The Chinese Room as a Mind

Functionalists must admit that “the [Chinese Room] isn’t just a tool in the study of the mind; rather, it really is a mind” - they must hold that the machine can literally be said to understand the story.

Systems Reply: The person mightn’t understand the story but the system (Suzy + book) understands Chinese. Response = Fine, well let Suzy completely internalise the book (e.g. through memorising all the rules etc.) so she can do all the translations in her head. If she still doesn’t understand Chinese (which seems like our intuitive answer) then there is no way the system could understand Chinese, because the system is just a part of him.

The Chinese room shows that there could be two ‘systems’ which pass the Turing test but only one of which actually understands. (i.e. Turing test is probably faulty/deficient)

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Formal symbol manipulations by themselves don’t have any intentionality - they have only a syntax but no semantics. Such intentionality as computers appear to have is solely in the minds of those who program them and those who use them, those who send in the input and those who interpret the output. As the computer has only syntax and no semantics, if you type in 2+2 it will show ‘4’ but it has no idea that 4 means 4 or means

The Chinese Room shows that as soon as we put something that does have intentionality (a man) and program him with the formal program, wthe formal program carries no additional intentionality - it adds nothing, for example, to a man’s ability to understand Chinese.

For simulation, all you need is the right input and output and a program in the middle that transforms the former into the latter. That is all the computer has for anything it does. To confuse simulation with duplication is the same mistake.

In functionalism what matters are programs (the function) and the functional role is independent of its actual realisation in a particular machine. The same program (function) can eb realised by an electronic...