John Searle’s Chinese Room, and Its Predecessor, a Short Story “The Game” by Anatoly Dneprov

Abstract

There are two views against the possibility of strong AI. The first is centered around John Searle’s well known 1980 skeptical thought experiment, “the Chinese Room.” However, there is a second, largely unknown, view, that preceded Searle’s. This second view is in Anatoly Dneprov’s 1961 short story, “The Game.” Both ask: “can computers think?” both answer: “no.” Although Searle’s experiment received a lot of criticisms, “The Game” did not receive any response. However, if we take into account Dneprov’s ‘The Game’ together with his other works, we will find that Dneprov’s argument is developed to a level comparable to Searle’s. This paper argues that the radical difference between the two is the perception of the brain. Searle believes that machines can think, but the human brain is the only machine capable of thinking, while Dneprov would not agree. For him, the brain is part of an organism and an organism cannot be regarded as a machine. Therefore, Dneprov’s work can be helpful to challenge conceptions of the brain as a machine in the current debates on AI.