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2. The Systems Reply & Gödel, Escher, Bach

The Systems Reply seems to be the most favoured answer pertaining to The Chinese Room. It has already been slightly touched upon in the sections of The Presumption Reply and The Brain Simulator Reply, but it shall be elaborated upon further here. The argument goes that while it may well be the case that the man inside the room does not in fact understand a single word of Chinese, he is nevertheless a mere functional part of a larger system. And that system could indeed be said to understand Chinese even though its individual “subsystems” do not.

Searle dismisses the argument in a very brief and simple fashion.[1]  As with the case of the water valves we are asked to consider that the man could in fact internalise the entire system, remember it by heart, and instead of physically referring to an English instruction manual for the right match-up rules of Chinese characters, or actually turning faucets in an elaborate network of pipes, the man could simply deduct the correct outcome or result in his imagination. This way the man does not even need to be confined to a room. He could walk around in a forest or a city if you like and still perform the same function of symbol manipulation without any idea what it all meant. Since, according to Searle, there is not anything in the system that is not in the man, one could not presume the man to be part of a larger system, which has knowledge that the man does not.

But is Searle right in this assertion? In their book “The Mind’s I (…)”[2] Dennett and Hofstadter, authors of the book, argue why they are still not convinced that The Systems Reply is an invalid one. After all what if a machine that could pass The Turing Test were to be created, what are these ‘marvellous “causal powers of the brain”’, which it would be lacking? Searle most definitely would claim their absence.

‘To point out the vacuity of that notion, Zenon Pylyshyn, in his reply to Searle, wondered if the following passage, quite reminiscent of Zuboff's "Story of a Brain" (selection 12), would accurately characterize Searle's viewpoint:

If more and more of the cells in your brain were to be replaced by integrated circuit chips, programmed in such a way as to keep the input-output function of each unit identical to that of the unit being replaced, you would in all likelihood just keep right on speaking exactly as you are doing now except that you would eventually stop meaning anything by it. What we outside observers might take to be words would become for you just certain noises that circuits caused you to make.’[3]

Dennett and Hofstadter claim that the reason for Searle’s argument leading us to an incorrect assertion is that the man in the room (whom they refer to as “Searle’s Demon”) leads us to identify ourselves with him - and therefore also with his inability to speak Chinese - in virtue of being animate. This, according to them, is irrelevant at best and misleading at worst. It leads us to see the scenario solely from the non-understanding demon’s point of view. As a counterexample (attributed to a John Haugeland)[4] Dennett and Hofstadter ask us to consider a very tiny demon indeed (referred to as a “Haugeland’s Demon”) inside the defective brain of a Chinese woman - a brain unable to send signals between the cells properly.

Instead of the usual firing of a neuron’s axon to a synapse all of the actual “signalling” is instead simulated by the demon as it “tickles” the appropriate spots at the appropriate time. (Although not explicitly stated by Dennett/Hofstadter I assume we should ignore the possible eventuality that the demon by pure mischief would tickle the wrong spots at the wrong time, although it would be quite an interesting thought experiment in itself.) What then is the difference between this woman and an exact water-pipe replica of the woman’s neural pathways? According to Searle[5] the woman has the right causal powers while the pipes do not. (Compare to my consideration of The Zombies Reply. At this point I am extremely curious what these “causal powers” are.)

The Dennett/Hofstadter Theory of Mind[6] (in lack of anything better for me to call it) is one that possesses extreme complexity and extreme simplicity at the same time, and I could hardly do it justice in a few paragraphs – at least not while still conveying an understanding of it. However I will mention a few words about it and otherwise urge anyone to read what Dennett and Hofstadter have to say. In short it has to do with a multitude of levels of systems and subsystems inside subsystems re- and transgressing in either direction like matryoshka dolls, where a larger doll can be contained within several dolls smaller than itself. The idea has already been presented on a smaller scale in Dennett and Hofstadter’s reply to Searle’s Chinese room by differentiating between The Demon on a lower level and the Chinese Woman on a higher level. In “The Mind’s I (…)” they compare it to the ability of any computer to emulate another computer’s internal structure – i.e. to run a simulation of another computer’s system.[7]  One might even have emulations within emulations or subsystems, which are supersystems in their own right. Dennett and Hofstadter go on to say that while different levels do not usually communicate with each other, it has been proven that such level-mingling is exactly what is going on in the human brain.[8]

  Which, to return to their version of The Chinese Room, would correspond to The Chinese Woman and her Demon conducting a conversation with one another. I would presume that this would result in a sort of self-programming computer where a supersystem can command a sub-subsystem to perform a function, which in turn could change the suprasystem. It is important to note that any particular level would carry no inherent meaning – or in Searle’s terminology intentionality – from the vantage-point of neither its subsystems nor from that of a supersystem of which it in turn is a subsystem of.

Hofstadter illustrates this cliff-hanger balance between holism and reductionism in his part fictional, part factual book “Gödel, Escher, Bach”[9] by letting four of his characters discuss a sentient ant-hill called Aunt Hillary.[10] On one level Aunt Hillary is nothing but a scurry of aimless, dumb individual ants. On another level the ants produce clusters that run as signals throughout the colony to perform functions that carry meaning for the colony as a whole, but not necessarily for the little ant. And on yet another level we have Aunt Hillary, a sentient being capable of witty banter (through “writing” with lines of ants) and liberal ideological beliefs. Dr. Anteater – the character who is simultaneously the strongest supporter of reductionism and “ant-intellectualism” - does not stop there however. To the statement that ant colonies survive because their caste distribution has meaning, he responds that ant colonies and their mechanisms are as much a subsystem of their evolutionary process as their subsystems - ants and signals - are a part of them and therefore from the evolutionary level even Aunt Hillary as a sentient being is “purposeless” and without “meaning.”[11]

To Searle’s allegation that:

‘(…) it is a consequence of their [Dennett and Hofstadter – ed.] view that any hunk of junk whatever would literally have to have mental states in the same sense that you and I do if only it instantiated the appropriate program with the right input and output (…)’ [12]

One could cite a statement by Dennett/Hofstadter made even before Searle’s allegation, which reads:

‘(…) minds worth calling minds exist only where sophisticated representational systems exist, and no describable mapping that remains constant in time will reveal a self-updating representational system in a car engine or a liver.’[13]