Editing Chinese room (section)

=== Other minds and zombies: meaninglessness ===<!-- Linked to in a footnote above -->
Several replies argue that Searle's argument is irrelevant because his assumptions about the mind and consciousness are faulty. Searle believes that human beings directly experience their consciousness, intentionality and the nature of the mind every day, and that this experience of consciousness is not open to question. He writes that we must "presuppose the reality and knowability of the mental."{{sfn|Searle|1980|p=10}} The replies below question whether Searle is justified in using his own experience of consciousness to determine that it is more than mechanical symbol processing. In particular, the other minds reply argues that we cannot use our experience of consciousness to answer questions about other minds (even the mind of a computer), the epiphenoma replies question whether we can make any argument at all about something like consciousness which can not, by definition, be detected by any experiment, and the eliminative materialist reply argues that Searle's own personal consciousness does not "exist" in the sense that Searle thinks it does.

==== Other minds reply ====
The "Other Minds Reply" points out that Searle's argument is a version of the [[problem of other minds]], applied to machines. There is no way we can determine if other people's subjective experience is the same as our own. We can only study their behavior (i.e., by giving them our own Turing test). Critics of Searle argue that he is holding the Chinese room to a higher standard than we would hold an ordinary person.<ref>{{Harvnb|Searle|1980|p=9}}; {{Harvnb|Cole|2004|p=13}}; {{Harvnb|Hauser|2006|pp=4–5}}; {{Harvnb|Nilsson|1984}}.</ref>{{efn|The "other minds" reply has been offered by Dennett, Kurzweil and [[Hans Moravec]], among others.{{sfn|Cole|2004|pp=12–13}}}}

[[Nils Nilsson (researcher)|Nils Nilsson]] writes "If a program behaves <em>as if</em> it were multiplying, most of us would say that it is, in fact, multiplying. For all I know, Searle may only be behaving <em>as if</em> he were thinking deeply about these matters. But, even though I disagree with him, his simulation is pretty good, so I'm willing to credit him with real thought."{{sfn|Nilsson|1984}}

Turing anticipated Searle's line of argument (which he called "The Argument from Consciousness") in 1950 and makes the other minds reply.{{sfn|Turing|1950|pp=11–12}} He noted that people never consider the problem of other minds when dealing with each other. He writes that "instead of arguing continually over this point it is usual to have the polite convention that everyone thinks."{{sfn|Turing|1950|p=11}} The [[Turing test]] simply extends this "polite convention" to machines. He does not intend to solve the problem of other minds (for machines or people) and he does not think we need to.{{efn|One of Turing's motivations for devising the [[Turing test]] is to avoid precisely the kind of philosophical problems that Searle is interested in. He writes "I do not wish to give the impression that I think there is no mystery ... [but] I do not think these mysteries necessarily need to be solved before we can answer the question with which we are concerned in this paper."{{sfn|Turing|1950|p=12}}}}

==== Replies considering that Searle's "consciousness" is undetectable ====
If we accept Searle's description of intentionality, consciousness, and the mind, we are forced to accept that consciousness is [[epiphenomenal]]: that it "casts no shadow" i.e. is undetectable in the outside world. Searle's "causal properties" cannot be detected by anyone outside the mind, otherwise the Chinese Room could not pass the Turing test—the people outside would be able to tell there was not a Chinese speaker in the room by detecting their causal properties. Since they cannot detect causal properties, they cannot detect the existence of the mental. Thus, Searle's "causal properties" and consciousness itself is undetectable, and anything that cannot be detected either does not exist or does not matter.

[[Mike Alder]] calls this the "Newton's Flaming Laser Sword Reply". He argues that the entire argument is frivolous, because it is non-[[verificationist]]: not only is the distinction between <em>simulating</em> a mind and <em>having</em> a mind ill-defined, but it is also irrelevant because no experiments were, or even can be, proposed to distinguish between the two.{{sfn|Alder|2004}}

Daniel Dennett provides this illustration: suppose that, by some mutation, a human being is born that does not have Searle's "causal properties" but nevertheless acts exactly like a human being. This is a [[philosophical zombie]], as formulated in the [[philosophy of mind]]. This new animal would reproduce just as any other human and eventually there would be more of these zombies. Natural selection would favor the zombies, since their design is (we could suppose) a bit simpler. Eventually the humans would die out. So therefore, if Searle is right, it is most likely that human beings (as we see them today) are actually "zombies", who nevertheless insist they are conscious. It is impossible to know whether we are all zombies or not. Even if we are all zombies, we would still believe that we are not.<ref>{{Harvnb|Cole|2004|p=22}}; {{Harvnb|Crevier|1993|p=271}}; {{Harvnb|Harnad|2005|p=4}}.</ref>

==== Eliminative materialist reply ====
Several philosophers argue that consciousness, as Searle describes it, does not exist. [[Daniel Dennett]] describes consciousness as a "[[user illusion]]".{{sfn|Dennett|1991|loc={{page needed|date=February 2011}}}}

This position is sometimes referred to as [[eliminative materialism]]: the view that consciousness is not a concept that can "enjoy reduction" to a strictly mechanical description, but rather is a concept that will be simply ''eliminated'' once the way the ''material'' brain works is fully understood, in just the same way as the concept of a [[Demon (thought experiment)|demon]] has already been eliminated from science rather than enjoying reduction to a strictly mechanical description. Other mental properties, such as original intentionality (also called "meaning", "content", and "semantic character"), are also commonly regarded as special properties related to beliefs and other propositional attitudes. Eliminative materialism maintains that propositional attitudes such as beliefs and desires, among other intentional mental states that have content, do not exist. If eliminative materialism is the correct scientific account of human cognition then the assumption of the Chinese room argument that "minds have mental contents ([[semantics]])" must be rejected.{{sfn|Ramsey|2022}}

Searle disagrees with this analysis and argues that "the study of the mind starts with such facts as that humans have beliefs, while thermostats, telephones, and adding machines don't ... what we wanted to know is what distinguishes the mind from thermostats and livers."{{sfn|Searle|1980|p=7}} He takes it as obvious that we can detect the presence of consciousness and dismisses these replies as being off the point.