You believe that something inert cannot be doing computation. I agree. But you seem to think it’s coherent that a system with no action—a post-hoc mapping of states—can be.
The place where comprehension of Chinese exists in the “chinese room” is the creation of the mapping—the mapping itself is a static object, and the person in the room by assumption is doing to cognitive work, just looking up entries. “But wait!” we can object, “this means that the Chinese room doesn’t understand Chinese!” And I think that’s the point of confusion—repeating someone else telling you answers isn’t the same as understanding. The fact that the “someone else” wrote down the answers changes nothing. The question is where and when the computation occurred.
In our scenarios, there are a couple different computations—but the creation of the mapping unfairly sneaks in the conclusion that the execution of the computation, which is required to build the mapping, isn’t what creates consciousness!
You believe that something inert cannot be doing computation. I agree. But you seem to think it’s coherent that a system with no action—a post-hoc mapping of states—can be.
The place where comprehension of Chinese exists in the “chinese room” is the creation of the mapping—the mapping itself is a static object, and the person in the room by assumption is doing to cognitive work, just looking up entries. “But wait!” we can object, “this means that the Chinese room doesn’t understand Chinese!” And I think that’s the point of confusion—repeating someone else telling you answers isn’t the same as understanding. The fact that the “someone else” wrote down the answers changes nothing. The question is where and when the computation occurred.
In our scenarios, there are a couple different computations—but the creation of the mapping unfairly sneaks in the conclusion that the execution of the computation, which is required to build the mapping, isn’t what creates consciousness!