Assignment #3: The Chinese Room

I believe that I agree with Dr. Searle's argument, but I must admit that I am still a little blown away by the whole concept. I didn't actually realize that there was an argument at all on this particular topic. Perhaps I am showing a bit of ignorance, but I believed that it was just common fact that a computer was incapable of "thought" as a human is. That there are those who would argue otherwise completely amazes me. 

The "other minds" argument was easily the most interesting, in my opinion, and I found it down right frustrating that Dr. Searle basically passed it off as not worth his time. There really is no way to know if the way that some other person understands is the same as the way that someone else understands. Except for the way that it is perceived that they understand, there is no way. Who is to say whether or not the computer understands except the computer itself, which is of course not to be believed. Mos of the arguments surrounding the theory are circular and thus can not in present times be proven or disproven. 

I also found the Zombie argument outlined in the Wikipedia article to be rather interesting. This seemed extremely preposterous when I first read it, but the more I think about it, the more plausible it seems. Mutations are by no means uncommon, and given that such a mutation did occur, I have no trouble believing that a "zombie" would insist that that it had the consciousness of humans. 

The syntax versus semantics argument was well put, in my opinion. It is almost exactly this idea that led me to believe that it was obvious that computers couldn't think. There is no way that a computer program could mimic the way that every individual person has a very different and unique interpretation of any one symbol. Take the hamburger example from the example story. The combination of hamburger smells, tastes, sounds, and images that come to my mind when I hear or see the word hamburger are not the same on two different occasions, let alone the same as someone else might have come to mind. To mimic that in a computer program would be next to impossible.

Personally, I don't believe that there is any need for strong AI as described by Dr. Searle. The "weak" AI is more than sufficient. The ability of computers to even mimic the abilities of the human mind is phenomenal.