The Chinese Room Argument Analysis

Searle states that syntax itself is neither constitutive of, nor sufficient for, semantic content. Therefore, the computers are not sufficient enough to have a mind because of their purely syntactical form of processing information. Searle argues that his claim is correct by using an argument that he wrote called, “The Chinese Room Argument”. Searle believes that being able to understand information requires having the ability to have consciousness, self awareness and intentionality.This argument is against the belief that computers can have strong AI, or in other words, have the ability to think and fully interpret information, and not just receive input and send output based on computed command. Searle included the Chinese Room Argument in …show more content…
The human mind is a sophisticated entity that controls movement, supports survival, and conjures thoughts that exist from memories and our imagination. The human mind, unlike the digital computer, has a conscious, unconscious, and subconscious mind. The human mind lives and experiences the world and absorbs new information everyday based on what the human mind has processed. The information created in our mind is the only source of information that exists within us. What makes the digital computer different is that the computer can only hold the information that is programmed within it. The most important difference between a computer and the human mind is that you cannot ask a computer to learn or imagine, because it doesn’t have the ability to think freely. You can do the programming into the computer and command the computer to learn whatever it is you want the computer to know, but unlike the human mind, you can’t ask the computer to learn on its own, to imagine what it desires, because it has no desire, no emotion, no understanding of meaning. Imagine a circumstance where you ask both a human and a computer to describe a rose. The human (depending on the age of this person and how much time this person spends outdoors) will be able to describe the rose as it would imagine a rose to look like. This person would imagine a rose, remember a time where …show more content…
To argue this, let us imagine the person in the room memorizing and internalizing the letters and symbols in the Chinese books. Now this person will not have to use the books and will translate through memorization, but he/she will still not understand the language, same as the system. Could it be that there is a smaller part of the mind that comprehends Chinese, or subsystem of the person that is understanding Chinese? No, because even if he memorized the Chinese characters, there would be no part of the mind that would fully comprehend Chinese. If a subsystem of his mind understood Chinese, then his whole mind would understand the semantics of Chinese. If the system doesn’t understand the system, then the person in the room doesn’t understand the system, because there isn’t anything in the system that isn’t apart of the person in the room. Besides, if the system had a mind, then couldn’t we qualify anything that has information processed to have a mind? For example, a digestive system works without a mind of its own. The digestive system works for the body and does not have a mind of its own even though it has information to be processed. So, like the man in the room, the digestive system will have to retrieve and send information but will not have conscious