ercn67@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes) (07/04/90)
A Fable of a Chinese Room ========================= Once there was a man called S. S was a very clever man, a philosopher, a philanthropist and an entrepreneur. In his early life he stayed in China and on learning the Chinese language he decided to write a Book of Rules. This Book was a wondrous thing for it outlined in English a set of Rules for manipulating Chinese symbols. It allowed someone who could read the book in English to receive a set of Chinese symbols, and by following the Rules, produce another set of Chinese symbols. Once the Book was complete he built a room which he called the Chinese Room. This room contained two slots to the outside. In one slot people would deposit scrolls of Chinese characters and from the other would recieve a scroll of Chinese characters in return. The first scroll would contain questions written in Chinese and the second would contain answers written in Chinese. In order to complete his project he advertised for a deputy: Must know English Must not understand Chinese Must be a very fast worker A certain young man called Bob, who was very fast on his feet, had a good command of English and hadn't yet learned Chinese was hired for the post. Bob's duties were dull but he did them well. He would sit inside the Chinese Room, recieve scrolls of Chinese Characters and then, reading the Book of Rules which S had written, produce new scrolls of Chinese characters and pass them out from the second slot. He found that his lack of understanding of Chinese actually helped prevent distraction. When the Chinese Room was opened for business, peasants came from far and wide to ask questions of this Oracle. The questions were always answered succinctly and all assumed that inside the Chinese Room there lay a great Sage with understanding of all things Chinese. Then one day, along came Confucius who decided to teach the Chinese Room some Chinese stories in order that he might ask questions. The Oracle answered wisely but strangely always had to have the stories given immediately before the questions. Never did the Oracle remember a story the next day. Confucius was confused and suspected that the Room contained a machine rather than a Sage. Once the peasants discovered that the Oracle would not remember their lives and problems, business began to fall off. Profits went down. S was perturbed by this. He had by now made learned speeches about the Chinese Room and how it would appear to understand Chinese and yet clearly did not. He saw that his Book of Rules could cope well with a set of symbols which included both a story and questions but appreciated that if the stories were not remembered, people would become disillusioned and suspicious. S adapted his book of Rules to include instructions on how some Chinese symbols might be kept in the Chinese Room and perhaps consulted later according to some new Rules. S called this a "memory" but to Bob it was just more rules and more manipulation of symbols and his task continued as before. Confucius was pleased that the oracle had finally decided to remember stories. This would save him a lot of scroll writing. Things continued happily. Bob was diligent at his task. The peasants were pleased with the Oracle and the Sage inside was yet more widely admired. Profits were up and S gave yet more learned talks about his Chinese Room. He gained great repute in learned circles. Then one day Confucius came back. "I have written.." he said "..a Book of Rules in Chinese which will teach the Chinese Room to speak English." Wondrous was this new Book. It would represent each English letter with the appropriate Chinese symbols and written in Chinese were the many Rules that would inform the Chinese Room how to manipulate these symbols in order to produce new symbols representing the Chinese description of English letters. Remembering a previous visit, he included instructions on storage of symbols. He called this a "memory". He gave these scrolls to the Chinese Room. Bob was very busy that day. Now Confucius could invite along the local English missionary, who knew no Chinese. He taught the missionary how to write the Chinese symbols for each English letter and after this the missionary could ask questions in English and recieve the answers in English, although translating the Chinese characters to their English equivalents took a little time. This was regarded as a wonderful feat. Now the Chinese Room understood both Chinese and English as far as the peasants were concerned. Confucius thought that perhaps it didn't really understand English since it was only obeying his Book of Rules which he had written in Chinese. But he saw that it clearly did understand Chinese. S was a worried man. he knew that the Chinese Room didn't understand Chinese, it was only obeying the Book of Rules he'd written in English. Bob understood English, so perhaps that meant that the Chinese Room really did understand English even though it was only obeying a Book of Rules in Chinese. However the missionary had invited his English friends to visit the Oracle and since the Room now answered both Chinese and English questions, business was booming. However this was taking its toll on Bob. He had twice as much work to do and he wasn't getting any younger. He was slowing down. The peasants and the missionary's friends were becoming impatient. Fortunately S had access to Western Technology. He decided to re-invest some profits in the business and bought some computer equipment. "This is a Sun workstation, Bob" he said "It's even faster at producing scrolls than you are!". He told Bob that from now on the Chinese characters would appear on the screen in a "window" and Bob should then look up the Book of Rules and type the answering characters in a second "window". This saved a lot of scroll writing for Bob, and he could concentrate on looking up the Rules. S ran two cables out from the slots and connected them to another terminal outside the Room. Now the peasants could just type Chinese questions onto a window on this second terminal and the answers would appear in a second window. They were amazed and astounded, and pleased that they wouldn't have to buy so many scrolls. Confucius came to the grand opening ceremony for the new modernised Chinese Room. He saw the wondrous Western Technology. He also found and read the User Manual. This was an obscure and yet sometimes informative Book and later in the evening, when things were quieter, Confucius sat at the new terminal outside the Room and typed in a strange new language. He was there all night. "It's a tradition of us programmers" he said mysteriously next morning. And the next day another wondrous thing had happened. There was a third window on the terminal outside the Room. Confucius was explaining that he'd written something called a "C-program" which would translate English characters typed into the third window, into the equivalent Chinese characters in the first window. This would save the missionary and his friends the necessity of translating English symbols into Chinese ones and their answers would appear in English characters in the third window after the equivalent Chinese characters of the answer appeared in the second window. S was pleased. Business was booming and he was being invited to an academic conference to talk about the Chinese Room. He would explain how it appeared to understand Chinese and yet Bob was only obeying his Book of Rules written in English. He was worried by the question of whether Confucius's Book of Rules in Chinese really made it understand English. Confucius had really just imitated S, and yet Bob did understand English. Confucius had been walking around the gardens with a thoughtful look on his face. He'd been wondering whether or not the Room could really be said to understand English. One day when the missionary visited Confucius's home, Confucius wasn't there. "Gone to an Academic Conference" said a note pinned to the door. By some coincidence S was giving a lecture on the Chinese Room at this very Conference. S saw Confucius at the back of the hall, leaning against his cane and listening attentively. On his return, Confucius again typed from dusk until dawn at the terminal. In the morning he walked up to the Chinese Room and rapped on the wall with his cane. Bob, inside, was startled. No-one had ever done this before. He walked over to the source of the noise, by the two slots where the cables passed in and out. Suddenly a strange square black object popped through the slot and dropped noisily. This was followed by a note which fluttered gently to the floor. The note was in English and explained that the square object peculiarly referred to as a "disk" should be entered into Bob's terminal. "I've configured the system so that you can open a window to my English front-end program" it said mysteriously. "You'll get access to the Chinese Room" it added. "The results will interest you". Well, this was intriguing and Bob's life had been dull lately so he slid the square disk into a slot underneath the two windows and after a brief moment a third window appeared! The window contained only the words "Next Question:". Bob was amazed. He found he could ask any question he wanted, in English, and get a reply. He was continually distracted by Chinese characters appearing in the first window and the need to look up Rules and type Chinese characters into the second window but he found time to type questions into the third one in English despite being busy. He concluded that he was somehow talking to a girl through the terminal. She was incredibly clever and appeared to have a perfect memory. She would never agree to meet him after work though and Bob was continually distracted during work by the arrival of more Chinese symbols. In fact every single time he asked her a question, more Chinese symbols arrived. In desperation, Bob had an idea. If his new girlfriend would agree, he would type in all the English Rules from S's Book. She had a perfect memory so she'd be able to remember them all. Then he'd just pass the Chinese symbols to her and she'd produce for him, using the Book of Rules he'd taught her, the resulting Chinese symbols. That'd give him a lot more time to talk to her. It all worked perfectly and Bob even worked out a way to automatically copy incoming Chinese symbols from the first window to the third and to copy the resulting Chinese symbols to the second window. His girlfriend was so fast that she could do all his work and still find time to talk to him. Bob was very happy. Outside the Room, the peasants and the missionary and his friends were all happy. The Oracle was solving all their problems in both Chinese and English. Confucius had a strange twinkle in his eye and was occassionally prone to mutterring "It DOES understand both Chinese AND English". S had found out what Bob was doing with his time and had suffered a nervous breakdown.