9 Searle - Can Computers Think?

okay good afternoon fleshed-out so the SE is drew are in a week console today is it is that right yes I hear underfunding - do you have any questions about that about the SI how do I do it there was something that came up in office hours yesterday that I do want to say to you writing a philosophy as he usually takes many drafts there are there are some people who really can't just sit and think about the stuff for a while and then sit down and write and I see straight off but I promise you that is not the usual experience my own experience in writing our philosophy stuff has always been that you write something and you you don't even need to ask anyone else you can see about what you've written is just terrible and that is what makes it so difficult because you you're not gentle impulses not to do the thing at all and to wait until you're able to write something that's any good and it never works like well I think for most people not for everyone but for most people it never works like that it's a bit like doing a drawing where you try to do a portrait of someone where you do the drawing and you can see right off it is nothing like the person the nose is all wrong and the only way you get it right is by keeping going back to the drawing and correcting a bit here I'm collecting a bit there and making a bit better so um I think somehow there is always a psychological barrier to writing the first draft because you think this is terrible I have no idea what to say so you postpone it but I I just want to encourage you to write out a draw if you haven't done it already write a draft fairly soon be braced for the fact that even you may be able to see it's not much good and then just go back and keep working on it does that prompt any questions okay that's just an expression of sympathy as is always hard writing about this stuff okay okay so today is a Chinese room and saralzar classic article can computers think on Tuesday we'll review where we've got to so fast for there isn't any reading for Tuesday on Thursday we'll move into thinking about consciousness and Thomas nagels what is like to be a bat and the next two lectures and nuts its traditional at some point for the revered professor to give way and let people who actually know something about what's going on in the subject nowadays to to explain it to you and we'll do that the following week so we'll discuss later what's happening after we do niggles thing ok but today let's just start by looking at the computer model of the mind just briefly up what it is and then Searles Chinese room objection and ways of elaborating or replying to that you know back in the 1950s it was very 1960s it was very popular the idea that computers are the answer to the key to the mind it seems when you look back at the history of thinking about the mind it really seems that people have always taken whatever the state of the machine is and said you know the mind is kind of like that before the computer people said you know the mind is like a telephone exchange think of the mind is like a telephone exchange I was reading something from 1900 by guy oh who said well you know think about the photograph the photograph is a really remarkable invention and as all these grooves you can record music into these grooves and then there's a try and it gives a kind of Mickey Mouse explanation of how phonograph works and he says you know the mind is like that the mind is AA recording apparatus and you play back from the grooves in your conscious life in the 17th century they said when the market in England was being flooded by these marvelous cuckoo clocks from Switzerland they said well you know the mind is really like a marvelous clock these little chumps coming out banging Hummels cavemen doubtless said the mind is like a wheel or the mind is like a fire but anyway right for the last 50 years the dominant image has been the mind is like a computer and the picture is that a computer run software right you with the hardware and you get the software on a computer so you could think of the brain as the hardware of the mind the brain is the processing chip and the mental states that you have a software that what's going on when you're thinking and so on is basically just that your brain is running a particular program so hence the appeal of artificial intelligence if your brain is hardware running a piece of software then it ought to be possible to take that program that your brain is running and run that in a machine and the Machine presumably then would have just as much claim to be thinking and feeling and so on as you so if you think of it like that then the question is what would it take to succeed how would you know when a computer was understanding the language that it was using I know if we're gonna have this task here of programming a computer so I can think and reason just the way you are I can think of reason then how do we know when we've done it I actually I'm curious to know right at this point what is you I'm sure that most of you have thought about this question before so what do you got impulse right at this point could you program a computer to think feel reason love hot and so on yes pick your hand up if the answer is yes okay about what it who have your hand if you think the answer is no Wow okay that's far more than it and if you don't know okay that's most least popular option and if you don't understand the question okay okay okay good well Turing suggested the mathematician Turing suggested a famous test for how you'd know when you'd won he said well think of it like this suppose you had well in his first run he said suppose you've got a man and a woman in a room communicating with the outside world by teletype right so they can just type there they can get answers coming in by teletype they can get answers coming they can give replies going out and suppose that your task is to tell which is the man and which is the woman right so you got the answers identified this is subject a this is subject B well these guys are trying to fool you so and suppose the woman tells the truth the whole time and the man just lies and tries to give female appropriate answers then okay that's one kind of imitation game right how well is this male successfully impersonating a woman a new challenge is to catch them out the that's just an example to the earth in itself has no importance that example but then the idea is suppose it was behind the screen is a computer and a human and your task is to tell which is the computer and which is a human right you can feed in any questions you like you look at the answers coming out and you got to figure out is it a or is it B that is a computer could you do that at the moment do you think I mean could you tell yes the half-past attuning test really and uh-huh yeah yes absolutely their work of you for a long time that I've been computers like artificial paranoid which kept giving answers when it wrote when it was stumped by a question would give an answer like why do you ask me that or it's my mother isn't it my mother told you to ask that since there are humans that can respond in that kind of way yeah an Internet chat room or something it is absolutely the kind of forum what it really might work but the thing is the game is a little harder here because in contexts where people are unsuspecting they might not guess this is a computer yeah that's right the computers can't do that but the thing is suppose you know one of them is a computer on one is a human and your task is to catch them out could you do that yeah that test I think no one has a no computer has yet passed yeah humans can't you humans are really good you know we are really fast about each other the whole time you could tell if I most of you could tell if I was lying in a moment you just look at the expression you hear the falsity in the intonation x' yeah we're very very fast with each other you could do that with a computer you could catch it out yep yes I do yeah is a computer in the human okay well right after this class incidentally you can hear the state of the art on this ad that thing in bennetto auditorium which is just about what the state of the art is and Turing tests yep that's right but the question is if the programmers good enough has the programmer programmed the computer to think to understand this language yeah and the test is if you can't tell well what more do you want yeah okay so this is what Turing said back in 1950 he said I believe that in about 50 years time it will be possible to program computers with a storage capacity of about 10 to the 9 to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70% chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking we're expecting to be contradicted I think he would be disappointed yeah it doesn't know what actually what has happened generally but the question in another 10 years or computers be able to do that I don't see why not really I mean probably even if they can't right now in another 10 years everybody would expect computers could be programmed to pass this kind of test very hard to see why not does anyone see why not yet well yeah but we know what the task is the task is just to get a computer that can win this game yeah so it's a well-defined task a reasonably well defined yeah okay and actually did that would you have created something that could think yeah they could understand language yep yeah every gonna be a response to this program or else maybe that the computer round because you could make the computer talking loud and stuff yeah but are you so different intent evolution or God or something pre-program you I mean you didn't make it all out yourself right you were born with a working brain you say but all that was preset so I'm not thinking I can't be right alive maybe not I mean if it's made of horrible metal wiring and stuff you might not say all that things not alive but would that mean it can't think is that what a pure comparison isn't that just um speciesism or animalism if you see what I mean um some kind of general anterior until robotic sentiment just speaking it's not just a prejudice as if she said well people with green skin can't think well why not computers if you can overcome your thing about green skin can you overcome your thing about computers aha by definition by definition of being made a horrible wires and plastic and stuff III I just wanna should say what you have to overcome here this the the challenge you have to overcome that you're not just exhibiting a crude prejudice yeah but I agree this an important point his life really connected to intelligence and thinking yeah okay this is a different question right how much the computer can really change is different yeah but you surely could make the computer so could change a lot alive or not and why does life have to do with the possibility of change I mean life has no monopoly and the possibility of change and after all we all know people who should change and just can't yeah one two yes yes oh I I agree we just genuinely get uncertain at this point yeah how do you feel an honest answer oh we've had order sizes sorry yes yes I mean if you could I can do as well as your I do in an ordinary conversation yeah what do you think about you couldn't program a computer to give a good answer to that I think about my mother I guess I can program that in uh the sense if you are a computer as the brain is a computer running a soft piece of software the neurons that is programmed to yeah and that is the hypothesis right that is what cognitive science is built around the idea that you can understand the mind computationally it is not some daft hypothesis I mean it really works for a lot of mental functions the vision is a computational process oh of course you could make a computer to associate emotionally yeah I mean why not fear right I've seen that before I do fire up my fear reaction program why not yep yes yes that's right again I don't really see why not um artificial paranoid decades ago could I give answers like why did you ask me that if it didn't you know you asked it how do you feel today who give a suspicious answer why do you ask me that or and computers can certainly allowed a lot chess-playing computer can learn from its mistakes yeah yes yeah you could bring you could program a computer to say I feel great wit I apologize on reflection I don't feel so good today yeah I mean yes a curiosity oh yeah I couldn't do good a computer of curiosity yeah well really I want to focus on thinking and understanding yeah but if it can't think and understand then curiosity should be relatively easy curiosity is there some master of the computer says things like please tell me more or I would really like to know about astrophysics yeah where did I come from yes I don't again it's hard to see why you couldn't program a computer with that stuff in such a way that if you're playing the imitation game with it you would say this is curious I know this is a very inquiring mind this thing yeah yeah well again that is not smart I mean you can build people can build chess playing people have built chess-playing computers that defeat them every single time yeah it's not quite clear what it means to say that there's no smarter than you I mean I was just that our I was creative you know I was just looking at a machine in molecular biology that does it runs experiments I mean you you you the the human gives on a whole stack of slides at the end of the day and the thing runs hundreds of experiments overnight and prints out the paper to be sent to nature in the morning I mean it it is incredible what well I can I made that up about the printing out the paper but but you could easily program a computer not easily but you could program a computer that does stuff like interrogating all the results of the experiments that's resulting overnight and saying that was an interesting one let's look further at this yeah I mean when you start to think about what the possibilities are everything you're saying could be exhibited in this kind of scenario by the computer the question is why wouldn't that be enough what more would you want yeah so if we're going to address this question seriously we need to know a little bit about what a computer is so what is a computer hereis saddle explaining what a computer is he says a typical computer rule will determine that when a machine is in a certain state and it has a certain symbol on his tape then it will perform a certain operation such as raising the symbol or printing another symbol and then enter another state such as moving the tape one square to the left this should seem very familiar at this point where we seen that kind of thing before functionalism yes it is nothing but what Searle is describing there is nothing but a dear old friend s1 right you you've got s1 and then when the machine is in s1 and it is a certain symbol on its tip when it gets a symbol as input then it gets as you get that input and then it gives us motor output and goes into a different state right the computer model is just a version of functionalism in here that is not in functionalism already they talk about symbols I functionalism as such doesn't talk about symbols so what's going on here is we have a type of functionalism that gives a lot of importance to symbols you could think of it like this in the abstract description of functionalism it just talks about states s1 s2 s3 and lists of inputs states that can go into on motor outputs right but functionalism adds on those states s1 s2 s3 and so on they all involve signs they all involve physical shapes and they have a syntax is just a way of referring to the shape of the thing the kind of I could if it's in speech it would be the kind of sound it makes and in writing it's whether it's a 0 or a 1 for example what kind of shape it has and the idea is is because the signs have the physical characteristics that they do the states of the machine or the thinker what cars they do so all that's going on is that these symbols are particular effects given certain causes because of their shapes because of the syntax right you rate that shape down in the program then when you get us input another shape you get as output going into a different state and I'm pretty good another state another shape okay so the symbols here that the computer is using the symbols have no meaning they're not about anything all that they are is a collection of shapes they are specified purely in terms of their formal or some tactical structure formal here just means having to do with form or shape the zeros and ones for example are just numerals they don't stand for numbers so the computer model of the mind we can say that genitally well the computer model of the mind is is functionalism plus the idea of what makes the box and data connections work the way they do our physical sentences inside the boxes yep does that seem recognizable uh I've learned any computing guys in here as how does that okay yeah you can comment you see you can say it out loud even if you agree not everything you say has to be disagreeable yes sounds okay that's a reasonable recognizable description of what a computer is in a general kind of way okay so that's the computer model of the mind and this is of course a familiar to everybody I mean it's one of it it is the dominant idea for thinking about the mind right now that particular form of functionalism that says it's functional structure plus thought of as a computational architecture that explains how the mind works yep and service point is nothing like that can be right yep well something in practice might be a string of zeros and ones yeah but it could also be if you think of English as the highest level programming language for an English speaker which is really what the idea is yeah then it's the physical shapes of the English signs not and what the sign means I mean we could all be built so that statistically they're going to some people who drift off but anyway if I shout fire well you flee the room then one possibility is you could interpret that by saying I understand what I said and therefore you run out but you could also be built so you just have a wired connect when you hear that noise fire you flee the room you see what I mean that second thing is what is being described here where just the physical sentence you have a wired connection to that physical sentence fire when you clear the room you you see what I mean it doesn't have to go via something else knowing what the word stands for is that addressing yeah okay so that's a computer model and I guess most of you guys have an opinion as to whether it's right or wrong oh you here to sell arguing do their thing cannot be right and in principle couldn't be right nothing like that could be right however fancy a computer you have imagine a bunch of programmers have written a program that will enable a computer to simulate the understanding of Chinese right that would be the ambition so if the computer is given our question in Chinese then it will match the question against this memory of database and produce appropriate answers to the questions in Chinese so that was the kind of thing I was saying to you you could do you could get a computer that answers all the questions appropriately let's suppose we have it right let's suppose you play the imitation game with this computer you can't tell which is a computer on which is a human it passes the Turing test so suppose that the computers ourselves are as good as those of a native Chinese speaker nobody outside the room has any hope of telling which is which well the question is does the computer literally understand Chinese suppose artificial intelligence reaches its some Nirvana or nemesis it gets there right it does what it wants to do is that a little understanding of Chinese what's your impulse it'll be hard if you think yeah that would be understanding trainees all right yes this is not a question or yeah yeah put up your hand if you think the answer is yes or if you think the answer is No okay and if you don't know I was okay I would say a slate majority for who runs a task force the second one no a straight majority for no but not much in it yep yep I don't just mean passing that well it's not trivially the same thing as passing the Turing test it's whatever understanding is does it have that does it know what the sign is mean yes that's right no yeah and the question is can there be any more here yep yes okay well Cheryl says imagine you are locked in a room and in this room of several baskets full of Chinese symbols and suppose you are given a rulebook for manipulating those symbols so suppose you don't understand a word of Chinese you can see look at the symbols all right but that's all you get but you're given a rule book in English for manipulating the symbols so the rule might say yourself shows us deep understanding and sensitivity of the Chinese language take the squiggle squiggle sign out of basket number one and put it next to a squirrel squirrel sign from basket number two okay so the Sal understand Chinese know to sell have any idea what's going on no I mean squiggle squiggle for heaven's sake oh yes yes that's the best you can do he's the kind of thing is looking at is if you see that shape followed by that shape followed by that shape then produce this ship followed by that okay I used to know when this met myself but I've I've relapsed okay so you but you could do that right you could follow that instruction without knowing what any of the Chinese signs meant is that okay yeah you could do that so now suppose that you have a big set of books or a set of big books with tons of instructions like that in them so this is you here you are with a very large volume containing many such instructions and baskets of symbols and the book says things like well is if you don't mind me doing that again take a squiggle squiggle sign from basket number one and put it next to a squirrel squirrel sign from basket number two so people can mail in questions through the door and you can output answers to them yep all using the symbols consulting the book and you operating with all those symbols yep do you understand a word of Chinese in this scenario no no you don't understand anything of what's going on you might say god this is a boring job you talk about numbing you have no idea what's going on you might reasonably wish if you are doing this thing that you did or some good learning as to what was happening but no you don't understand any of that nonetheless well there's no way you could learn any Chinese just by manipulating the symbols on a computer is in that situation right I mean what you're doing here is you're running the computer program everything is in the computer program can be in the books what a computer program is is a set of instructions for how to manipulate symbols so if you can write the computer program then you can write one of those books that's what the computer program is what this guy is doing is just running the program do the computation guys want to that's right right I mean you can thats all that is happening so this guy is running the program the computer has our syntax but no semantics the computer is sensitive to the shapes of the signs it's using but it doesn't know where any of those signs stand for nonetheless this room could pass the Turing test if you're outside understanding the symbols that are being output you can say whoever or whatever is in that room is an intelligent Chinese speaker if you're given this room with this guy who doesn't understand a wonderful is going on and you're given another room with a native Chinese speaker in it putting out answers to questions you would not be able to tell which one contains the speaker who actually understands what they are doing and which one contains the this unfortunate Drudge who has no idea what's happening yeah so you could meet the imitation this guy could meet the imitation game without understanding a word of Chinese so the whole program of artificial intelligence is hopeless suppose you won suppose you made a computer that passed the Turing test you still would have not advanced an inch towards making something that understood any Chinese at all you haven't done anything to explain what it is to understand Chinese this guy has it's not that this guy doesn't understand very well or it's not as good or something like that he has zero idea he has nothing in the way of an understanding of the meaning of any of those symbols yep yep can we broken out understand me broken down into what the neurons are doing yeah surely Damacy something right about that yeah yeah they're doing the job the neurons are doing the job yeah yeah yeah so presumably the model if you're right is that you can't explain what it is to understand on a language in terms of what individual neurons are doing okay so the scientific approach to explaining an understanding of language is hopeless yeah doesn't you sing that's right yeah we don't understand that must be the wrong answer and I think one the natural model to draw would be if you try to explain our understanding of language in terms of what neurons are doing you get the result that we don't understand language but since that is the wrong answer what must have gone wrong is the appeal to understanding to explaining an understanding of language in terms of the activity of neurons yeah there are different replies of ways you might take this but yeah yes that's very good the the in terms of cells model what the computer has got is relationships between words and words given these shapes as inputs do these shapes as outputs yeah so it's good the word WOD part right now it's very natural to think to do the thing you just said and talk about an image yeah you don't know if you just manipulate with the signs you don't know what any of them stand for but maybe you've got an immediate fire then you know what the word fire stands for yeah and the reason that's so natural is its natural to think that the relationship between the image and the thing out there you can take that for granted because you I mean let me just just make it obvious to you what thing out there the word stands for yeah the trouble is to explain without means under you make the connect to an image because in terms of computation you can certainly have a syntactic structure but you call an image there might be good reasons to cover an image you know maybe it's just a big matrix of zeros and ones rather than our sentence you see what I mean yeah and but if that's with an images then okay I connect my the word fire to this big matrix of zeros and ones you're a part of the program that's not going to get me anywhere yeah but it's very natural to set things up the we just did yeah okay okay so really that's it that's the name point that's just game over fart official intelligence right for the scientific approach to an understanding of the mind I mean you see the force of this point here you have something that clearly meat does what the computer scientists trying to do but doesn't have any understanding at all yeah pointing to an idea yes and like what data well the thing is is if you have a program that meets all these functional suppoed you've written a program that will enable a computer simulate the understanding of Chinese right what we're talking about what a computer program is it's a way of shuffling symbols yep I mean I delight in the computer guys to keep me honest here if I'm missing something if you said to someone who is trying to write in AK to a write a computer program yeah yeah that's you're shuffling the zeros and ones really well here you're shuffling all the symbols of Chinese really well here but I want you to add in some more code that will say Unferth or more this sign stands for files that will let the machine know the computer know what the sign stands for i mean well but what it means is completely you can't you can't just add that in I mean all you can add in is of another instruction for shuffling symbols that's what the computer does it shuffles symbols if you say no no I won't you you might as well add in a symbol say I don't know line of code that will enable it to fly to the moon but that's not what programming is you see what I mean programming is teaching the thing to shuffle symbols we have relationships between what and what right that's all that's a computer program is one too so that's a very crisp statement of settles point exactly yeah but you could program a look-alike of semantics but all you've got is more shuffling of syntax that's right yes [Laughter] right yeah right yep that's very good but there are two different ideas you've got here one is the baby waving on the other is a possibility of lambing yeah so with the possibility of landing you guys she could build that into this machine fairly straightforwardly suppose you have a teaching signal that can come in saying that was a bad move go back and rewrite that instruction yeah you could give this guy the power to do that yeah so if suppose that let just take for example suppose our guy follows this instruction and gets a teaching signal that means delete the last thing yeah try something else yeah so he says okay okay and picks out a symbol at random and shoves it in and then he gets another teaching signal saying bad one he did he try something else he can just try that until he gets a clear signal yeah still without having any idea what's going on right in my butt he might not I mean it really his thing is he couldn't that sense be laughing I'm the the teaching signals could be much more complex yeah and his strategies for responding to them could be much more complex so he could be redesigning his books under the influence of those teaching signals still without having an idea what's going on so I think the learning thing the computer computers can learn yeah I mean that's what I mean all these um other thing you do without fingerprint sense all right you you teach it yeah what the right fingerprint is or you teach your computer to recognize your voice yeah the wave is interesting the wave is different I mean suppose does it matter that it's a wave suppose the computer outputs by you see what I mean wouldn't that do just as well or do you really want to does it make a difference if it's going to be a wave okay the one well I do seem you mean but sales point is that is a hallucination you can you well well if it was possible this guy could do it this guy has a very big rule book though yeah anything you can let's wrap up give him two books yeah okay it's not going to make any difference he still doesn't understand the world of what is going on well if you give him this right if you just give him the semantics yeah it seems it seems unlikely but it would certainly help a lot yeah if he knew the meaning of just one Chinese symbol then maybe you could you could start piecing things together but we are assuming he doesn't have any semantics what you said was building semantics out of syntax the point there yeah but you're not you're building semantics out of syntax plus semantics ok it will have his only syntax then that's just giving him a very big book but look it's a really big book though you see what I mean it means anything your computer guys have got in the way of syntax he's got there right whoa okay people who haven't asked the question so yeah yeah yes yes well what can I actually come on to that in a moment because that's an important important line of reply but straight off the thing is if he doesn't understand a word of Chinese then what does it mean to say the whole room understands Chinese I mean if you put if you take the guy out of the room right then he doesn't understand Chinese at all yeah that's just the way it was set up he doesn't understand any Chinese so then you put a row of a shell of a room around him and you say well no no you know we've done it now we did the critical thing we get something that understands Chinese how did that happen what does that mean yeah there's a that was very well put yeah but just in terms of the room putting the room round doesn't seem to I mean if if you buy that you didn't somehow make semantic sort of syntax just by putting together a whole bunch of these rules then how could putting a shell of a room random make the difference so if your brain doesn't understand just by shuffling symbols how could putting the shell of our body around it make a difference if we're how is that the critical thing I mean I don't mean you'd over times up to that where that is the question yeah we'll come on and discuss that more so yes you cruda that's right yes that'd be fair yeah yeah that's right that's right so there's no underfunding here at all I mean there's even less than the way of understanding though there was before well the thing is if you accept that this guy doesn't understand the world of Chinese yeah and you accept that well and suppose you know cut away his brain and you say but all everything carries on as before how could you how can you suddenly get an understanding of Chinese out of this by eliminating the padule-- brain in the scenario you know how could you by amputating a bit of the scenario generate an understanding of Chinese that's right yes right so you got a hand that's doing that yeah it would be running the very same program that's right biggest event of anything that understood or wonderful was going on well you mean the hand does understand the Mira speak to the hand that's right yeah well it does exactly what this guy does and he doesn't understand but I thought yeah since he doesn't understand right and the hand is only doing what he does presumably the hand doesn't understand either okay all right but they're all running the full power computer program um is there anyone who hasn't asked like I think yeah the broken the computer not yeah that's fair enough but it's still since is so clear in this scenario that there's nothing there other understands Chinese how could eliminating the smart parts of the scenario generate an understanding of Chinese right the book understand Chinese it doesn't sound right to say the brick or he he might say I mean you don't really mean that he might be feeling Envy for the book it was saying what drug duty this is at least the book understands what's going on I mean that's a kind of magical thinking that it a lot last one enemy really should move on yes that's right you wouldn't be able to tell that's right that is the remaining puzzle yeah there must be something more to understanding a language in that I said last one but you haven't raised a question yet yeah yeah yeah yes yes yes point yeah well but but it's interesting we yeah but this is like the thing about waving I mean it's important that it's a point okay experience yeah experience and pointing are both important ideas yeah but remember that there's nothing in the very idea of a computer program that includes pointing or experiencing yeah you tell these computing guys bill then know that you got to experience this or build in now that you got to point to that that yeah okay that's the kind of thing that's missing yeah that's fair enough there's also you could appeal to that is outside a classical computer program yeah but yeah the really the last one yes yes yeah is it clear it's clear to what he means I mean syntax for our purposes is just the relationships between words and words putting words together semantics has to do with a relation between signs and the world signs and the stuff out there and the point is no amount of being able to shuffle the world is going to get you the connect between the world and the say you know the stuff out there quickly I think we raise any question well there goes certainly going to pass the imitation game if they can do all the shuffling of syntax right but the compelling point here is you could pass the Turing test you could pass the imitation game and still not understand anything that that's just a datum okay let me give you a quick illustration this is kind of coming out the cell think from a different point of view we're thinking right now of scientists who are looking at humans and saying look at all the stuff they do with language how is that working what is it for them to understand language well suppose you take a much simpler example suppose you take suppose you're a scientist and you found a calculator so it's not a human it's just something much simpler you found a gadget that can multiply numbers and you say to yourself how is this gadget working how come is managing to multiply numbers just the same way you could ask about a human how come they managed to give all these answers to questions well how is it how is a calculator doing it well here's a here's um a simple program that the calculator might be running now this is a very simple example but I promise you all computations are just fancier versions of this so suppose you want to multiply 3 by 2 okay let's let's do that later family class let's multiply 3 by 2 okay so N and a ok so that 3 is M and n is 2 and we don't know a yet so our opening instruction is make a 0 ok and then it says ok is n 0 is n 0 know what is n n is 2 so if n is not 0 we subtract 1 from n giving us 1 and we add M which is 3/2 a which is 3 plus 0 yes which is 3 and now we say I am to a ok now we go round again and we say is n 0 then 0 no so now we subtract 1 from n 0 and we go back round again no wait a minute we add em to a AHA 3 to a so we add 3 and 3 which is 6 and then we go back round again and we say is n 0 and the answer is yes because then no is 0 and so we stop hey look at that nobody ok so you broke down computer you broke down multiplying 2 adding the computer program did that and then you say now how come that gadget can add and eventually you break it down to something in binary and you say okay so here's something that can add 0 & 1 so you get an exclusive or gate and a none gate here so if you've got a 0 & 1 here the or that thing sorry I'm doing this wrong the wrong way if you get a warner if you get two different things there then the on gate gives a 1 is you can say 2 different as you can just efforts in the top box isn't the same as what's in the bottom box then the and gate gives you a 1f what's in the top box is different to us in the bottom box then the an gate gives you a 0 if what's in the top box is the same as what's in the bottom box then the or gate gives you a 0 if what's in the top box is different to what's in the bottom box then the or gate gives your 1 right that's the way it works and you get a simple thing like that and that will let you do binary addition computer guys yep fair enough that gives you binary addition okay so you broke down the multiplying to adding and then you break down the adding to this kind of thing I know you say how do I break this down how is it managing to do that computer guys no idea what do you teach you guys there's a cheap shot well the thing is at this point you can't break it down any forethought I mean at this point what you've got is just electrical circuits yeah that's why you do that you can get these simple flip-flop switches and so at this point you get something that is realized in the in the in the hardware of the thing so when you're explaining how a computer system works there is always going to come the point where you have primitive processors processes that can only be explained in hardware towns in terms of what some bit of the hardware is doing and when you're thinking about the brain that are ultimately going to be electrical circuits in the brain there are the primitive processes of the brain these will give you the basic vocabulary that the brain operates with and it's notes at all straightforward in the brain two identities is if we're going to be very straightforward to identify which electrical socket is doing what and the brain is much harder to say is an assembly of neural firings is there a particular neural firing is a rate of neural firing what's the particular bit of brain there is the primitive process here but the thing is is going to be something like that the computer program ultimately has some basic process of doing the work and in these terms you can put cells point by saying no amount of manipulating these primitive processors could add up to you understanding the signs that you're using okay so so much for cognitive science actually go back at one side yeah it's aryl doesn't put it this way I think this is all this is a way though of putting his point no amount of that kind of stuff could add up to understanding the understanding you want knowledge of what the sign stands for and nothing in that adds up to that no amount of computation can add up to knowing what the signs stand for and that really is a problem I mean that is a big problem for any scientific approach to the analysis of the mind it's such a big thing this ability to understand and think language yeah so is there anything we can say to sell yep yes this that's what we're talking about today understanding a thinking imagination yeah yeah well there was certainly half yeah but the thing is it depends it depends what you how you conceive of imagination you can conceive of imagination computationally you can see I mean I put it earlier I could think of an array or matrix of zeros and ones yeah you can think of a really gigantic matrix of zeros and ones and imagining as an ability to manipulate big matrices of zeros and ones yeah if that's what imagining is then computers can do it there's no problem about computers doing it but I doesn't get you anything in the way of understanding is by imagining you rather mean wondering where your mama's right now and try to imagine how it's going they're just presupposes your understanding of language and your ability to think so if you think of it imagination is that much richer way but that's fine but it's something that computers just don't do yes right well those anyway you couldn't I mean you could but you could have this guy when he gets the face of someone he knows an input from that says in Chinese this is about someone you know looking into the face of something you know well on an awesome evening and triggers off a whole bunch of them sign manipulations that a native Chinese speaker could recognize as imaginings yeah yeah last one yes that's fine but what you but what you're talking about there is not syntactic associations you're not talking about I'm running a computer program anymore I'm sorry I really want to move on because there's one thing that I think is exactly the same in the sense that it meets the Turing test but if you're saying he's doing something more than running a program then that's giving up the game well that's the question what is the difference if he's running the same program as you or me he will meet the Turing test but he met the Turing test while he was inside his room when you see this stuff about walking about the streets of Beijing but that's fine but the only reason you want to have him walking about the streets of Beijing is because you think having the computer program is not enough if it was just the computer program you have that already here you'd you're thinking he gets something else well it's fine but it's not caught by the computer model then yeah and then the question is indeed what more is that but what is the other thing he got okay okay I want to get on to this is a comment that's come up a couple of times that many people have in the questions have been getting at this and the one thing that you would think of in a computer people talk about the central processing unit the chip the running the computer and you think well this guy in the Chinese room is really like a chip in the computer right he's doing with the chip does now ordinarily we don't say that your brain understands English or your brain is doing the talking or your brain remembers right you talk about the whole person and you see the whole person remembers the whole person thinks yeah not your brain so you could say well it's okay to say this guy doesn't understand Chinese that's like saying your brain doesn't understand Chinese and one way to get at the difference between what the whole room is doing this was the question earlier one way to get a difference between what the whole room is doing and what this guy in the center is doing is think about the personality that is being exhibited and the replies that come out I mean maybe the replies that come out from the Chinese room are very poetic or maybe they're very grumpy maybe this is someone short-tempered who says that was a stupid question and you know stuff like that right you could get a personality coming out in the responses from the Chinese room but the person in the room might not have any such characteristics the person in the room might be calm tranquil I'm not particularly poetic not particularly grumpy so the mind that is being exhibited in the responses from the room might be quite different to the mine that the of the person inside the room do you see what I mean does that make sense yep yes that's right okay I I think I agree with everything there except the remark about the personality of the book because I just think that's a that's poetic right books don't have personalities yeah sorry yeah Rick the book I gave you that yeah but the book itself does not have a personality in the responses coming out of the room you may get a very good sense of what kind of character you're addressing I agree with everything you're saying except the thing about the book having a personality that can't be literally correct yeah I see why you say it but it can't be right it isn't what you want rather what there's ever a question or we're saying that it's the whole thing it's the whole system that has the personality you see what I mean you don't want to locate it in some different bit of the interior and hunt about in the interior and I don't think hunting about for the originator the author of the book is quite the right thing either way because that again the author of the book made of a quite different temperament from that which is being displayed in these responses yeah but the talk about the mind here has to do with what the whole system is doing that's right well that's right the passion inside response is just move symbol a into basket said right but what the whole system is doing is saying what a beautiful day it remains me of must spring in my youth you you see what I mean the the guy inside is not saying that but the whole system is saying that so well I just think the books saying this is like that previous response the book isn't literally saying anything at all it's just a dumb book yeah sorry the guy inside doesn't understand what he's saying the book doesn't understand what he's saying but the whole system is saying this what a beautiful day yeah I mean one way to put it David a philosopher called David Cole suggested this is to say suppose you've got a Chinese and Korean room so that on the one is it so the two in response to inputs of Chinese symbols it will meet the Turing test with a native Chinese speaker in response to input of Korean symbols it will meet the Turing test for an intelligent Korean speaker but maybe the Chinese and Korean personalities that are being exhibited are both quite different to each other and to the personality of the person in the middle so you've got it you could think of it like a virtual mind here you could you you get you can ask questions about is this a smart person is it DOM is it well informed does it remember the spring of 76 you can ask lots of questions about the personality that's being exhibited in these outputs and how much knowledge and what kind of knowledge that person has but that's a different thing to walk the personality or knowledge this guy has he met there may be a lots of information about the spring of 76 coming out here but if you ask this guy what was going on in spring 76 he says before my time no idea the thing is the hard question here is why does going up a level help I mean this was my question earlier bhakti back to you which is suppose you say that when you look at the whole system you can talk about personality and so on and maybe you can talk about an understanding of Chinese or Korean at the level of the whole system but what is it this being I did I said if you just if you don't have understanding and then you stick the shell of a room around then how does that help and Sam has a really challenging point here that this guy if you say well it's the book that's intelligent it's um it's business because you've hid the book where you got the room well this guy in principle could memorize the entire book he could get all that whole book into his head all these instructions like this one you could just memorize this so you wouldn't need to use the book without understanding any of the individual symbols you could just memorize thousands of those without understanding any of the individual symbols you could memorize the entire book without understanding any of the individual symbols so then there wouldn't be any book outside you are really running the whole program yourself from inside your head but you still don't understand a word of Chinese you might say well what's going to be either there's not the shell of a room this is why these comments about waving and pointing interested are really striking you could say well if I've got something that can walk about if I embed this program in a robot that can walk about maybe that will do it maybe that will constitute understanding or maybe the whole thing's been badly setup because really it's not a good idea to do the stuff when you've got a free agent that this is the same problem that we had for the block homunculus added robot is really a variant unblocks argument this thing and you might think there's some nasty trick being walked here by having a guy doing it who after all might go and strike at any moment and say what's in this for me okay and then that Samba note will though there's no reading for Thursday I will just review where we've got to okay thanks great questions

Channel: Philosophy Overdose

Views: 2,061

Rating: 4.8400002 out of 5

Keywords: Philosophy, John Searle, Chinese Room, Artificial Intelligence, Understanding, Functionalism, Computationalism, Materialism, Physicalism, Turing Test, Turing Machine, Computer Science, Other Minds, Cognitive Science

Id: qWoTE7NVzvo

Length: 79min 23sec (4763 seconds)

Published: Sun May 20 2018