I've already asked them to do that as well as define understanding, but they only seem willing to keep asserting their unfound notions.
They also ignore the fact that the man in the room still understands the language the instructions are written in and how the man learned THAT language, and then they're failure to define understanding and consciousness, this thread is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. Interesting how you can learn another language using your language, hmmm? — Harry Hindu
First you say that knowledge of any language isn't important, then go on to explain how some entity knows Chinese or not.I think the person in the Chinese Room, his knowledge of language, any language for that matter, isn't important. If I recall correctly, he doesn't know Chinese at all. All that this person represents is some mechanical computer-like symbol manipulation system that spits out a response in Chinese to a Chinese interlocutor and that's done so well that it appears the Chinese Room understands Chinese. — TheMadFool
The difference is that the instructions in the room are not the same instructions that a Chinese person used to learn Chinese. People are confusing the instructions in the room with instructions on how to use Chinese. Since the man in the room already knows a language - the one the instructions are written in, he would need something that shows the Chinese symbol and then the equivalent in his language - you know, like how you use Google translate.Perhaps this isn't the the right moment to bring this up but the issue of Leibniz's identity of indiscernibles seems germane. The Chinese Room is indistinguishable from a Chinese person - they're indiscernible - but does that mean they're identical in that the Chinese Room is ontologically a Chinese person? The issue of Nagel's and others' idea of an inner life as part of consciousness crops up. — TheMadFool
First you say that knowledge of any language isn't important, then go on to explain how some entity knows Chinese or not.
Seems like we need to know how the "mechanical computer-like symbol manipulation system that spits out a response in Chinese" learned how to do just that. — Harry Hindu
:up:If one wants to make the case that consciousness is something special then you can't do it using language. — TheMadFool
At this point I'd like you to consider the nature of consciousness, specifically the sense of awareness, particularly self-awareness. The consciousness we're all familiar with comes with the awareness of the self, recognition of one's own being and existence, which unfortunately can't be put into words as far as I'm concerned. It's quite clear that the Chinese Room is, from the way it operates, aware, albeit in a very limited sense, of its external environment in that it's speaking Chinese fluently but is it self-aware? — TheMadFool
Hence, there are aspects of language that are not captured by such an algorithmic translation process. — Banno
We don't know. Unless we actually know how consciousness occurs within ourselves, we won't be able to judge the presence of inner life in anything else. Evidently there is some sort of information processing going on within us which is responsible for all this but we only have broad anatomical descriptions, not detailed or functional enough either to replicate or in my opinion to base a theoretical framework. — debd
Seems to me that I have to first know that I am self-aware. What does that mean? What is it like to be self-aware? Is self-awareness a behaviour, feeling, information...?How would you know if I am self-aware or not? You can only do that by looking to a comparator, yourself. — debd
so
he has understood Chinese
And yet...
Memorizing all the rules does not allow me to answer questions like "How do you feel today?", "What are you grateful for today?".
...so he has not understood Chinese
This doesn't strike you as problematic? — Banno
Your missing an important component - the instructions. The instructions are in the room, along with the man, but are two separate entities inside the room. What "physical" role does the instructions play inside the brain if the human is the entire neural network? And isn't the entire neural network really the brain anyway? So you haven't coherently explained all the parts and their relationship with each other.That's because we are replacing the chinese room with the brain and the person inside the room is being replaced by a nerual network. — debd
Neural networks weren't born knowing Chinese, English or any other language. The neural network had to learn those instructions, which means that the instructions were initially external to the neural network. How does a neural network acquire instructions for learning a language, and where do the instructions go when they are learned, understood, or known?But there is no such separate instruction set that the neurons follow, not atleast for learning chinese. — debd
How did a neural learn to do what it does? It doesn't perform the same function as other cells in the body. What allowed it to do what it does and not some other job that some other type of cell does? — Harry Hindu
Neural networks weren't born knowing Chinese, English or any other language. The neural network had to learn those instructions, which means that the instructions were initially external to the neural network. How does a neural network acquire instructions for learning a language, and where do the instructions go when they are learned, understood, or known? — Harry Hindu
Well, the neural network and the full connectome of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans have been fully mapped. Simulating this neural network produces an identical response to different experiments when compared to a biological worm. If we are able to do this for our own brains we can expect similar results. But C. legans has only 302 neurons, orders of magnitude less than humans and the network complexity doesnot even come close. However, it is possible and hopefully we will be able to achieve this. — debd
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