'R' is for the Rule-following Room   Special equipment needed: pile of Chinese hieroglyphs

Alan Turing it was, the celebrated Second World War code breaker, who suggested that when we are unable to tell the difference, after prolonged questioning, between talking to a machine or to a human being, we ought to consider the machine to have intelligence. This offended many philosophers. After all, intelligence is something hard acquired and jealously guarded. But it was in the celebrated 'Chinese Room' experiment that philosophers found their champion. It was there, that the (contemporary) artificially intelligent philosopher,John Searle, sought to debunk such a generous interpretation. Searle, offered to be locked up in the imaginary room with a pile of Chinese hieroglyphs. He then asked us to consider what would appear to happen if, from time to time, someone outside the room were to post Chinese questions through the letter box for him to sort out? For inside the room, there are some instructions taped on the wall, written in English, which explain which hieroglyph to post back, no matter which one is posted in. Searle's aim is to prove that the person in the room does not understand Chinese. The experiment is fairly convincing at showing this. After all, at the beginning of his example, he states that the they "know no Chinese, either written or spoken", and that for them, ''Chinese writing is just so many meaningless squiggles". His conclusion may seem a bit like stating the obvious, but then analytic philosophers do that sort of suff. The trick is to make the obvious seem not so obvious. Nonetheless, the philosophical problem is as Searle puts it, that ''from the external point of view - that is, from the point of view of somebody outside the room in which I am locked, - my answers to the questions are absolutely indistinguishable from those of native Chinese speakers". So, does the experiment show that intelligence is more than just appearances?   Discussion But what Professor Searle seems to have missed is that it is not really that the person in the room appears to understand Chinese, but that the whole 'system' - person in the room, sets of symbols on cards, plus instructions taped to the wall, gives the appearance of understanding Chinese. And this is much more plausible. After all, the person who wrote the instructions did understand Chinese.   What has happened in his example is that the expertise of the instructions' author has been transferred, via the written rules, to the person in the room. If the set-up is then replaced by a computer, programmed with the rules, then the 'expertise' of the Chinese speaker has, at least in limited cases, been transferred to the computer. This approach makes it much more difficult for Searle, or anyone else, to deny the computer any expertise or even understanding. (And actually, these days, you may be treated in hospitals, given career advice, told where to dig for gold or whatever, by computers running 'expert systems' of rules and procedures drawn from human expertise.  Broadening the issue of whether computers really think, Professor Wang, of Qingdao University (who really does understand Chinese) says the question in any case, is not whether the machine demonstrates intelligence, but whether 'this human construct' demonstrates intelligence. Lisa Wang notes that a picture, after all, may be said to be 'of a tree, or 'beautiful', or whatever, even if it may be basically just bits of mineral on a piece of vegetable. The Chinese Room is another misguided attempt at understanding the world by reducing it to its parts - a congenital mistake often committed by analytical philosophers, and quite contrary, of course, to the Eastern, indeed the Socratic tradition. (Although it is a bit like Aristotle's way.) Even Sextus Empiricus asked how "in a heap of atoms" there can come about pleasure". And in the Monadology, Leibniz writes: Suppose that there were a machine so constructed as to produce thought, feeling, and perception. We could imagine it increased in size while retaining the same proportions, so that one could enter as one might a mill. On going inside we should only see the parts impinging upon one another, we should not see anything which would explain a perception..." But this is getting complicated. I should like to suggest another 'thought experiment - my own version of this interesting problem. (Searle did several, getting increasingly complex and obscure. )      The Chinese Room Experiment (cruel version) Special equipment needed: pile of philosophy books Suppose a person is locked in a room stripped of furniture - apart from a table piled high with dusty old philosophy books. And then suppose on the wall is a blackboard with instructions on how to use them - especially on how to look up views on certain philosophical problems. Now, into this room are posted some tantalising questions such as: ï is evil a normative concept? ï are all mathematical truths a priori? ï can something be red and green all over, at the same time!?  and so on...  Then using the instructions, our prisoner types out relevant sections from the philosophy books and posts them back. You see, our prisoner does not understand philosophy. They think it is all just meaningless squiggles. But to anyone outside the room, they appear to understand. So now does the experiment show that philosophy is more than just appearances ? Remember Alan Turing say's that to distinguish between the appearance and the actaulité is mere prejudice - Searle is not so sure.  What I think is interesting about this experiment is that it seems to show that although we are reluctant to allow the person in the Chinese Room to be credited with 'understanding' a language just because they can reliably produce the correct response to questions, this is not really so obviously reasonable. As anyone who has been to philosophical seminars and discussions will know, it is not necessary - and certainly not appreciated - to generate your own view on the problems but better, rather, to appropriately reproduce other people's comments. Why tell the philosopher who offers such second-hand contributions that they 'do not really' understand? (Only a cad would do so, Prof Searle!) At least, as far as the so-called 'Cruel Room' example goes, there is the option of simply waiting to see if the person gets bored and tries to leave. In which case we can be pretty sure that they don't really understand philosophy.   by Martin Cohen   A shorter version of this experiment first appeared in the Independent newspaper (London).