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From: jufier@daimi.aau.dk (Svend Jules Fjerdingstad)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Searle, Strong AI, and Chinese Rooms
Summary: (Yet) Another Attack on Searle's Chinese Room Argument.
Message-ID: <1990Nov12.122329.15235@daimi.aau.dk>
Date: 12 Nov 90 12:23:29 GMT
Sender: jufier@daimi.aau.dk (Svend Jules Fjerdingstad)
Organization: DAIMI: Computer Science Department, Aarhus University, Denmark
Lines: 190


	The January 1990 issue of Scientific American featured two articles
about Artificial Intelligence: "Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program?" by
John R. Searle, and "Could a Machine Think?" by Paul M. Churchland and Patricia
Smith Churchland. All three authors are professors of philosophy, which may
explain their poor general understanding of the properties of computers and
computer programs.

	In the September issue Scientific American printed a number of
responses to the articles. Although I agree with most of the objections to the
articles stated in these letters, I feel that important points of criticism was
omitted.
	The following represent my response to the articles.
 
	I must confess, that I'm not exactly impressed by the quality of the
arguments presented in the two articles. It seems to me, that most of the
arguments are quite weak and remarkably simple to refute. 
	In "Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program?" professor of philosophy
John R. Searle attempts to show that even passing the famous Turing test does
not prove a computer program intelligent. He tells this story of a "Chinese
Room" in which a person ignorant of Chinese language manipulates Chinese
symbols according to the rules in a book. He correctly points out, that the
rule book is the "computer program", and that the person is the "computer",
merely executing the program. But then he wrongly concludes, that the _person_
satisfies the Turing test in spite of being ignorant of Chinese. Obviously, it
is the Chinese Room _as a whole_, which is able to pass the Turing test. And
the room itself certainly cannot be said to be ignorant of Chinese, as an
extensive knowledge must be present in the rule book, although the person in
the room has no means of accessing this knowledge. To him or her, the rules in
the book _seem_ entirely meaningless.
	Unless speaking Chinese in a manner "indistinguishable from those of a
native Chinese speaker" does not require intelligence, then of course the
entire room must be considered intelligent. It certainly behaves intelligently,
and as this cannot be ascribed to the person, the intelligence must be due to
the rule book, whether the rules are stored on paper or not.
	Searle tries to avoid this so-called Systems Reply by imagining yet
another (impossible) situation, in which the person in the room memorizes all
the rules for manipulating the symbols. His argument is nearly unbelievably
naive: "There is nothing in the 'system' that is not in me, and since I don't
understand Chinese, neither does the system."
	The consequences of this statement are absurd: If his statement is
correct, then he has proven nothing more, than that it should be possible for a
person ignorant of Chinese to pass the Turing test for speaking Chinese. All he
has done is reducing the requirements for speaking a language fluently. In
fact, he has simply made it impossible to determine, whether a person
understands a given human language or not: If other humans are able to answer
in speech as though they understood what was being said, then surely all their
actions might also be the result of consulting a simple rule book.
	The entire concept of comprehension has been made hollow and without
meaning.

	Furthermore, if the Turing test no longer is a valid test for
intelligence, then it has become impossible to judge the degree of intelligence
present in a person. The concept of intelligence has also been made
meaningless, as the presence or absence of Searle's kind of intelligence in no
way influences an entity's behaviour. If it did, the Turing test could be used
to distinguish between the two.  
	Of what use are Searle's concepts of comprehension and intelligence, if
they are not related to any events of this world?
	If Searle's statement were true, he would simply have made it clear
that conscious thought was unnecessary for all kinds of human behaviour!
	Which is probably the exact opposite of what he wanted to prove.

	But perhaps the key to the explanation could be, that Searle himself
actually does not understand English. Whenever he writes an article, he simply
consults a (lousy) book full of rules for writing articles against artificial
intelligence :-)
   
	The entire attitude of Searle is ridiculous. He states that "a program
merely manipulates symbols, whereas a brain attaches meaning to them". But why
is it important, that humans attach meaning to symbols? Does it matter? Of
course it does, it is exactly this attaching meaning to symbols that allows us
to interpret the symbols as conveying a message, and allows us to understand
this message.  
	Obviously, the fact that we are able to understand symbolically encoded
messages affect the way we interact with our environment. Which is why a
computer would have to be able to understand human language, not merely
manipulate it, in order to pass the Turing test.
	Does our intelligence influence the way we behave? Of course, it does.
If not, what is intelligence, then? And why are we equipped with it, if it is
of no real, practical use?
	But if intelligence influences our behaviour, then it follows, that a
computer also would have to be intelligent, if ever to pass the Turing test.
	As the person in the Chinese Room were unable to understand the Chinese
signs entering the room, all of these qualities would have to be present in the
"rule book" in the Chinese Room, which would make it something far more
sophisticated than merely a book. I think, this is where Searle really cheats.
By using a simple book full of rules, he is able to carry along with his
arguments, because it is obvious, that a book could not understand Chinese, or
be intelligent. However, he has at no time demonstrated (or even made likely)
that a book would indeed be sufficient for his project. His assumption is, in
fact, a degradation of intelligence to a set of simple rules that can easily be
formulated in a book.
	Searle gets things mixed up by assigning the name "book" to an entity
with properties, that are fundamentally different from those of a book. This
is, in my opinion, the central error in the Chinese Room argument. Searle
confuses himself (and the Churchlands) by calling something a book, that could
never be just a book of rules.

	Searle's attack on the Turing test is unfair and unfounded. He mistakes
his own lack of understanding for flaws in the Turing test.
	It is odd, that the Churchlands in their article "Could a Machine
Think?" fail to recognize the untenability of Searle's arguments against the
Turing test. They agree with Searle, that "it is also very important how the
input-output function is achieved; it is important that the right sorts of
things be going on inside the artificial machine."
	Well, I certainly do not agree with that. That's just pure mysticism. A
black box must be considered intelligent, if it acts intelligently. It is
ridiculous to define "conscious intelligence" in a way, which makes it
impossible to measure, because it in no ways affect its surroundings. With this
definition, we won't ever be able to determine whether conscious intelligence
is present or not in an object. All we can say is the following: "Is it human?
Ah, then it's intelligent! Not human? Well, then this seemingly intelligent
behaviour is not achieved the right (human) way. Therefore, it is not
intelligent!"
	Then we have defined intelligence in such a way, that it can only occur
in humans. And by defining it this way, we have excluded all the most
impressive and important qualities of human intelligence.

	I am not at all impressed by these three philosophers' abilities to
reason: Searle also argues that simulating a process on a computer is very
different from the actual process, and that therefore even if we could simulate
all the processes of the brain, we should still not have attained artificial
intelligence. However his example, that you cannot make a car run with a
computer simulation of the oxidation of hydrocarbons in an engine, is really
not relevant. Obviously, "a simulation of cognition" would process the same
genuine information as a brain, not just some symbolic substitute. And it would
process it the same way as the brain. The simulation would be a genuine
"processor of information", just like the brain. Therefore the two situations
are not comparable, and the argument is invalid.

	Let me try to summarize, why I think AI is possible. The definition of
intelligence I will use, is the more usual one than Searle's: Intelligence is
the ability to interact with the environment in an "intelligent" way, that is,
in a way which shows comprehension of the workings of the environment.
	My argument goes like this: Only purely random events (if such exist at
all) are not governed by rules. And since intelligence is the quintessence of
non-randomness, rules for intelligent behaviour must exist, however complex
they may be.
	These rules are not the kind of rules to be found in Searle's rule
book. These are complex rules, which take into account all knowledge and memory
of past experiences, all emotions, the behaviour of the surroundings, et
cetera. Because of that, all rules are not the same in all humans, but no doubt
we share a large proportion of these rules.
	Intelligent behaviour is in essence highly non-predictable. But this is
simple due to the complexity and multitude of the rules guiding intelligence.
It is certainly not the result of no rules, as this would only lead to random,
and thereby non-intelligent, behaviour. 
	As a consequence of the existence of such complex rules, artificial
intelligence is possible, as it is "simply" a matter of creating a machine,
which is able to handle these complex rules and the enormous amount of memory
required. And it would be very unlike human beings, if we were not to achieve
such a machine one day.

	In his response in the September issue of Scientific American, Searle
writes: "It is a mistake to suppose that in opposing a computational
explanation of consciousness I am opposing a mechanical explanation." In my
opinion, this doesn't make sense at all. If there is a mechanical explanation,
then there has to be a computational explanation as well, because every
mechanical process can be described computationally.
	Searle admits: "There must be a mechanical explanation for how the
brain processes produce consciousness because the brain is a system governed by
the laws of physics." Yes, and that is precisely the reason why artificial
intelligence is possible. "Consciousness" and "intelligence" are results of a
functioning brain. It is this functionality, that we want to recreate.
What matters is the functionality itself, not how it is achieved. And if there
is a mechanical explanation of how the brain's information processing works,
then of course we can, in principle, recreate it as a computer program, however
complex it might have to be.

	Searle ends his response my stating that: "Any sane analysis has to
grant that the person in the Chinese room does not understand Chinese." Right,
I agree. I don't think, that Searle could find anybody disagreeing. However,
this is completely uninteresting. As Searle pointed out in his article, the
person is acting as a "computer", whereas it is the rule book, that corresponds
to the computer _program_. So Searle has just proved, that the _hardware_ of a
computer need not be intelligent in order for the computer _system_ to be
intelligent. But he certainly hasn't proved, that the brain's mind could not be
the result of executing a computer program, as was his intention.

	Searle's article, and others like it, always makes me think of the
apparent paradox, that the people most strongly opposed to the notion of
artificial intelligence are sometimes those, who seem less well endowed with
natural intelligence :-)

--

Svend Jules Fjerdingstad, jufier@daimi.aau.dk
Computer Science Department, University of Aarhus
Ny Munkegade 116, DK-8000 Aarhus C, DENMARK