scholarly journals A Fair Version of the Chinese Room

Problemos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 96 ◽  
pp. 121-133
Author(s):  
Hasan Çağatay
Keyword(s):  
Pattern Recognition ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
John Searle ◽  
Chinese Room

By the Chinese room thought experiment, John Searle (1980) advocates the thesis that it is impossible for computers to think in the same way that human beings do. This article intends firstly to show that the Chinese room does not justify or even test this thesis and secondly to describe exactly how the person in the Chinese room can learn Chinese. Regarding this learning process, Searle ignores the relevance of an individual’s pattern recognition capacity for understanding. To counter Searle’s claim, this paper, via examining a series of thought experiments inspired by the Chinese room, aims to underline the importance of pattern recognition for understanding to emerge.

5. Doing thought experiments

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-58
Author(s):  
Timothy Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
To Come

Reasonable true belief without knowledge is possible, but knowledge is not only justified true belief—so what is it? ‘Doing thought experiments‘ explores how human beings use their imagination and intuition to solve philosophical problems in imaginary scenarios. Thought experiments have played a major role in recent moral philosophy. Sometimes thought experiments are enacted in real life, whereas some can only be imagined. The challenge is to come up with a scenario interesting enough to prove. Through imagining something fully, we know that it is possible, but imagination is not infallible. What if we all gave the same verdict on a thought experiment, but were wrong?

Is the Theatre a Zombie? On the Successful Failures of Émile Zola

2018 ◽  
Vol 136 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Rebellato
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Emile Zola ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Chinese Room ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Zombie Argument ◽  
The Mind

AbstractNaturalist theatre, in its late-nineteenth-century incarnation, and particularly in the work of Émile Zola, is often seen as advancing a physicalist view of the mind, where all mind states can be reduced to brain states. The novels and the plays do not uniformly or unambiguously support this analysis, so is the theory or the practice wrong? Physicalism is an idea that has had a recent renaissance, helped by the discoveries of neuroscience. Nevertheless I express some caution about the claims made for the eradication of free will. A range of thought experiments in the philosophy of mind have cast doubt on physicalism, culminating in David Chalmers’s much-debated zombie argument. I argue that zombies and their analogues represented deep social anxieties in the late nineteenth century, and make repeated appearances in Naturalism. The essay goes on to suggest that Naturalism should be considered to have conducted thought experiments, rather than just to have attempted to embody the theory on stage. Turning to John Searle’s ‘Chinese Room’ thought experiment, I suggest that theatre-making itself may be a kind of thought experiment model of the mind.

scholarly journals In Defense of Strong AI

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-49
Author(s):  
Corey Baron
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Order System ◽  
Semantic Meaning ◽  
John Searle ◽  
Chinese Room ◽  
Chinese Room Argument ◽  
Strong Ai

This paper argues against John Searle in defense of the potential for computers to understand language (“Strong AI”) by showing that semantic meaning is itself a second-order system of rules that connects symbols and syntax with extralinguistic facts. Searle’s Chinese Room Argument is contested on theoretical and practical grounds by identifying two problems in the thought experiment, and evidence about “machine learning” is used to demonstrate that computers are already capable of learning to form true observation sentences in the same way humans do. Finally, sarcasm is used as an example to extend the argument to more complex uses of language

Epistemological Status of Models and Thought Experiments in Economics

2015 ◽  
pp. 123-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Koshovets ◽  
T. Varkhotov
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Theoretical Modeling ◽  
Epistemological Status ◽  
Epistemological Analysis ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

The paper considers the analogy of theoretical modeling and thought experiment in economics. The authors provide historical and epistemological analysis of thought experiments and their relations to the material experiments in natural science. They conclude that thought experiments as instruments are used both in physics and in economics, but in radically different ways. In the natural science, a thought experiment is tightly connected to the material experimentation, while in economics it is used in isolation. Material experiments serve as a means to demonstrate the reality, while thought experiments cannot be a full-fledged instrument of studying the reality. Rather, they constitute the instrument of structuring the field of inquiry.

Socrates’ First City: Pleonexia and the Thought Experiment

Apeiron ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Diaco
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Happy Life ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
The City

AbstractThe present study provides an analysis of Socrates’ account of the first polis in Republic 2 as a thought experiment and draws attention to the fact that Socrates combines both explanatory and evaluative aspects in his scenario. The paper further shows how the analysis of the city of pigs as a thought experiment can explain the lack of pleonexia by saving both the letter of the text, according to which there are no “pleonectic” desires in the city of pigs, and the fact that the first polis is nonetheless concerned with human beings. For, in contrast to the account offered by Glaucon earlier in Book 2, Socrates highlights our needs and lack of self-sufficiency as well as our compatibility with an advantageous and happy life in a community.

Further Insights on Fake-Barn Cases and Intuition Variation

Episteme ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Carsten Bergenholtz ◽  
Jacob Busch ◽  
Sara Kier Praëm
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Risk Attitude ◽  
Knowledge Ascription ◽  
Underlying Factor ◽  
Demographic Group ◽  
Knowledge Ascriptions ◽  
Group Variation ◽  
Fake Barn

Abstract Studies in experimental philosophy claim to document intuition variation. Some studies focus on demographic group-variation; Colaço et al., for example, claim that age generates intuition variation regarding knowledge attribution in a fake-barn scenario. Other studies claim to show intuition variation when comparing the intuition of philosophers to that of non-philosophers. The main focus has been on documenting intuition variation rather than uncovering what underlying factor(s) may prompt such a phenomenon. We explore a number of suggested explanatory hypotheses put forth by Colaço et al., as well as an attempt to test Sosa's claim that intuition variance is a result of people ‘filling in the details’ of a thought experiment differently from one another. We show (i) that people respond consistently across conditions aimed at ‘filling in the details’ of thought experiments, (ii) that risk attitude does not seem relevant to knowledge ascription, (iii) that people's knowledge ascriptions do not vary due to views about defeasibility of knowledge. Yet, (iv) we find no grounds to reject that a large proportion of people appear to adhere to so-called subjectivism about knowledge, which may explain why they generally have intuitions about the fake-barn scenario that vary from those of philosophers.

scholarly journals Natural Science and Supernatural Thought Experiments

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 389
Author(s):  
James Robert Brown
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
The Other ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Theological Thought

Religious notions have long played a role in epistemology. Theological thought experiments, in particular, have been effective in a wide range of situations in the sciences. Some of these are merely picturesque, others have been heuristically important, and still others, as I will argue, have played a role that could be called essential. I will illustrate the difference between heuristic and essential with two examples. One of these stems from the Newton–Leibniz debate over the nature of space and time; the other is a thought experiment of my own constructed with the aim of making a case for a more liberal view of evidence in mathematics.

scholarly journals The Experience Machine: Existential Reflections on Virtual Worlds

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Gualeni
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Robert Nozick ◽  
Experience Machine ◽  
Technical Reproducibility ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Digital Simulations

Problems and questions originally raised by Robert Nozick in his famous thought experiment ‘The Experience Machine’ are frequently invoked in the current discourse concerning virtual worlds. Having conceptualized his Gedankenexperiment in the early seventies, Nozick could not fully anticipate the numerous and profound ways in which the diffusion of computer simulations and video games came to affect the Western world.This article does not articulate whether or not the virtual worlds of video games, digital simulations, and virtual technologies currently actualize (or will actualize) Nozick’s thought experiment. Instead, it proposes a philosophical reflection that focuses on human experiences in the upcoming age of their ‘technical reproducibility’.In pursuing that objective, this article integrates and supplements some of the interrogatives proposed in Robert Nozick’s thought experiment. More specifically, through the lenses of existentialism and philosophy of technology, this article tackles the technical and cultural heritage of virtual reality, and unpacks its potential to function as a tool for self-discovery and self-construction. Ultimately, it provides an interpretation of virtual technologies as novel existential domains. Virtual worlds will not be understood as the contexts where human beings can find completion and satisfaction, but rather as instruments that enable us to embrace ourselves and negotiate with various aspects of our (individual as well as collective) existence in previously-unexperienced guises.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document