Individiual Understanding

Individual Understanding

I agree with functionalists, specifically the strong Artificial Intelligence (AI) camp, concerning the concept of understanding. While John Searle poses a strong non-functionalist case in his AChinese Room@ argument, I find that his definition of Ato understand@ falls short and hampers his point. I criticize his defense that understanding rests on a standardized knowledge of meaning, but not before outlining the general background of the issue.

Functionalists define thought and mental states in terms of input and output. They claim that what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch (input) creates a mental state or belief, and that particular mental state in turn creates our reaction (output). If I see it=s raining outside, I believe that if I go outside I will get wet, and therefore I take an umbrella with me. The functionalists define a mental state strictly through its cause and effect relationships, through its function.

This thinking leads to the conclusion that the human brain is little more than a big, complex computer. All we humans do is take input, process it, and accordingly create output, just like a computer. In fact, functionalists who support strong AI go so far as to say that an appropriately programmed computer actually has all the same mental states and capabilities as a human. In AMinds, Brains, and Programs,@ John Searle outlines this argument:

AIt is a characteristic of human beings= story understanding capacity that they can answer questions about [a] story even though the information they give was never explicitly stated in the story. . . . [Strong AI claims that m]achines can similarly answer questions about [stories] in this fashion. . . . Partisans of strong AI claim that in this question and answer sequence the machine is not only simulating a human ability but also (1) that the machine can literally be said to understand the story . . . and (2) that what the machine and its program do explains the human ability to understand the story and answer questions about it@ (354).

While strong AI claims that a machine can understand just as a human understands, Searle himself disagrees. He claims that a strictly input-output system, such as a computer is, cannot understand anything, nor does it explain humans= ability to understand. In criticizing strong AI, Searle creates his famous AChinese Room@ argument: suppose that Searle was locked in a room with a large batch of Chinese writing.