Editing Chinese room (section)

=== Other replies ===
[[Margaret Boden]] argued in her paper "Escaping from the Chinese Room" that even if the person in the room does not understand the Chinese, it does not mean there is no understanding in the room. The person in the room at least understands the rule book used to provide output responses. She then points out that the same applies to machine languages: a natural language sentence is understood by the programming language code that instantiates it, which in turn is understood by the lower-level compiler code, and so on. This implies that the distinction between syntax and semantics is not fixed, as Searle presupposes, but relative: the semantics of natural language is realized in the syntax of programming language; the semantics of programming language has a semantics that is realized in the syntax of compiler code. Searle's problem is a failure to assume a binary notion of understanding or not, rather than a graded one, where each system is stupider than the next. <ref>{{Citation |last=Boden |first=Margaret A. |title=Computer Models of Mind |year=1988 |editor-last=Heil |editor-first=John |chapter=Escaping from the chinese room |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-24868-6}}</ref>

==== Carbon chauvinism ====
Searle conclusion that "human mental phenomena [are] dependent on actual physical–chemical properties of actual human brains"{{sfn|Searle|1980|p=13}} have been sometimes described as a form of "[[Carbon chauvinism]]".{{sfn|Graham|2017|p=168}} [[Steven Pinker]] suggested that a response to that conclusion would be to make a counter thought experiment to the Chinese Room, where the incredulity goes the other way.{{sfn|Pinker|1997|p=94–96}} He brings as an example the short story ''[[They're Made Out of Meat]]'' which depicts an alien race composed of some electronic beings who upon finding Earth express disbelief that the meat brain of humans can experience consciousness and thought.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bisson |first=Terry |date=1990 |title=They're Made Out of Meat |url=http://www.terrybisson.com/theyre-made-out-of-meat-2/ |access-date=2024-11-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190501130711/http://www.terrybisson.com/theyre-made-out-of-meat-2/ |archive-date=May 1, 2019 }}</ref>

However, Searle himself denied being "Carbon chauvinist".<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Vicari |first=Giuseppe |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NA6e6LhEnAMC&dq=was+searle+a+carbon+chauvinist&pg=PA49 |title=Beyond Conceptual Dualism: Ontology of Consciousness, Mental Causation, and Holism in John R. Searle's Philosophy of Mind |date=2008 |publisher=Rodopi |isbn=978-90-420-2466-3 |page=49 |language=en}}</ref> He said "I have not tried to show that only biological based systems like our brains can think. [...] I regard this issue as up for grabs".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fellows |first=Roger |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CixGDHrR-uEC&pg=PA86 |title=Philosophy and Technology |date=1995 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-55816-7 |page=86 |language=en}}</ref> He said that even silicon machines could theoretically have human-like consciousness and thought, if the actual physical–chemical properties of silicon could be used in a way that can produce consciousness and thought, but "until we know how the brain does it we are not in a position to try to do it artificially".{{sfn|Preston|Bishop|2002|p=351}}