| It really don't in my opinion. Of course, the person in the room doesn't understand Chinese just like the individual neuron in a Chines person doesn't understand Chinese. It's the entire house where the person in the room is just one part of the entire system. And yes he does imply that there is something magical about the way humans are pattern recognizing feedback loops vs. machines as humans came from immaterial matter ourselves if he doesn't his argument simply do not hold up as there is nothing magical either in the way human conscience is a byproduct of simpler systems all forming to become a scentient one. If you can buy that humans have evolved from dumb atoms then you have too look that not how humans and "machines" are different but how they are the same. The samenes is that we are pattern recognizing feedback loops and that our sentience comes out of something non-sentient. So either something magical is in play or there is nothing that hinders machines to become sentient either from what we know. A human consists of milions of sub-systems like a calculator and yet we are somehow sentient. Furthermore there is no know upper limit to how complex silicon based systems can be and so the right answer really is if anything "we don't know" not "because the person in the room doesn't understand chinese it proves that systems can" the person in the room is not the system the entire house including everything happening outside of the room. In other words unless searle is claiming magic at some level nothing, absolutely nothing indicates that machines can't become sentient. With regards to your last point then that's the wrong way to look at it. A better way to understand why it's possible is to start from omniscience and then realize that omniscience means you are aware of everything and thus have no perspective where as all systems that can handle information potentially can become sentient the more complex they become. |