Forum:Article on Searle's Chinese Room
I’d really like to contribute to the article on the Chinese Room, and maybe expand the coverage of Searle's argument beyond that, but I have some problems with doing so. The article seems to me to be largely a polemic against the CR argument rather than a balanced discussion here. It seems to start from the prior assumption that Searle must be wrong, indeed that he is in some sense part of the 'enemy'. Certainly no neutral point of view as in Wikipedia, even within the brief summed up at the top of the Rationalwiki main page. I hope nobody is claiming that Searle’s argument is ‘pseudoscience’ or part of the ‘anti-science movement’, let alone a ‘crank idea’ or part of ‘authoritarianism’ and ‘fundamentalism’. Then why is the article structured so as to exclude the possibility that Searle might even be right, or at least have something to contribute to rational and naturalistic debate? I notice the comment by Apostate describes these as “our arguments” That sound more like agreeing a party line than open rational discussion. Am I misinterpreting?
Now I think that there may be some misunderstanding or misrepresentation of Searle, and some arguments that are mistaken or maybe invalid. Oddly, not only does it describe all of Searle's argumants against the computational theory of mind, it doesn't even describe the common objections to the Chinese Room! As I say, I’d like to put my thoughts forward, and I think I can contribute constructively, but I’m having trouble seeing how to do this without drastic restructuring of the article, which migh come over as a hostile act. That’s not my intention. Perhaps I could intersperse material sympathetic to Searle or response to some of the argumentation in the existing article, to create a kind of Socratic dialogue?
I’d like comments in response to this, before I spend some time drafting my contribution. Thoughts, please?
Best wishes
Graham Warner — Unsigned, by: Gwarner99 / talk / contribs