Imagine for a moment that you're sitting alone in a quiet, spacious room. To your right is a small table with a stack of white printer paper and a single black pen. In front of you is what seems to be a large, red cube with a tiny opening—slightly smaller than the size of a mail slot. An inscription just above the slot invites you to write down a question and pass it through the slot. As it happens, you speak Mandarin; so, you write down your question in Mandarin on one of the sheets and insert it into the opening. A few moments pass, and then slowly, an answer emerges. It's also written in Chinese and is the just the sort of answer you might have expected. So, what did you ask? Are you a person or a computer? And the response? Why yes, yes I am.
This thought experiment is based on philosopher John Searle's Chinese Room Argument. The premise...