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by bermanoid
4475 days ago
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That's fair - I'm biased by having too many conversations with self professed philosophers telling me that any push towards AGI is wasted effort because of X, where X just means that it wouldn't satisfy whatever they think is special about humans. I don't think AI researchers have anything to offer philosophy. The thing is, AI researchers rarely engage at all except when philosophers pop up and tell them that what they're doing is impossible. AI researchers generally don't give a shit about philosophy, whereas there is a ton of noise coming from the other direction. You may be right in your implicit suggestion that the people bringing up Searle are really just amateurs, though. I don't ever recall anyone with bona fide credentials in philosophy ever mentioning the guy as anything more than a sad amusement... |
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Unfortunately, this often gets misunderstood (both by practitioners of those fields and people with an axe to grind) as being critical of the field. The criticism is usually really directed at another philosophical position.
I think the reason the Chinese Room argument gets so much attention is that it's an argument against a position that was popular in the 1970s --- that mental states are identical (as in, strict identity) to classical computational states --- while being easy to understand and criticise. As you say, it assumes its own conclusion.
To be fair to Searle, I shoul point out that while the chinese room argument isn't taken seriously, he did other unrelated work that is still relevant!