Q&A: Searle’s Chinese Room
Searle’s Chinese Room
Question
A side note. You’ve mentioned Searle’s Chinese room experiment several times. Actually, the experiment is usually known in a slightly different version—not that he gets an electric shock if he doesn’t give the correct answer, but rather that he has an instruction manual in a language he knows, and that effectively serves as an algorithm for combining the Chinese letters into the correct answer. That is also how it appears in Searle’s own books. Does your wording appear somewhere else, or is it your own? And why is this formulation better than the standard one? (Maybe because this way you don’t need the hidden algorithm?)
Answer
Indeed, that’s correct. That’s how I remembered it, but you’re right that it differs from the original. In my opinion, this formulation is much more successful for several reasons. First of all, it is really very similar to AI training (whereas his formulation resembles a computer with a classical program, which is what existed in his time). Second, it answers several difficulties that people raise regarding the experiment (see Wikipedia), although in my opinion none of them poses any significant difficulty.
Just out of curiosity, I looked a bit through your other writings in other places. In the books Two Carts and Those Who Are Here, you quoted Searle’s wording in his own formulation, and here on the site, in column 591, you brought both versions.