Editing Chinese room (section)

===Robot and semantics replies: finding the meaning===
As far as the person in the room is concerned, the symbols are just meaningless "squiggles." But if the Chinese room really "understands" what it is saying, then the symbols must get their meaning from somewhere. These arguments attempt to connect the symbols to the things they symbolize. These replies address Searle's concerns about [[intentionality]], [[symbol grounding]] and [[syntax]] vs. [[semantic]]s.

==== Robot reply ====
Suppose that instead of a room, the program was placed into a robot that could wander around and interact with its environment. This would allow a "[[causal]] connection" between the symbols and things they represent.<ref>{{Harvnb|Searle|1980|p=7}}; {{Harvnb|Cole|2004|pp=9–11}}; {{Harvnb|Hauser|2006|p=3}}; {{Harvnb|Fearn|2007|p=44}}.</ref>{{efn|This position is held by [[Margaret Boden]], [[Tim Crane]], [[Daniel Dennett]], [[Jerry Fodor]], [[Stevan Harnad]], [[Hans Moravec]], and [[Georges Rey]], among others.{{sfn|Cole|2004|p=9}}}} [[Hans Moravec]] comments: "If we could graft a robot to a reasoning program, we wouldn't need a person to provide the meaning anymore: it would come from the physical world."<ref>Quoted in {{Harvnb|Crevier|1993|p=272}}</ref>{{efn| David Cole calls this the "externalist" account of meaning.{{sfn|Cole|2004|p=18}}}}

Searle's reply is to suppose that, unbeknownst to the individual in the Chinese room, some of the inputs came directly from a camera mounted on a robot, and some of the outputs were used to manipulate the arms and legs of the robot. Nevertheless, the person in the room is still just following the rules, and does not know what the symbols mean. Searle writes "he doesn't <em>see</em> what comes into the robot's eyes."{{sfn|Searle|1980|p=7}}

==== Derived meaning ====
Some respond that the room, as Searle describes it, is connected to the world: through the Chinese speakers that it is "talking" to and through the programmers who designed the [[knowledge base]] in his file cabinet. The symbols Searle manipulates are already meaningful, they are just not meaningful to him.<ref>{{Harvnb|Hauser|2006|p=11}}; {{Harvnb|Cole|2004|p=19}}.</ref>{{efn|The derived meaning reply is associated with [[Daniel Dennett]] and others.}}

Searle says that the symbols only have a "derived" meaning, like the meaning of words in books. The meaning of the symbols depends on the conscious understanding of the Chinese speakers and the programmers outside the room. The room, like a book, has no understanding of its own.{{efn|Searle distinguishes between "intrinsic" intentionality and "derived" intentionality. "Intrinsic" intentionality is the kind that involves "conscious understanding" like you would have in a human mind. [[Daniel Dennett]] doesn't agree that there is a distinction. David Cole writes "derived intentionality is all there is, according to Dennett."{{sfn|Cole|2004|p=19}}}}

====Contextualist reply====
Some have argued that the meanings of the symbols would come from a vast "background" of [[commonsense knowledge]] encoded in the program and the filing cabinets. This would provide a "context" that would give the symbols their meaning.{{sfn|Cole|2004|p=18}}{{efn|David Cole describes this as the "internalist" approach to meaning.{{sfn|Cole|2004|p=18}} Proponents of this position include [[Roger Schank]], [[Doug Lenat]], [[Marvin Minsky]] and (with reservations) [[Daniel Dennett]], who writes "The fact is that any program [that passed a Turing test] would have to be an extraordinarily supple, sophisticated, and multilayered system, brimming with 'world knowledge' and meta-knowledge and meta-meta-knowledge." {{sfn|Dennett|1991|p=438}}}}

Searle agrees that this background exists, but he does not agree that it can be built into programs. [[Hubert Dreyfus]] has also criticized the idea that the "background" can be represented symbolically.{{sfn|Dreyfus|1979|loc="The [[epistemological]] assumption"}}

To each of these suggestions, Searle's response is the same: no matter how much knowledge is written into the program and no matter how the program is connected to the world, he is still in the room manipulating symbols according to rules. His actions are syntactic and this can never explain to him what the symbols stand for. Searle writes "syntax is insufficient for semantics."{{sfn|Searle|1984}}{{efn|Searle also writes "Formal symbols by themselves can never be enough for mental contents, because the symbols, by definition, have no meaning (or [[Interpretation (logic)|interpretation]], or semantics) except insofar as someone outside the system gives it to them."{{sfn|Motzkin|Searle|1989|p=45}}}}

However, for those who accept that Searle's actions simulate a mind, separate from his own, the important question is not what the symbols mean to Searle, what is important is what they mean to the virtual mind. While Searle is trapped in the room, the virtual mind is not: it is connected to the outside world through the Chinese speakers it speaks to, through the programmers who gave it world knowledge, and through the cameras and other sensors that [[roboticist]]s can supply.