Well in this instance we're mostly looking at the question the other way round.
The Turing Test explicitly tests whether a machine behaves intelligently. The question is whether something that can pass the Turing Test is, necessarily, intelligent. The Chinese Room argument hypothesises a man, in a room, with a big book of rules. Chinese symbols appear on a screen, he looks rules up in his book and then sends more chinese symbols out. Someone outside the room thinks the room contains someone who understands Chinese, but it doesn't, it contains an English speaker and a big book of rules. So the room behaves as if it contains someone who understands Chines, but that doesn't mean that the person in the room actually does understand Chinese.
You can take that argument in several directions, and there is a vast literature refuting it. But I generally take it as highlighting that we have an inadequate understanding of what we mean by understanding (and also thought, consciousness and self-awareness, all of which fall under the same argument more or less).
Our best way of telling if some understands Chinese is to judge it's behave but that still doesn't mean that behaving as if you understand Chinese is the whole story...
EDIT: And, as you point out, it seems plausible that something could also be intelligent without behaving intelligently.
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dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-09 11:09 pm (UTC)The Turing Test explicitly tests whether a machine behaves intelligently. The question is whether something that can pass the Turing Test is, necessarily, intelligent. The Chinese Room argument hypothesises a man, in a room, with a big book of rules. Chinese symbols appear on a screen, he looks rules up in his book and then sends more chinese symbols out. Someone outside the room thinks the room contains someone who understands Chinese, but it doesn't, it contains an English speaker and a big book of rules. So the room behaves as if it contains someone who understands Chines, but that doesn't mean that the person in the room actually does understand Chinese.
You can take that argument in several directions, and there is a vast literature refuting it. But I generally take it as highlighting that we have an inadequate understanding of what we mean by understanding (and also thought, consciousness and self-awareness, all of which fall under the same argument more or less).
Our best way of telling if some understands Chinese is to judge it's behave but that still doesn't mean that behaving as if you understand Chinese is the whole story...
EDIT: And, as you point out, it seems plausible that something could also be intelligent without behaving intelligently.