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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">Answers</h2>
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<h1>Answers</h1>
<h3>Problem 1</h3>
<p>The argument is as follows:</p>
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<td style="border: none;">If AL is true, then, when the man pumps the magnet up and down, the room will be luminous.</td>
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<td style="border: none;">When the man pumps the magnet up and down, the room will not be luminous.</td>
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<td style="border: none;">AL is false.</td>
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<h3>Problem 2</h3>
<p>According to the Churchlands, the problem with the Luminous Room argument is the second premise — i.e., the answer is this:</p>
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<p style="color: #4c4c4c; font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Contrary to appearances, the room <em>is</em> luminous when the man pumps the magnet up and down; it’s just that we cannot see the light the magnet produces.</p>
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<p>The relevant passage from “<a href="/assets/courseware/v1/ea61e8eefb819ecbee7db312800619a1/asset-v1:MITx+24.09x+3T2019+type@asset+block/3_churchlands_could_a_machine_think_.pdf" target="_blank">Could a Machine Think?</a>” is this:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px; font-size: 14px;">He might begin by insisting that the “luminous room” experiment is a misleading display of the phenomenon of luminance because the frequency of oscillation of the magnet is absurdly low, too low by a factor of 10<sup>15</sup>. This might well elicit the impatient response that frequency has nothing to do with it, that the room with the bobbing magnet already contains everything essential to light, according to Maxwell’s own theory.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px; font-size: 14px;">In response Maxwell might bite the bullet and claim, quite correctly, that the room really is bathed in luminance, albeit a grade or quality too feeble to appreciate. (Given the low frequency with which the man can oscillate the magnet, the wavelength of the electromagnetic waves produced is far too long and their intensity is much too weak for human retinas to respond to them.)</p>
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<h3>Problem 3</h3>
<p>The implied argument is as follows:</p>
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<td style="border: none;">If the Luminous Room argument is unsound, the Chinese Room argument is unsound.</td>
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<td style="border: none;">The Luminous Room argument is unsound.</td>
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<td style="border: none;">The Chinese Room argument is unsound.</td>
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<p>Note that the Luminous Room argument, as construed here, is <em>not</em> invalid, and it is not treated as invalid by the Churchlands, so validity plays no role in their attempt to undermine the Chinese Room argument.</p>
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<h3>Problem 4</h3>
<p>Searle’s complaint amounts to rejecting the first premise in the argument above — i.e., the answer is this:</p>
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<p style="color: #4c4c4c; font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">If the Luminous Room argument is unsound, then the Chinese Room Argument is unsound.</p>
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<h3>Problem 5</h3>
<p>The important disanalogy, according to Searle is that</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px; font-size: 14px;">The Luminous Room argument concerns a physical, causal theory, whereas the Chinese Room argument does not.</p>
<p>The relevant passage in “<a href="/assets/courseware/v1/3e5f68afe24add5d2057014be49384a4/asset-v1:MITx+24.09x+3T2019+type@asset+block/1_searle_mind_s_brain_a_computer_program__.pdf" target="_blank">Is the Brain’s Mind a Computer Program?</a>” is this:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px; font-size: 14px;">Arguments from analogy are notoriously weak, because before one can make the argument work, one has to establish that the two cases are truly analogous. And here I think they are not. The account of light in terms of electromagnetic radiation is a causal story right down to the ground. It is a causal account of the physics of electromagnetic radiation. But the analogy with formal symbols fails because formal symbols have no physical, causal powers. The only power that symbols have, qua symbols, is the power to cause the next step in the program when the machine is running. And there is no question of waiting on further research to reveal the physical causal properties of 0’s and 1’s. The only relevant properties of 0’s and 1’s are abstract computational properties, and they are already well known.</p>
<p>(The last two sentences give some indication as to why this disanalogy is important, according to Searle. It’s a good exercise to think about those two sentences for a while.)</p>
<p>The important disanalogy according to our own Alex Byrne is that</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px; font-size: 14px;">It is consistent with AL that the Luminous Room, though luminous, has very little light in it, whereas it is not consistent with Strong AI that the Chinese Room, though it understands Chinese, has very little understanding.</p>
<p>You can see Alex saying that, more or less, <a href="/courses/course-v1:MITx+24.09x+3T2019/jump_to_id/8585c9367a9249a7a5d9238b9eb7d589">here</a>.</p>
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