Chinese Room Argument

Definition

This thought experiment, conceived of by John Searle, is intended to show that computers are not capable of understanding, or in other words, that implementing a computer program defined in terms of the manipulation of formal symbols, or syntax, is not sufficient for semantics. Searle, a non-Chinese speaker, imagines himself inside a room performing counterparts to all of the relevant operations that a computer running a program designed to respond in Chinese to Chinese questions would perform. For example, when a card comes in trough a slot in the box with a question, (the input), he consults a rule book (the program), which tells him which cards with Chinese symbols he should side out of the slot (the output). Searle argues that though his output could be mistaken for that of a native Chinese speaker, the process of performing these operations according to the rule book provides him with no understanding of Chinese. Since, he argues, there is no significant difference...