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In the philosophy of mind, the China brain thought experiment (also known as the Chinese Nation or Chinese Gym) considers what would happen if the entire population of China were asked to simulate the action of one neuron in the brain, using telephones or walkie-talkies to simulate the axons and dendrites that connect neurons. Would this arrangement have a mind or consciousness in the same way that brains do?
Early versions of this scenario were put forward in 1961 by Anatoly Dneprov,[1][2][3] in 1974 by Lawrence Davis,[4] and again in 1978 by Ned Block.[5] Block argues that the China brain would not have a mind, whereas Daniel Dennett argues that it would.[6] The China brain problem is a special case of the more general problem whether minds could exist within other, larger minds.[7]
The Chinese room scenario analyzed by John Searle,[8] is a similar thought experiment in philosophy of mind that relates to artificial intelligence. Instead of people who each model a single neuron of the brain, in the Chinese room, clerks who do not speak Chinese accept notes in Chinese and return an answer in Chinese according to a set of rules, without the people in the room ever understanding what those notes mean. In fact, the original short story The Game (1961) by the Soviet physicist and writer Anatoly Dneprov contains both the China brain and the Chinese room scenarios as follows: All 1400 delegates of the Soviet Congress of Young Mathematicians willingly agree to take part in a "purely mathematical game" proposed by Professor Zarubin. The game requires the execution of a certain set of rules given to the participants, who communicate with each other using sentences composed only of the words "zero" and "one". After several hours of playing the game, the participants have no idea of what is going on as they get progressively tired. A young woman becomes too dizzy and leaves the game just before it ends. On the next day, Professor Zarubin reveals to everyone's excitement that the participants were simulating a computer machine that translated a sentence written in Portuguese "Os maiores resultados são produzidos por – pequenos mas contínuos esforços", a language that nobody from the participants understood, into the sentence in Russian "The greatest goals are achieved through minor but continuous ekkedt", a language that everyone from the participants understood. It becomes clear that the last word, which should have been "efforts", is mistranslated due to the young woman who had become dizzy leaving the simulation.[1][2][3]
- ^ a b Dneprov, Anatoly (1961). "The Game" (PDF). Knowledge—Power (in Russian). 1961 (5): 39–41.
- ^ a b Vadim Vasiliev, Dmitry Volkov, Robert Howell (15 June 2018). "A Russian Chinese Room story antedating Searle's 1980 discussion". hardproblem.ru. Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies. Retrieved 13 July 2021.
A. Dneprov: "The Game" (originally published in 1961)
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ a b Dneprov, Anatoly (1985). "The Game (1961)". The Clay God. Stories and Short Stories. Series "Galaxy" (in Bulgarian). Vol. 66. Varna: Georgi Bakalov.
- ^ David Cole (2009). "Section 2.3 The Chinese Nation". The Chinese Room Argument. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- ^ Ned Block (1978). "Troubles with functionalism". Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. 9: 261–325. Archived from the original on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2011-06-23.
- ^ Daniel Dennett (1991). "Chapter 14. Consciousness Explained". Consciousness Explained. Back Bay Books. pp. 431–455.
- ^ Georgiev, Danko D. (2017-12-06). Quantum Information and Consciousness: A Gentle Introduction (1st ed.). Boca Raton: CRC Press. p. 362. doi:10.1201/9780203732519. ISBN 9781138104488. OCLC 1003273264. Zbl 1390.81001.
- ^ John R. Searle (1980). "Minds, brains, and programs" (PDF). Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 3 (3): 417–457. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00005756. S2CID 55303721.