Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jibal 43 days ago
The Chinese Room argument is one of the most fallacious arguments ever offered and is rejected by all experts.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/12/21/the-mystery-of-c...

"For [John Searle's] part, he has one argument, the Chinese Room, and he has been trotting it out, basically unchanged, for fifteen years. It has proven to be an amazingly popular number among the non-experts, in spite of the fact that just about everyone who knows anything about the field dismissed it long ago. It is full of well-concealed fallacies. By Searle’s own count, there are over a hundred published attacks on it. He can count them, but I guess he can’t read them, [...]"

2 comments

> one of the most fallacious arguments ever offered and is rejected by all experts

Do you have any sources for the first claim? The second claim is of course trivially wrong.

Every significant argument has plenty of detractors, that doesn’t mean they’re right. Every argument I’ve heard to the contrary is unconvincing to me, and to the majority:

https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/5002