The other day I got interested again in the issues of mind-body connection or interface and so I went to Wikipedia to see what people have to say about it. I read the post and got intrigued by the Chinese Room experiment.
Reading that post reminded me of how it seems almost inevitable that we restrict our thinking to within a certain world view and thus limit ourselves. For example, the article has the following on the "Brain replacement scenario:"
Brain replacement scenario. In this, we are asked to imagine that engineers have invented a tiny computer that simulates the action of an individual neuron. What would happen if we replaced one neuron at a time? Replacing one would clearly do nothing to change conscious awareness. Replacing all of them would create a digital computer that simulates a brain. If Searle is right, then conscious awareness must disappear during the procedure (either gradually or all at once).
The paragraph illustrates the problem on multiple points. The first sentence assumes that all actions of neurons are knowable and thus potentially reproducible by a computing machine. Thus the whole paragraph is now based on false or incomplete premise or at least one which can not be proven true or false.
Then in the third sentence (one right after the question) the author offers a statement as an established truth, which in fact is rather another assumption at best. The following statement contains yet another questionable assertion.
What concerns me is not so much the fallacy of the mental exercise, which, the exercise, does have value on its own, though, but rather the fact that often, based on those musings of various scientists or philosophers, technologies are developed which are used to consciously impact some aspect of daily life. If this is done with full understanding of the limitations of the theories, fine - we can possibly prepare properly for eventualities. Otherwise, such blind application of theories which incorporate fallacious thinking leads to uncharted territories with potentially disastrous consequences.
Friday, January 11, 2008
chinese room
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1 comment:
A friend of mine found this post and replied (in part) as follows:
"Concerning the chinese thought experiment: my answer is simple:
-- the chinese person is also a machine who is following instructions (in the brain), and does not know Chinese any more than the person following instructions from a book. This simplifies the entire argument."
My reply:
When we analyze "natural" or biological/mental phenomena we quickly run out of resources to consider all of the myriad of factors influencing them. So we try simplifying and ascribing everything left out to randomness. The argument here is the same as in my blog entry. There is nothing wrong with that method per se - it may, in fact, yield some, however incomplete and unreliable, understanding of the phenomenon. The problem for me is when we then forget the assumptions and claim general understanding, using it to indiscriminately influence those same phenomena - as in controlling them to reach desired outcomes. As if nature has a finite number of control knobs and dials ready for us to just set correctly and all will be as desired.
For example, in that Chinese Room thought experiment, Searle assumes that it is in fact possible to somehow define that "Chinese conversation" program algorithmically so that it can then be executed by a single human processor. This is a critical assumption which has not been tested for plausibility, but used as the basis for the argument. So, the argument has no basis and it is useless to argue its conclusions other than for the purpose of an exercise in logic.
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