Daniel Dennett on the Chinese Room

Philosophy Bites

Nigel Warburton

Education, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2013

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Can computers think? John Searle famously used the Chinese Room thought experiment to suggest that they can't. Daniel Dennett is suspicious about the way the thought experiment is set up. In this conversation with Nigel Warburton for the Philosophy Bites podcast he explains why.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Philosophy Bites with me Nigel Warburton and me David Edmonds.
0:07.0	If you enjoy Philosophy Bites please support us.
0:10.0	We are currently unfunded and all donations would be gratefully received.
0:14.0	For details go to W.W. philosophy bites.com.
0:19.0	You've created a computer program that allows a computer to speak Chinese at such a sophisticated level
0:25.1	that it passes the so-called Turing test. That is, people outside the room,
0:29.5	communicating with the computer, think the computer is an actual Chinese speaker.
0:34.9	Does this computer understand Chinese?
0:38.1	Now imagine that you have the English language manual of the computer code.
0:42.0	A Chinese question is put through the door by the
0:44.0	Chinese speaker. The manual tells you how to produce a few squiggles and
0:47.8	squiggles in response. You push the answer back through the door.
0:51.1	Clearly, says the philosopher John Searle, the inventor of this thought experiment, you don't
0:55.8	really understand Chinese, even if you can convince people on the other side of the door that
1:00.4	you do.
1:01.8	All you're doing is following instructions. That shows
1:04.8	claim so that computers don't really understand a language. The Chinese
1:09.9	room is about as famous as any thought experiment in philosophy.
1:14.0	Eminent philosopher Daniel Dennett thinks it's a very bad one.
1:18.0	Daniel Dennett, welcome to Philosophy Bites.
1:20.0	I'm glad to be back.
1:22.0	The topic we're going to focus on is the Chinese room.
	...

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