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Comment by GavinB | Hacker News Reader

The Chinese Room argument is wrong. That in itself does not make it useless.

It forces you to bite the bullet and really think about how systems must be able to give rise to intelligence, regardless of their physical makeup.

The wikipedia article that you linked has this quote: "The sheer volume of the literature that has grown up around it inspired Pat Hayes to quip that the field of cognitive science ought to be redefined as 'the ongoing research program of showing Searle's Chinese Room Argument to be false.'"

Incorrect arguments are an important step in establishing correct ones, which is a central point of jsomer's argument.

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<i>The Chinese Room argument is wrong. That in itself does not make it useless.</i>

It might be useless, but it's also not optimally useful. That is, I think, a large part of the problem PG points out in his essay.

"If everything you learned in philosophy class was useless, and other classes, in addition to teaching you valuable truths, also used the same “process” as philosophy, then it’d probably be Pareto optimal to jump ship. But I don’t think that’s the case."

"The sheer volume of the literature that has grown up around it..."

So it inspired a huge waste of time. Doesn't really fit my definition of useful.

How is it a waste of time?

Instead of refuting the flawed chinese room, the authors of those papers could have done something more productive instead. Like really working towards a real AI algorithm.

How can you possibly refute his argument intellectually without working towards a solution in some way? Knowing that it's not true now is an improvement to what was known then. By philosophizing against it, you gain a more concrete understanding of the problem and are, subsequently, closer to providing a solution.

He doesn't have an argument, in my opinion. There is nothing to refute. It is as if somebody was saying "look at this green spot, it is obviously red".

I guess the only way to "refute" it would be to create complete theory of human language and use it to prove that he isn't actually saying anything. But that doesn't seem very effective or promising as an undertaking to me.

Rephrased, maybe the problem with the chinese room is that it uses the fuzzy notion of consciousness, appealing to the vague emotions of it's audience rather than on logic. In so far as philosophy aims to clarify language, perhaps the chinese room could be useful as a bad example.

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