I think that his Chinese Room argument entirely misses the point of the functionalist perspective. He proposes the software as the \u201caware thing\u201d rather than understanding that it would be the interactions between components and the PROCESSES <\/b><\/i>which would be, together, the thing.<\/p>\n
That is, in the Chinese Room, he says that a person in a room who has been given a set of call-and-response variable rules that govern which Chinese characters they are to put together in what order in which situations DOES NOT KNOW CHINESE. And He\u2019s Right. That person is a functional component in a larger system\u2014the room\u2014which uses all of its components to communicate.<\/p>\n
In short, The Room Itself Knows Chinese.<\/b><\/i> The room, and the builders, and the people who presented the rules, and the person who performs the physical operations all form the \u201cMind\u201d that \u201cKnows\u201d \u201cThe Language.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, bringing the metaphor back around, \u201cA Mind,\u201d for functionalists, is any combination of processes which can reflexively and reflectively<\/b><\/i> engage inputs, outputs, and desires. A cybernetic feedback loop of interaction and awareness. In that picture of a mind, the \u201csoftware\u201d isn\u2019t consciousness. The process<\/i><\/b> is consciousness.<\/p>\n
TL;DR: He\u2019s wrong, for a number of reasons, of which \u201can imperfect understanding or potentially intentional miscasting of functionalism\u201d is just one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think that his Chinese Room argument entirely misses the point of the functionalist perspective. He proposes the software as the \u201caware thing\u201d rather than understanding that it would be the interactions between components and the PROCESSES which would be, together, the thing. That is, in the Chinese Room, he says that a person in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,55,73,313,444,492,627,628,767],"class_list":["post-890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-future-worth-thinking-about","tag-anonymous","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-functionalism","tag-john-searle","tag-machine-consciousness","tag-philosophy","tag-philosophy-of-mind","tag-so-ask-me-ask-me-ask-me"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5WByP-em","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5276,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5276","url_meta":{"origin":890,"position":0},"title":"Nonhuman and Nonbiological Phenomenology","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"May 15, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Late last month, I was at Theorizing the Web, in NYC, to moderate Panel B3, \"Bot Phenomenology,\" in which I was very grateful to moderate a panel of people I was very lucky to be able to bring together. Johnathan Flowers, Emma Stamm, and Robin Zebrowski were my interlocutors in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"alterity\"","block_context":{"text":"alterity","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=alterity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4812,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=4812","url_meta":{"origin":890,"position":1},"title":"Someone Asked “I think I read on your tumblr recently that there would probably be a difference between human consciousness and machine consciousness. Would this be due to the immanent nature of human consciousness and the derivative nature of a machines consciousness?”","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"February 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"No, not really. The nature of consciousness is the nature of consciousness, whatever that nature \u201cIs.\u201d Organic consciousness can be described as derivative, in that what we are arises out of the processes and programming of individual years and collective generations and eons. So human consciousness and machine consciousness will\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5375,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5375","url_meta":{"origin":890,"position":2},"title":"2017 SRI Technology and Consciousness Workshop Series Final Report","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"March 8, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"So, as you know, back in the summer of 2017 I participated in SRI International\u2019s Technology and Consciousness Workshop Series. This series was an eight week program of workshops the current state of the field around, the potential future paths toward, and the moral and social implications of the notion\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"Image of a rectangular name card with a stylized \"Technology & Consciousness\" logo, at the top, the name Damien Williams in bold in the middle, and SRI International italicized at the bottom; to the right a blurry wavy image of what appears to be a tree with a person standing next to it and another tree in the background to the left., all partially mirrored in a surface at the bottom of the image.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/20190308_021228.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/20190308_021228.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/20190308_021228.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/20190308_021228.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/20190308_021228.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/20190308_021228.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5310,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5310","url_meta":{"origin":890,"position":3},"title":"The Second Future of A.I. 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We were in Norway, in the Juvet Landscape Hotel, which is where they filmed a lot of the movie\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/20180919_102419-Juvet100DataEthicsSpaRainbow-1024x576.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/20180919_102419-Juvet100DataEthicsSpaRainbow-1024x576.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/20180919_102419-Juvet100DataEthicsSpaRainbow-1024x576.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5182,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5182","url_meta":{"origin":890,"position":4},"title":"Outline: “The Minds of Others: What Will Be Known by and Owed To Nonhuman Persons?”","author":"Damien P. 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The meetings were held under the auspices of the Chatham House Rule, which means that there are many things I can't tell you about them, such as who else was there, or what they said in the context\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/OctMantPep.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/OctMantPep.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/OctMantPep.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/OctMantPep.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5347,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5347","url_meta":{"origin":890,"position":5},"title":"“Consciousness and Conscious Machines: What\u2019s At Stake?”","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"January 16, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"[This paper was prepared for the 2019 Towards Conscious AI Systems Symposium co-located with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 2019 Spring Symposium Series. Much of this work derived from my final presentation at the 2017 SRI Technology and Consciousness Workshop Series: \"Science, Ethics, Epistemology, and Society: Gains\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/disabilityprotest.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/disabilityprotest.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/disabilityprotest.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/disabilityprotest.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4811,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions\/4811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}