FREE ESSAY ON SEARLES CHINESE ROOM

SEARLES CHINESE ROOM

The Chinese Room experiment seems pretty logical to me after the fact that I was able to
see Searle explain it first hand in the video on Thursday. The Chinese Room experiment is
used to explain on eof the reasons that a machine will never have the same qualities as
humans in the area of the mind, and consists of the following. A man is placed into a
room into which Chinese writing symbols are given to him. He has the knowledge of what
symbol is used to respond to each symbol is fed to him, however, he doesn't have the
slightest clue as to what they stand for or mean. So, in essence, he is communicating
with the giver of symbols and answering the giver's questions, but he doesn't really
understand what it actually means. 
Searle is using human to take the place of the machine to prove that a machine can simply
be programmed to respond to X with response Y, or A with response B. Searle says that
just because the machine acts like it knows what's going on, it only knows what we
program it to know. It is not aware of the situation like humans are. 
I agree with Searle on this argument. I do believe that a machine can only do what we
tell it to do. It cannot make up it's own principles, or have consciousness. There is an
argument that was used in class to prove me wrong, it is the example of the computer that
is programmed to think all sparrows are brown. Then it observes a green sparrow and
deletes the idea that all sparrows are brown, therefore, it made it's own principle
without human input. 
I think that is a logical example, but there is one flaw within this example. The flaw is
that in the beginning, the machine was at one time programmed with the knowledge to
observe sparrows and to think they are all brown. The machine didn't see that they were
all brown without being constructed by a human first. Therefore, everything the machine
based it's new principle on was human based. The point brought up in class that a machine
is not conscious until it can program itself entirely backs my argument up. The machine
did not start its program, but it did use it successfully. So, a machine might be able to
make it's own program, but not entirely.
Then there is Turing, he says that if a computer or machine of any sort can make a person
think it's thinking, than it is. With respect to the first and third person points of
view, this idea deals with the third. If my third person observes a machine that tricks
me into thinking it's human or thinking, than it must be. I don't agree with this
Imitation Game, but that is just what it means.