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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 doesnt 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 givers questions, but he doesnt 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 whats 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 its 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 its 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 didnt see that they were all brown without being constructed by a human first.
Therefore, everything the machine based its 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 its 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 its 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 its human or thinking, than it must be. I dont agree with this Imitation Game, but that is just what it means. Bibliography:
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