Chinese Room

The term of Chinese room indicates a Expérience of thought imagined by John Searle towards 1980. Searle wondered whether a Computer program, however complex is it, would be sufficient to give a Esprit to a system.

Principle

A widespread tendency then consisted in considering that since the Cerveau constituted on the one hand the seat of the spirit (what the assignments of the spirit by cerebral lesions confirmed) and on the other hand the place of important transfers of Information (10¹² Neuron S, each one likely to function all 10ms, that is to say a theoretical potential of approximately 10¹⁴ operations a second), these transfers of information “were” the spirit.

Searle tried to imagine these transfers of information simulated to perfection, but very slowly, on an immense model using of paper, the pencils, the operators, and the simple rules similar to those of the machines of Turing. This transfer of support indeed does not change anything with the model, the carrier data not playing of role in the business, and the concept of scale of time either. It seemed extremely difficult to him to admit that this device is in anything comparable really with the operation of a brain and has, according to the expression of Arthur Koestler, a phantom in the machine ( ghost in the machine ). Not that Searle blames the well-known principle of operation of a Neuron, but a question according to him was that of the scale of time of the process. To take a simple comparison, the light is well made of very fast variations of electromagnetic field, but to agitate a magnet with the hand quickly will not produce to in no case light.

Searle considers at this stage that the metaphor of the computer program is with it insufficient to only explain the phenomenon of the conscience, and must be supplemented considerations related to the scale of time itself (in any case if one regards our scale of time as privileged).

Its vision thereafter will be radicalized more still.

Insufficiency of the cognitive map running, according to Searle

It summarizes it in the following way:

“I did not know anything 1971 with the Artificial intelligence. I bought a handbook randomly, whose argumentative step struck me by its weakness. I did not know whereas this book was going to mark a turning in my life. He explained how a Ordinateur could include/understand the language. The argument was that one could tell a history with a computer and that it was able then to answer relative questions with this history although the answers are not expressly given in the account. The history was the following one: a man goes to the restaurant, orders a hamburger, one serves a carbonized hamburger to him, the man from goes away without paying. One asks the computer: “He ate hamburger?”. He answers by the negative one. The authors were very content with this result, which was supposed to prove that the computer had the same capacities of comprehension as us. It is at this time that I conceived the argument of the Chinese room. ”

The model of the Chinese room

Let us suppose that one is in a part closed with the possibility of receiving and to send Symbole S ( via a keyboard and a screen, for example). One lays out of Chinese natures and rules of work (instructions) allowing to produce certain continuations of characters according to the characters introduced into the part, on the model of the organizations of mail-order selling which treat their mail customer while placing answers prepared in advance, and already printed, in envelopes.

If one provides a history followed by a question, both written in Chinese, the application of the rules can only result in giving the good answer, but without the operator including/understanding anything, since he does not know Chinese. He will have just handled symbols which do not have for him any significance.

According to Searle, a Computer, or more exactly a program of computer, would be in the same situation as the operator in the Chinese room: he would have only of symbols and rules governing their handling.

Searle explains: “I did not await only this argument, which appeared commonplace to me, interest of a week causes beyond. The effect was on the contrary cataclysmic. All the participants of the seminar were convinced that I was wrong, but without being able to give the reason of it. Twenty years after, the discussion continues to make rage, it must have several hundreds of articles there on the subject. ”.

Analyzes and going beyond

For Searle, the argument of the Chinese room would show that the semantics of the mental contents is not intrinsic with only the Syntaxe of the computer program, which is defined in a formal way by a continuation of 0 and 1 accompanied by rules of treatment. Many critics however were addressed to him, in particular the fact that it poses like assumption a priori that semantics is not reduced to syntax, whereas precisely, of many researchers in cognitive science think that semantics emerges from syntax (see the principle of emergence).

Searle then proposes (in the redécouverte of the spirit) a new argument: “The major distinction that one can carry out is not between the spirit and the matter, but between two aspects of the world: those which exist independently of an observer, and that I call intrinsic, and those which are relating to the interpretation of an observer. ” Data-processing calculation, to be qualified of such, exists only relative with an interpretation which assigns a certain distribution of zeros and ones in a certain physical status.

This new argument, more radical, uncouples the question from the syntax of that of physical nature. A given thing cannot be regarded as a program (i.e. a syntactic structure) only relative with an interpretation. One indeed knew, well before work of Searle, that a message forever of direction in itself, but only in one context of interpretation given: a Séquence of ARN does not have a direction out of the Ribosome which the will translate into Protéine; information compressed does not have a direction out of the existence of the relief cock; decompressed information itself does not have a direction out of the rules of interpretation which one will apply to him, etc By analogy, a program of data processing would be only one whole of syntactic rules deprived of direction. To reach the direction, one would need a conscience. The “conscience” of the direction of a message indicates the capacity here to interpret the signal to translate it into actions, like in the case of ribosome; it is of a “concience of the world” ( awareness ) and not about a " conscience of soi" ( consciousness ). Searle tried to show by this way that the concept of Artificial intelligence known as strong was to be abandoned. However, the reasoning of Searle leaves the assumption that semantics is not reduced to syntax, which dispute the partisans of the strong IA, which suggests precisely that the direction can be an emergent property of computer programs.

“It is possible to assign a computational interpretation with the operation of the brain as to anything of other”, known as Searle. “Let us suppose that this door equalizes 0 when it is opened, and 1 when it is closed. There is a rudimentary computer there. This argument is more powerful than the first but more difficult to include/understand. ”

Final considerations

The argument of Searle usefully recalls that the human operator of its system does not include/understand at any time Chinese, just as none of our neurons includes/understands with him only a differential equation (even if it is punctually used for his calculation), or that Deep Blue, as good player is it for us, does not even know as it plays failures.

It is the redécouverte of a concept already formalized in various disciplines. Into psychophysical, the theory Gestalt suggests that " the whole has sometimes properties which do not exist in any of its parties". In cognitive sciences, one speaks about the principle of emergence. And Richard Buckminster Fuller proposes the concept of Synergie: by the Organization even of its components, a system acquires properties which are not present in any the components in question taken as tel. the system contains by its organization what Henri Laborit or Bertrand de Jouvenel names added information . The man does not include/understand Chinese, the room either, but the system " man + chambre" includes/understands indeed, since being able to translate it.

See too

External bonds

'' Langage, conscience, rationality: a natural philosophy, discussion with John SEARLE ''
Jacques BOLO, '' Philosophie against artificial intelligence '', Chapter 6: Formalization and language, § " Semantics chinoise"

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