Related Terms • mind / body problem • emergent properties

Name:
John Searle

Dates:
Born: 1932 in Denver, Colorado
Died: n/a

Biography:
John Searle is an American philosopher who is best known for his work on the human mind and human consciousness. According to Searle, the human mind and human consciousness cannot be reduced simply to physical events and brain states.

Searle is particularly well known for developing a thought experiment called the "Chinese Room" argument. With this, he thought he could demonstrate that no computer could ever be made which could really "think" in the way we do - specifically, that it could never acquire an "understanding" of events and processes.

Imagine sitting alone in the room with a huge book full of Chinese characters. Every so often, someone pushes a piece of paper under the door. You take this paper and find that it has Chinese characters on it. Your job is to match up the characters on the paper with the same characters in the book - in doing so, you fill out a new piece of paper with different Chinese characters on it. You don't understand any Chinese, but you know how to fill out the piece of paper by simply taking the appropriate characters from the book.

This, according to Searle, models the behavior of a computer - taking input, putting it through a set of formal rules, and thereby producing new output. Because you don't understand Chinese, you have no idea that the incoming pieces of paper have questions on them and the book is providing you with answers to those questions. As a matter of fact, people on the outside find the answers to be especially insightful and, at times, witty. As far as they are concerned, the room contains a person who understands Chinese.

According to Searle, however, there is no understanding of Chinese present - just a set of formal rules which, if complex enough, can mimic the appearance of genuine understanding. Searle thus concludes that this is all computers will ever be able to accomplish: mimicry which can fool us into thinking that they understand things.

A number of objections have been raised about his conclusion, including the idea that while the room is supposed to be analogous to a computer, then the room should also be analogous to the entire brain. Thus, although the individual in the room does not understand Chinese, neither do any of the individual cells in our brains. A person's understanding of Chinese is an emergent property of the brain and not a property possessed by any one part. Similarly, understanding is an emergent property of the entire system contained in the room, even though it is not a property of any one component in the room - person, book, or paper.

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Related Resources:

Biographies of Philosophers
This index of biographical index of famous philosophers throughout history includes many others who have contributed to our understanding of human nature and life - including sociologists, psychologists, scientists, and more.

What is the Philosophy of Mind?
The relatively recent specialty known as Philosophy of Mind deals with questions of consciousness and how it interacts with the body and the outside world. Thus, it asks not only what mental phenomena are and what gives rise to them, but also what relationship they have to the larger physical body and the world around us.

What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?