Sunday, November 7, 2010

Computer Language



The Chinese Room fails to produce understanding. Computers are “formal” in that they receive and respond to a string of symbols without paying any attention to the meaning of those symbols. Computer programs are purely syntactical because they only use formal symbol manipulation. Simply running a computer program cannot create understanding of meaning. Minds can have mental states that have meaning. Utterances and inscriptions can have meaning only derivatively in terms of how they were intended by the speaker and interpreted by the listener. Humans can receive and respond to the content of symbols in language because of words’ meaning, not just because of their physical appearance. The thought experiment includes the broader claim that one cannot get semantic meaning from syntax. Syntax is neither sufficient for, nor constitutive of, semantic content. While computers can receive syntax and produce an appropriate syntactical response, they do not understand the sentences they receive or produce because they cannot understand the meaning of the words used. Thus, computation is not sufficient to produce thought.

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