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Articles

Cleaning out the Chinese Room

Could computers have minds? Julian Moore criticises John Searle’s famous thought experiment.

Thinking machines, particularly thinking computers, are not inconceivable: we seem happy to grant minds to Commander Data of the Starship Enterprise, Marvin, the Paranoid Android from the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Kryten of Red Dwarf, and even the Terminator, to name a few fictional examples of programmed devices. At the very least, we are willing to suspend our disbelief, even though we cannot begin to build anything like them. Whether our inability will be overcome by time and technology, or whether it is really a matter of philosophical possibility is an intriguing question. We are now so familiar with computers and with the break-neck pace of their development, that a thinking computer seems almost inevitable. But there is as yet no proof either way.

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