UNGROUNDED SEMANTICS: SEARLE’S CHINESE ROOM THOUGHT EXPERIMENT, THE FAILURE OF META-AND SUBSYSTEMIC UNDERSTANDING, AND SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THOUGHT-EXPERIMENTS

2007 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-96
Author(s):  
Christian Beenfeldt
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Chinese Room

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.

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.

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.

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 Identity Theft: A Thought Experiment on the Fragility of Identity

Conatus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
David Menčik
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Identity Theft ◽  
Psychological Continuity ◽  
Temporal Proximity ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Prestige

This paper intends to discuss some aspects of what we conceive as personal identity: what it consists in, as well as its alleged fragility. First I will try to justify the methodology used in this paper, that is, the use of allegories in ontological debates, especialy in the form of thought experiments and science fiction movies. Then I will introduce an original thought experiment I call “Who am I actually?,” one that was coined with the intent to shed light on several aspects of the issue under examination, that is, the fragility of personal identity. Then I will move on to Christopher Nolan’s film The Prestige, as well as to Derek Parfit’s ‘divided minds’ thought experiment, to further discuss the fragility of personal identity; next to identity theft, the prospect of duplication is also intriguing, especially with regard to the psychological impact this might have on both the prototype and the duplicate. I will conclude with the view that spatial and temporal proximity or coexistence, especially when paired with awareness on behalf of the duplicates, would expectedly result in the infringement of the psychological continuity of one’s identity.

Looking to the Future

2019 ◽  
pp. 254-263
Author(s):  
Alan J. McComas
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Chinese Room ◽  
Chinese Room Argument ◽  
Inorganic Matter ◽  
The Future

This chapter considers the question of whether or not nonliving systems can acquire consciousness. It explores contemporary advances in technology, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence. The chapter also considers whether or not consciousness can be performed if inorganic matter replaced the components with which organisms experience consciousness. These and similar questions on nonhuman intelligence and consciousness are fleshed out with scenarios and thought experiments proposed throughout the 20th century, such as John Searle’s Chinese room argument and the archangel paradigm proposed by C. D. Broad. The chapter concludes with reflections on the human being’s inability to truly experience consciousness in the same way as nonhumans.

Thought Experiments

Philosophy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Robert Brown ◽  
Michael T. Stuart
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Widespread Agreement ◽  
The World ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Insight Into

Thought experiments are performed in the imagination. We set up some situation, we observe what happens, then we try to draw appropriate conclusions. In this way, thought experiments resemble real experiments, except that they are experiments in the mind. The terms “thought experiment,” “imaginary experiment,” and “Gedankenexperiment” are used interchangeably. There is no consensus on a definition, but there is widespread agreement on which are standard examples. It is also widely agreed that they play a central role in a number of fields, especially physics and philosophy. There are several important questions about thought experiments that naturally arise, including what kinds of thought experiments there are, what roles they play, and how, if at all, they work. This last question has been the focus of much of the literature: How can we learn something new about the world just by thinking? Answers range from “We don’t really learn anything new” to “We have some sort of a priori insight into how nature works.” In between there are a great variety of rival alternative accounts. There is still no consensus; debate is wide open on almost every question pertaining to thought experiments.

Are Thought Experiments Just What You Thought?

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Norton
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Science Writing ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Original Intent ◽  
The World

Whatever the original intent, the introduction of the term ‘thought experiment’ has proved to be one of the great public relations coups of science writing. For generations of readers of scientific literature, the term has planted the seed of hope that the fragment of text they have just read is more than mundane. Because it was a thought experiment, does it not tap into that infallible font of all wisdom in empiricist science, the experiment? And because it was conducted in thought, does it not miraculously escape the need for the elaborate laboratories and bloated budgets of experimental science?These questions in effect pose the epistemological problem of thought experiments in the sciences:Thought experiments are supposed to give us information about our physical world. From where can this information come?One enticing response to the problem is to imagine that thought experiments draw from some special source of knowledge of the world that transcends our ordinary epistemic resources.

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