Chinese Room

Introduction
'The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds'

Searle's objection to Turing's test and functionalism as a whole seeks to dispute the idea that a computer running a programme could have either a mind, or consciousness, and that's not very inclusive now is it Searle? play nice.

Composition
Searle here imagines that he is inside a blank room with a bunch of mandarin characters that he cannot understand and a book of instructions for making a response, that he can. On the outside of the room there is a Chinese speaker who will write messages and then pass them into the room through a small slot. Searle cannot read nor understand anything that these messages are saying, but with reference to the instructions, he can organise the characters into a response that would seem to emulate actual Chinese conversation, enough so as to fool the person sending the messages.

What he is getting at here is that while his replies are believable, as a robot passing the turing test would be, it isn't indicative of having either a mind, or consciousness, rather an ability to simulate it, which isn't really intelligence at all.

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