The Chinese Room

Imagine you are locked in a room.

Through a slot in the wall, someone passes you a slip of paper covered in Chinese characters. You don't speak Chinese. The marks are meaningless to you. But you have a very large rulebook. It tells you: if you receive this sequence of symbols, respond with that sequence of symbols.

You follow the rules. You pass a response back through the slot.

From outside the room, your answers look like fluent Chinese conversation. The person passing you slips of paper might conclude that whoever is inside speaks Chinese perfectly.

You don't. You never learned a word. You just followed rules.

John published this in 1980. He was making a point about computers.

The Chinese Room

Imagine you are locked in a room.

You follow the rules. You pass a response back through the slot.

From outside the room, your answers look like fluent Chinese conversation. The person passing you slips of paper might conclude that whoever is inside speaks Chinese perfectly.

You don't. You never learned a word. You just followed rules.

John published this in 1980. He was making a point about computers.