Thought Experiments in Philosophy - Thought Experiments in Ethics, Thought Experiments in Philosophy of Mind, Chinese Room, Original Position (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 27. Chapters: Thought experiments in ethics, Thought experiments in philosophy of mind, Chinese room, Original position, Twin Earth thought experiment, Mary's room, Philosophical zombie, Trolley problem, Ticking time bomb scenario, Molyneux's Problem, Violinist, Brain in a vat, Mere addition paradox, Experience machine, Inverted spectrum, Swampman, Living High and Letting Die, China brain, Heinz dilemma, N-universes, Rudolf Lingens, Wittgenstein's Beetle and Other Classic Thought Experiments, Intuition pump, Lifeboat ethics, The survival lottery, Big Book, Brainstorm machine, Utility monster, Plank of Carneades. Excerpt: The Chinese room is a thought experiment by John Searle which first appeared in his paper "Minds, Brains, and Programs," published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in 1980. It addresses the question: if a machine can convincingly simulate an intelligent conversation, does it necessarily understand? In the experiment, Searle imagines himself in a room acting as a computer by manually executing a program that convincingly simulates the behavior of a native Chinese speaker. People outside the room slide Chinese characters under the door and Searle, to whom "Chinese writing is just so many meaningless squiggles," is able to create sensible replies, in Chinese, by following the instructions of the program; that is, by moving papers around. The question arises whether Searle can be said to understand Chinese in the same way that, as Searle says, "according to strong AI, . . . the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind, in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to understand and have other cognitive states." The experiment is the centerpiece of Searle's Chinese Room Argument which holds that a program cannot give a computer a "mind" or "understanding," regardless of how intel...