Far as I can tell, his reply is, That's Ridiculous! See, e.g., Minds Brains and Programs, Behavioral & Brain Science 1980 (in J. Haugeland, ed. Mind Design), and The Chinese Room Revisited, BBS 1982. But in some ways the reply is the only one that can be offered. In this kind of philosophical argument, you tell a story as vividly as you can that is designed to elicit an intuition, and if it doesn't have the desired effect, there is nothing more to say.
Although I am far from confident in saying that we are Chinese Rooms because Searle's example depends on the Chinese Room "thinking" in algorithims operating on syntaically structured sentences of a language of thought (I used to do this shit for a living, amazing how it comes back, like riding a bicycle), and I don't think we think that way, I think tahtw hether we do or not is merely an empirical matter. We might think that way, and if we did, we'd still be thinking. So we could be Chinese rooms, and maybe we are the connectionist equivalent -- connectionism being ana lternative to the algorithin theory, never mind the details.
I used to argue about mechanical intelligence with my students. Suppose your sweetie, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, turned out to be a robot -- said, darling, I have something to tell you, and flipped open a panel with wiring. Would that means he was just a _thing_, that you could disassemble her and stash her in the basement, kick her downstairs, use her asa sex toy, sell her to a fraternity? A certain number of students, maybe 20%, ireducible said, Yes. Well, I'd say, I have news for you -- you were not supposedto find out about this until your senior year, but YOU are robots. Does that change your view?
- That's ridiculous.
Why? How do you know? You were assembled in Toledo, and told that you were born in the usual way to spare your feelings. (Students often got actually upset at this.)
- I know it's not true.
How?
- I just know!
Someday we will have to organize for robot rights. Bladerunner will be our Uncle Tom's Cabin.
jks
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