John Searle's Chinese Room - a clear explanation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBE06SdgzwM
"This is a video lecture about "Can Computers Think ?" by John Searle.
In this paper, Searle argues again a form of functionalism, which he calls "Strong AI".
"The human brain is a machine also.
No, he's talking specifically about digital computers and he's saying that digital computers can't have thoughts and the reason that they can't have thoughts is because they are just syntax manipulating machines and syntax is never enough for semantics...
Or to put it another way, form is never by itself sufficient for meaning.
Okay so that's his point computers as we have them - all of the computers
that we have which are digital computers - they can't think.
Here's something that Searle says to sort of make this point directly this is on page 673 in the reading: "If you're following along is instantiating or implementing the right computer program with the right inputs and outputs
sufficient for or constitutive of thinking the answer is clearly no and it is no for the reason that we have spelled out namely."
The computer program is defined purely syntactically but thinking is more than just a matter of manipulating meaningless symbols, it involves meaningful semantic contents, these semantic contents are what we mean
by meaning okay, so the thought is functionalism is false, because having
the right inputs and outputs is just a matter of syntax.
A digital computer that has all the right inputs and outputs - that kind of computer all the computers we have - they can simulate understanding of the chinese language for example, but they can't actually have understanding because all they ever get like the person inside the chinese room, all they ever get, are facts about syntax.
They never get any information about semantics."
