Comment by finghin
9 hours ago
I don’t disagree with the general point here but the attraction of that argument has surely drifted much in ~5y.
I’d be REALLY curious to see a survey of philosophy 2015 vs 2025 UG entrants on mind-brain connection intuitions
I feel like it might be strengthened by a machine that actually does implement the core of the argument (even passes the turing test?) but is also just matrix multiplication. Previously the idea of a device that could respond to input with human-like output was a fantasy, now it's reality which removes one of the arguments against the Chinese Room on the basis of plausibility.
But yes, I would like to see a modern philosophers take on it.
I'm more interested in whether the uninformed intuitions have changed, whether someone who used an LLM before graduating from school and entering university has a more forgiving stance than an "ignorant" college entrant from ten years ago. From my experience of the field, I would really doubt many philosophers of mind have changed their view based on this. The major questions of interest concern qualia, it ha been so for many years.
Plausibility was never an argument against Searle's Chinese Room Argument ... that's a very deep confusion, since Searle was arguing against the possibility of Strong AI, whereas advocates of Strong AI of course thought it was plausible and that's why they were working to create it. That you conflate the Chinese Room Argument with "the Chinese Room" is one aspect of the confusion.
It’s absolutely about the plausibility of mechanistic intentionality, given the implausibility of intentionality where the person in the experiment doesn’t understand chinese