The key to the Chinese Room

Authors

Shaun Gallagher, University of Central Florida

RIS ID

88874

Publication Details

Gallagher, S. 2009, 'The key to the Chinese Room', in K. Leidlmair (eds), After Cognitivism: A Reassessment of Cognitive Science and Philosophy, Springer, Netherlands. pp. 87

Additional Publication Information

ISBN: 9781402099922

Abstract

John Searle's famous thought experiment concerning the Chinese Room (CR) is cast rhetorically in terms that are standard for the target it seeks to defeat, the strong computational claims made about human intelligence by strong AI (Searle 1980). Thus, the problem is laid out in terms of physics, syntax, and semantics. The CR argument demonstrates that semantics cannot be reduced to computational syntax - or that syntax by itself can never give you semantics (intentionality, meaning).