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From: jones@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov (JONES, THOMAS)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Searle's Chinese Room
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Date: 13 Jul 90 21:17:49 GMT
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Searle's Chinese Room concept has triggered considerable head-scratching among
both philosophers and AIniks.  I propose to use Searle's analysis to
reexamine the Turing test and reconsider just what is needed to make the
Chinese Room work.

By hypothesis, the Room matches the ability of a human speaker of Chinese to
answer questions and carry on a conversation in Chinese.  The first thing to
note is that the questions are not restricted to simple ones like, "What is
your favorite color?"  Instead, the Room would have to make *some* reasonable
answer to complicated questions involving its (i.e., the Room's) mental state,
its ethics and values, its family, friends, and childhood; i.e.,that, in order
to satisfy Searle's criterion, the Room
would have to be a *true artificial person,* endowed with every mental ability
which a normal human has.  (Searle would have to really hustle to be a working
CPU for this.) We will call this the Room Person, or just Mr. Li.  A typical
conversation might look like this:

Me: Good morning, Mr. Li. I trust you are well.

Mr. Li: Quite well, thank you.

Me: Why don't you start by telling me a little about yourself,
    your family, etc.

Mr. Li: I live in a little village in Quedong province. I work as my ancestors
        have for thousands of years, tilling the land.  I have a wife and two
        grown sons.

Me: What do you think of the events in Tienanmin Square?

(Conversation comes to a halt for a few seconds while Searle adjusts his
glasses.)

Mr. Li: Well, democracy is a fragile flower in China.  We have a history of
        many years of authoritarian government.

Me: Now if you will just lie back on the couch and talk about whatever comes
    to your mind.

Mr. Li: I am thinking about something that happened when I was about five
        years old. Etc., etc.


The point being that the Room is a person, not too different from the rest
of us.  It must have a mind, emotions, values, a culture, an id, ego, and
superego (assuming that Freud was right about this). 

Now we are prepared to answer Searle's claim that no computer can, in
principle, understand a natural language.  The solution to the puzzle
is that Searle, the CPU, understands no Chinese, while Mr. Li, the
Room Person, is fluent in it.

******************************************************************************


Tom Jones--jones@dftnic.gsfc.nasa.gov