Chinese Room, Mary’s Room, and Qualia

<h1>Revisiting the Chinese Room Argument</h1> I recently stumbled upon <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Chinese room argument</a>. I revisited it after a long time and experienced an epiphany: if we succeed at computational understanding of human norms and language (implying deep enough understanding on par with average humans), we can discredit the Chinese room argument! Seeing life from a programmer’s lens and trying to deal with the problem of learning from demonstration for quite a while, I instinctively believe that computers can simulate everything that we do. The very premise of learning from demonstration is that all human behaviors can be simulated by a computer, at least that’s what I supposed (second thought: maybe it’s time to revisit the premise?). I’d be curious to know: <ol> <li>What kind of human behavior can’t be computed?</li> <li>And why?</li> </ol> Not having any concrete answer but having a strong belief in that nature is computing something, I decided in excitement to jump up and say, “Let the machine explore the world as humans do and connect symbols to real-life experiences. Then we can legitimately claim that it also understands them.” Before long, I came across <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#Robot_reply" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">the robot reply</a> to the argument, which basically makes the same argument! The sudden surge of dopamine validated the feeling of validation. Remarkably, John Searle (the philoshopher who presented Chinese room argument) did not yield to this claim. He refuted it by saying that “he doesn’t see what comes into the robot’s eyes.” What does that even mean? It’s natural for people to view the world from a different perspective, but I find it difficult to comprehend how they could be so certain about such claims. I hope to delve deeper into their 1980 paper, “Minds, brains, and programs,” to decipher his intended meaning. <a href="https://beyondsymbols.medium.com/chinese-room-marys-room-and-qualia-4b1bd26f0aea">Visit Now</a>