SEARLE'S CHINESE-ROOM ARGUMENT

References to Searle's and Rapaport's Articles

(intended primarily for students in my Intro to AI course, CS 472/572)

Searle's Writings

1. Searle, John R. (1980), ``Minds, Brains, and Programs,'' Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: 417-457. (Lockwood and SEL, QP360 .B425)

2. Searle, John R. (1982), ``The Myth of the Computer,'' New York Review of Books (29 April 1982): 3-6; cf. correspondence, same journal (24 June 1982): 56-57. (Lockwood and UGL microfiche and microfilm AP2 .N655)

3. Searle, John R. (1984), Minds, Brains and Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). (Lockwood and UGL, BF161 .S352 1984)

4. Searle, John R. (1990), ``Is the Brain a Digital Computer?'', Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 64, No. 3: 21-37. (Lockwood Per B11 .A52)

5. Searle, John R. (1993), ``The Failures of Computationalism,'' Think (Tilburg, The Netherlands: Tilburg University Institute for Language Technology and Artificial Intelligence) 2 (June 1993) 68-71.

Rapaport's Writings

(Note: Lest you get the wrong idea, I am merely a minor player in the game of Searle-bashing. There are many, many articles in response to Searle. I am only listing mine here because of their local interest. Rapaport 1986a, 1988b, and 1995 give the essence of my reply to Searle. Rapaport 1986a is more informal and probably easier to read. Rapaport 1988b and 1995 are more technical, but give an overview of what's needed for natural-language understanding.

1. Rapaport, William J. (1985), ``Machine Understanding and Data Abstraction in Searle's Chinese Room,'' Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (University of California at Irvine) (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates): 341-345.

   • This contains a preliminary version of my data-abstraction argument in Rapaport 1988a, below.

2. Rapaport, William J. (1986a), ``Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, and the Chinese-Room Argument,'' Abacus 3 (Summer 1986) 6-17; correspondence, Abacus 4 (Winter 1987) 6-7, Abacus 4 (Spring 1987) 5-7.

   • This was written for a general audience; it describes the CRA and gives a reply in terms of abstract data types.

3. Rapaport, William J. (1986), ``Searle's Experiments with Thought,'' Philosophy of Science 53: 271-279. (Lockwood Per Q1 .P55)

   • This was a reply to Cole, David (1984), ``Thought and Thought Experiments'', Philosophical Studies 45: 431-444 (Lockwood Per B21 .P53); it discusses syntax vs. semantics.

4. Rapaport, William J. (1988a), ``To Think or Not To Think,'' Nous 22: 585-609. (Lockwood Per B1 .N62)

   • This is a review of Searle 1984, above; it gives a reply in terms of abstract data types, rather more formally than Rapaport 1986a, above. It also contains, in footnotes, Searle's comments on my review.

5. Rapaport, William J. (1988b), ``Syntactic Semantics: Foundations of Computational Natural-Language Understanding,'' in James H. Fetzer (ed.), Aspects of Artificial Intelligence (Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers): 81-131. Reprinted in Eric Dietrich (ed.) (1994), Thinking Computers and Virtual Persons: Essays on the Intentionality of Machines (San Diego: Academic Press): 225-273.

   • This is my longest and most widely cited piece on the CRA, replying in terms of SNePS/Cassie and in terms of the distinction between syntax and semantics.

6. Rapaport, William J. (1990), ``Computer Processes and Virtual Persons: Comments on Cole's `Artificial Intelligence and Personal Identity','' Technical Report 90-13 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science, May 1990).

   • This is a reply to an earlier version of Cole, David (1991), ``Artificial Intelligence and Personal Identity,'' Synthese 88: 399-417. (Lockwood, Per AP1 .S9)

7. Rapaport, William J. (1993), ``Because Mere Calculating Isn't Thinking: Comments on Hauser's `Why Isn't My Pocket Calculator a Thinking Thing?','' Minds and Machines 3: 11-20.

8. Rapaport, William J. (1995), ``Understanding Understanding: Syntactic Semantics and Computational Cognition'', in James E. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 9: AI, Connectionism, and Philosophical Psychology (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview): 49-88.

9. Rapaport, William J. (forthcoming), ``How Minds Can Be Computational Systems'', Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence; preprinted as Technical Report 96-10 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science) and Technical Report 96-1 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science).