The Chinese Room: Just Say "No!"
Robert M. French · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2000
It is time to view John Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment in a new light.The main focus of attention has always been on showing what is wrong (or right) with the argument, with the tacit assumption being that somehow there could be such a Room.In this article I argue that the debate should not focus on the question "If a person in the Room answered all the questions in perfect Chinese, while not understanding a word of Chinese, what would the implications of this be for strong AI?" Rather, the question should be, "Does the very idea of such a Room and a person in the Room who is able to answer questions in perfect Chinese while not understanding any Chinese make any sense at all?"And I believe that the answer, in parallel with recent arguments that claim that it would be impossible for a machine to pass the Turing Test unless it had experienced the world as we humans have, is no.