The Chinese Room: Qualia and Semantics

Throughout the literature generated by Searle’s Chinese Room Argument, the Robot Reply has persistently beckoned a more thorough response. Many proponents of AI have stood their ground in holding that there is something intuitively correct about such a reply. For example, critics such as Bridgeman and Abelson contend that if a super robot were able to interact with the world, then this should generate understanding, as is seen in children. (Abelson actually uses the term “sensorimotor” for the phenomena needed for the machine to do such a thing (424).) It is this requirement that I shall address directly. Assuming that the utilization of robotics is encompassed by the school of strong artificial intelligence, I will contend that this can take the system in question only so far. Indeed, the robot will never understand any concepts that directly involve qualia, despite any newfound sense of sensorimotor phenomena. In fact, we will see that even if the strong AI school is able to account for semantics