MINDS, MACHINES AND SEARLE 2:

The paper pointed out that a "Chinese-Understanding" computer program would not really understand Chinese because someone who did not understand Chinese (e.g., Searle himself) could execute the same program while still not understanding Chinese; hence the computer executing the program would not be understanding Chinese either. The paper rebutted various prima facie counterarguments against this (mostly variants on the theme that it would not be Searle but "the system," of which Searle would only be a part, that would indeed be understanding Chinese when the program was being executed), but all of this seemed trivial to me: Yes, of course an inert program alone could not understand anything (so Searle was right about that), but surely an executing program might be part of what an understanding "system" like ourselves really does and is (so the "Systems Reply" was right too). The paper was refereed (favorably), and was accepted under the revised title 'Minds, Brains, and Programs', circ

Harnad, S. (2001) What's Wrong and Right About Searle's Chinese Room Argument? In: M. Bishop & J. Preston (eds.) Essays on Searle's Chinese Room Argument. Oxford University Press. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/searlbook.htm http://cogprints.org/1622/ Minds, Machines and Searle 2: What's Right and Wrong About the Chinese Room Argument Stevan Harnad in an academic generation a little overaddicted to "politesse," it may be worth saying that violent destruction is not necessarily worthless and futile. Even though it leaves doubt about the right road for London, it helps if…

related reading

• Chinese room - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
• Chinese Room Argument | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophyiep.utm.edu
• Minds, brains, programs. Searle, John. R.web-archive.southampton.ac.uk
• Philphilosophy.hku.hk
• alan turing - computing machinery and intelligencecourses.cs.umbc.edu
• The Turing Test (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)plato.stanford.edu
• Harnad, Ssouthampton.ac.uk
• Quantum Mechanics, the Chinese Room Experiment and the Limits of Understanding | Scientific Americanscientificamerican.com
• Interview-Codaresci-Harnad.pdfeprints.soton.ac.uk
• The Computational Theory of Mind (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)plato.stanford.edu
• Computation in Physical Systems (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)plato.stanford.edu
• Can computers think? No. They can’t actually do anythingaeon.co