The Chinese Room

My last two blogs were on the question whether a physical world is all there is. Two weeks ago I discussed the case of Mary, locked up in a black and white room. Mary learned there all physical facts that can be known about colour. Then she was released and for the first time in her live not only did she learn about colour, but she experienced colour. The conclusion was that the world isn’t merely physical but that there are also non-physical phenomena, namely sense experiences (which are often called qualia in philosophy).

One week ago I discussed Thomas Nagel’s famous question whether we can know what it is like to be a bat. Nagel’s answer was “no”: The bat way to experience the world via its system of echo location is so different from the human way that it is intrinsically impossible for man to take the point of view of a bat. Therefore we must distinguish between a subjective and an objective point of view.

In the introduction to my last week’s blog I mentioned a philosophical case that is even more famous than Mary’s fate and than the bat question, namely John Searle’s “Chinese Room argument”. I want to complete my discussion of physicalism by discussing it in this blog. The case is very famous in philosophy and it is very much commented on and I limit myself to put forward only what is important for my point. You can find Searle’s original presentation of the case here: http://cogprints.org/7150/1/10.1.1.83.5248.pdf ; see further https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/#4

Mary has been released from her black and white world, as we have seen, but after she has seen red tomatoes, pink pandas and other colourful objects, she is locked up in another room for a new experiment, although in other respects Mary is well cared for and the room is comfortable. Among the objects in the room she sees a book that acts as an instruction set, a complete database of Chinese characters and the utensils to write them with. However, Mary doesn’t know what the Chinese characters stand for, for she doesn’t know Chinese. Then outside the room a Chinese woman starts to ask Mary questions in Chinese: She writes them on pieces of paper and pushes them through a slot in the door. For example the Chinese woman asks: How many members does your family have? Mary reads the question, follows the instructions in the book to determine which characters she has to write as a reply, writes the characters prescribed on another piece of paper and pushes it through the slot. In this way, Mary replies one question after another and she always gives correct replies, so that the Chinese woman and other people outside the room become convinced that Mary is fluent in Chinese. Nevertheless, she doesn’t understand a word of it but simply has followed the instructions. The result of the experiment is that it is possible to converse – verbally, in written text or otherwise – with someone else in a certain language without understanding what you and your interlocutor say in the sense that you grasp the meaning of the words in a correct way. Applying a syntax in the right way doesn’t imply semantically understanding the related piece of behaviour. However, any native speaker is not only able to speak his or her language correctly but s/he also understands what s/he says. Apparently meaning is more than machine-like behaviour.

Searle used this example in order to argue that artificial intelligence (AI) is not possible. Or actually, Searle admits that what he calls “Weak AI” – which merely replicates human intelligence without understanding what it does (just as in the example) – can be performed by “intelligent” computers, but “Strong AI” in which “the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind; rather, 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” cannot happen. “In strong AI, because the programmed computer has cognitive states, the programs are not mere tools that enable us to test psychological explanations; rather, the programs are themselves the explanations.” Such computer programs will never exist, so Searle. (p. 2 see the link above)

However, the possibility of artificial intelligence is not what I want to discuss here. For my discussion of the possibility of physicalism Searle Chinese Room example contains an important lesson. We had already seen that not all phenomena can be reduced to physical states. Qualia are a case in point. We have also seen that there are objective facts and subjective facts. In the end facts are dependent on the point of view we take. Now we see that the meaning of facts cannot be reduced to the way they are physically brought about. Having said this, we still don’t know how meanings are realized. However, ask a physicist and I think that in the end s/he cannot tell us what the world essentially is constituted of but that s/he can produce the mathematical formulas that describe the phenomena.

And Mary? After having been released from her Chinese room she lived happy ever after.