What do think is the best argument against the Chinese Room thought experiment?

680Ṁ184

resolved Jun 28

100%54%

Modules of a system may not themselves have the characteristics they grant the larger system. Bob, who's inside the room working the levers, does not know chinese any more than a neuron in my brain "knows" chinese.

12%Other

1.3%

Too complicated; no one can agree, so it's not a useful intuition pump.

1.3%

Proves too much

0.3%

Wouldn't actually work

1.0%

Since it is only clumsily describing how a human brain works, you might as well just talk about brains, and not waste time on hypothetical rooms.

For humans to be conscious and Chinese Rooms to all not be conscious, there would need to be some process in the brain that can't be represented by Chinese Room manipulation rules. By the Church–Turing thesis, this is impossible.

0.6%

The argument begs the question of the existence of consciousness in other humans; there is no good evidence for this.

Proving that anything doesn't have consciousness is inherently impossible. No level of inaction or mis-action could prove such a thing; even if you grant the CR argument, it's only arguing against one pathway to consciousness.

12%

That which points to the one GLUT that talks about consciousness, out of all the vast space of possibilities, is now...the conscious person asking us to imagine this whole scenario.( https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k6EPphHiBH4WWYFCj/gazp- )

0.7%

Insofar as anyone will accept that anyone has consciousness, ever and always, they do it empirically. The Chinese room does not address how to judge this empirically, so it is entirely beside the point.

0.7%

"I can access the internet, but I don't know anything about IPv4, so I don't 'really understand' what I'm doing. Therefore, I am not conscious" is a stupid argument; Q.E.D.

0.7%

Clearly, since no one has a good explanation or description of consciousness, the correct belief is that no one has consciousness; you might think you do, but you are wrong. Therefore, the CR argument is meaningless.

The program would be very complex. We can't say whether the person following it will "learn" Chinese just by doing so.

I will choose the answer according to whichever answer destroys the Chinese Room experiment as an argument against conscious computers. It is possible I choose multiple answers if I really like them. Jun 20, 11:52pm: the title was meant to say: what do **I** think is the best...

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