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by Maursault 1251 days ago
> Searle's Chinese Room is becoming very relevant.

It's been relevant to Philosophy of Mind and Strong AI circles of Computer Science ever since it was published in 1980. I can't recall who, but an academic quipped around 2010 that, paraphrasing, the last 30 years of discussions of Artificial Intelligence has been dominated by arguments trying to prove that Searle's Chinese Room is wrong.
1 comments
kbelder 1251 days ago
"...by arguments proving Searle's Chinese Room wrong".

It was clearly fallacious from the outset; it presupposes mysticism, a dualistic reality. I'm genuinely shocked anybody's still talking about it.

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ChainOfFools 1251 days ago
Well put. The underlying debate is not do what extent machines are able to think like humans, but to what extent humans are merely organic machines. Or as you alluded to, more simply it is monism versus dualism. And dualism is just the generalization of the God of the gaps fallacy.
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Maursault 1251 days ago
> more simply it is monism versus dualism

Monism is doing a awful lot of work in this hand wave. You'd only have to sit in on a college-level Philosophy of Mind course for a single semester to understand how silly your comment is.

The fact of the matter is there is no academic consensus on whether Searle's Chinese Room argument is wrong. But the number of arguments against it is always growing while Searle's responses to these arguments are getting less frequent.

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