Chinese room

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The Chinese room argument holds that a computer executing a program cannot have a mind, understanding, or consciousness,^[a] regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave. The argument was presented in a 1980 paper by the philosopher John Searle entitled "Minds, Brains, and Programs" and published in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences.^[1] Before Searle, similar arguments had been presented by figures including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1714), Anatoly Dneprov (1961), Lawrence Davis (1974) and Ned Block (1978). Searle's version has been widely discussed in the years since.^[2] The centerpiece of Searle's argument is a thought experiment known as the Chinese room.^[3]

The thought experiment starts by placing a computer that can perfectly converse in Chinese in one room, and a human that only knows English in another, with a door separating them. Chinese characters are written and placed on a piece of paper underneath the door, and the computer can reply fluently, slipping the reply underneath the door. The human is then given English instructions which replicate the instructions and function of the computer program to converse in Chinese. The human follows the instructions and the two rooms can perfectly communicate in Chinese, but the human still does not actually understand the characters, merely following instructions to converse. Searle states that both the computer and human are doing identical tasks, following instructions without truly understanding or "thinking".

The argument is directed against the philosophical positions of functionalism and computationalism,^[4] which hold that the mind may be viewed as an information-processing system operating on formal symbols, and that simulation of a given mental state is sufficient for its presence. Specifically, the argument is intended to refute a position Searle calls the strong AI hypothesis:^[b] "The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds."^[c]

Although its proponents originally presented the argument in reaction to statements of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, it is not an argument against the goals of mainstream AI research because it does not show a limit in the amount of intelligent behavior a machine can display.^[5] The argument applies only to digital computers running programs and does not apply to machines in general.^[6] While widely discussed, the argument has been subject to significant criticism and remains controversial among philosophers of mind and AI researchers.^[7][8]

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