> As someone who literally studied consciousness and perceptual neuroscience in grad school, and ran studies on real-life blindsight patient GY, you couldn't be more mistaken about the Chinese Room's relevance.
> The original formulation is awkward to modern ears, but the heart of the problem remains: How does/can consciousness emerge from smaller unconscious parts?
> A single neuron can be modeled with a physics simulation, and is clearly not conscious. But at what size/configuration does a group of neurons become conscious?
This is clearly not the Chinese Room Argument. The Chinese Room Argument was supposed to prove that computers will never be capable of consciousness simply by following rules written down in a book. It was directed at symbolic AI systems that literally were just computers following rules in a book. Modern deep neural networks as well as human brains clearly don't function anything like that.
The idea that computers can't think is clearly based on irrational prejudice against electronic technology. Why can't a computer gain consciousness by simulating a human brain? John Searle himself said that consciousness requires "organic substrate" without any elaboration. Taken in context it's clear that the Chinese Room Argument was fundamentally clearly and obviously just motivated out of an irrational bias and prejudice against electronic/non-organic substrates.
> The original formulation is awkward to modern ears, but the heart of the problem remains: How does/can consciousness emerge from smaller unconscious parts?
> A single neuron can be modeled with a physics simulation, and is clearly not conscious. But at what size/configuration does a group of neurons become conscious?
This is clearly not the Chinese Room Argument. The Chinese Room Argument was supposed to prove that computers will never be capable of consciousness simply by following rules written down in a book. It was directed at symbolic AI systems that literally were just computers following rules in a book. Modern deep neural networks as well as human brains clearly don't function anything like that.
The idea that computers can't think is clearly based on irrational prejudice against electronic technology. Why can't a computer gain consciousness by simulating a human brain? John Searle himself said that consciousness requires "organic substrate" without any elaboration. Taken in context it's clear that the Chinese Room Argument was fundamentally clearly and obviously just motivated out of an irrational bias and prejudice against electronic/non-organic substrates.