Purpose
- to get to know an important counter-argument to Turing
- to gather material for our in-class debate on Monday of week 3
Read
Questions
Here are some questions to guide your reading. You don't have to answer these questions in writing. However, you will have to hand in an essay arguing your position for our in-class debate. So, take some notes now that you can use for the preparation of the debate later on.
- How does the Chinese room thought experiment work? How does it argue that the Turing test does not work?
- According to Searle, can a computer ever be intelligent? Can any human built machine ever be intelligent? What properties would that machine have to have/not have?
- Imagine that engineers have invented a tiny computer that exactly simulates the action of an individual neuron. You now replace the neurons in a human's brain one-by-one until they are all replaced. According to Searle, will the patient have a conscious mind after the operation? What do you think?