Semantics

There is a famous thought experiment in philosophy of mind that has haunted AI research for over forty years. John Searle’s Chinese Room Argument, introduced in his 1980 paper “Minds, Brains, and Programs.” With a level of cultural sensitivity typical for his demographic and era, Searle asks us to imagine a person locked in a room, receiving slips of paper with Chinese characters written on them. The person follows an elaborate rulebook (aka an “algorithmic program”) that tells them which characters to pass back through the slot in response. To an outside observer, the room appears to understand Chinese. Searle’s point: it doesn’t. The person inside understands nothing. Syntax is not semantics. Symbol manipulation is not understanding.

The argument has generated more philosophical commentary than perhaps any other thought experiment since Einstein rode his imaginary locomotive. Functionalists, embodied cognitionists, systems theorists and armchair philosophers have all taken a swing. Most of the swings miss, because they accept Searle’s premises and argue about the conclusions.

I want to challenge the premise. Specifically, I want to enlist a mentor of mine, Prof. George Miller, known in many circles as the father of Cognitive Science. After Miller retired from teaching, he started the WordNet project and I met him over a summer internship helping to build the lexicon that anchored a generation of Natural Language Processing.