I was contemplating the possibility of a person, previously know nothing about Chinese, to learn Chinese just by observing the algorithms of operation of Chinese characters. That is, is it possible for this person to derive any meaning from the symbols if he has sufficiently long exposure to the symbol system.
This thought was in fact motivated by the question that how did one learn Chinese in the real life. A child is born without any language abilities, but somehow could learn Chinese later. Could the execution of the algorithm be a simulation of the actual learning process? If that is possible to a certain extent, then one can argue that after enough executions are done, then the man in the room in fact can understand Chinese.
However now I see the flaw in the assumption. A child learn Chinese by interacting with the world, not with some abstract symbol system. For example, to learn the word "apple", he not only needs to remember the physical shape of this word, but more importantly he needs to map this physical shape to a whole range of concepts, such as the taste, the smell, the color etc. of an actual apple. All these concepts actually constitute the meaning of the word "apple". This process is lacking in the Chinese room algorithm. Clearly, no matter how many times the word "apple" is shown to the man, and no matter how many examples of using this word in context and so on, the link between the word and the meaning cannot be achieved, therefore it is not possible for him to really appreciate the meaning of any symbol.
This is also why the "system reply" is wrong. One of the replies to this thought experiment argues that the entire system consisting the room, the man and the algorithm understands Chinese. Searle responded with a new thought experiment that this man memorize the algorithm in his mind, and hence now the entire system becomes the person himself. But we cannot say the man as the system understands Chinese, because again, the symbols are not linked with meanings.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
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