinese