In a 1980 article titled “Minds, Brains and Programs”, the American philosopher John Searle engaged with the question of whether “strong” artificial intelligence is possible, that is, could computers become truly sentient, conscious and rationally thinking creatures? In tackling this idea, he provided an illustrative thought experiment: “the Chinese room”.
Imagine, he writes, that you are locked in a room with a large batch of Chinese writing, which you don’t understand in the slightest – the characters are just “meaningless squiggles”. You are then given a second batch of Chinese script along with rules of correlating the two batches together and, thankfully, the rules are in English (so you understand those). You are now able to correlate one formal set of symbols with another formal set of symbols. If you are then provided with a third batch of Chinese symbols, again with English instructions, you would be able to correlate this latest group with the former two.
Searle describes the outcome: “Unknown to me, the people who are giving me all of these symbols call the first batch ‘a script’, they call the second batch a ‘story’, and they call the third batch ‘questions’. Furthermore, they call the symbols I give them back in response to the third batch ‘answers to the questions’, and the set of rules in English that they gave me, they call ‘the program’.” Now, somebody on the outside, feeding questions into the room in Chinese and receiving coherent replies in the same language would be convinced that the person in the room understands Chinese. However, that is not the case at all.
“As far as the Chinese is concerned,” Searle remarks, “I simply behave like a computer; I perform computational operations on formally specified elements. For the purposes of the Chinese, I am simply an instantiation of the computer program.”
It must be said that we are in danger of turning our classrooms into "Chinese rooms", learning environments where information in and information out is simulating real thinking and critical reasoning. Despite the investment into differentiation, our schools generally remain focused on delivering a standardised curriculum for the purposes of measurable outcomes as assessment. This, of course, matches the outlook of much of the modern West: industrialised, replicative and efficient. Consequently, consciously or not, we are regarding the student as essentially functional rather than personal; a student is academically successful when she is able to do something rather than be someone.
The growth of STEM is a nod in this direction. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics have been bundled together neither because they pursue truth using the same method of learning nor because they progressively impart the same virtues to the young person, but because they are delivering the same products. Mathematics in STEM isn’t interested in transcendent or metaphysical truths (as rightly belongs to the discipline) – it is the slave of engineering; science is not an enterprise based on discovering ever more wonder in God’s created world – it is a means to a technological end.
Alongside the ascendancy of STEM, we observe the subordination of theology and the humanities (merely reflective of the society in which we live). These areas of study are ill-suited to utilitarian, mechanical outcomes and certainly cannot dance to a monochromatic tune. However, this is a system of schooling where the adoption of IT or AI seems quite natural since knowledge has become equivalent to facts and information. Our schools - like our universities, businesses and communities - are like machines, simulating “perpetual revolution” and delivering an “endless cycle of idea and action, endless invention, endless experiment”, which sounds uncannily like the constant innovation born out of Education Departments.
What is lost? Eliot puts it, as usual, poetically and precisely:
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.
(T.S. Eliot, The Rock, 1934)
How do we reverse this trend towards “Chinese room” style education? How do we inculcate genuine knowledge in our students and not simply the ability to produce information? Two elements of classical liberal arts education are particularly pertinent here: learning that is holistic and learning that is integrated.
Holistic education means that topics are studied from more than one angle, asking questions of an object in a way that responds to the fullness of our humanity (physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually). As such, subject areas converse with one another in natural ways and students are able to see connections between topics. This leads to integration, where knowledge is not partitioned and isolated (which aids the "facts" approach to learning), but seen as part of a woven human and divine tapestry.
John Searle was confident that machines, no matter how sophisticated, could never become truly intelligent, rational persons. If we do not significantly alter what passes for much education today, it is sad to say that we are turning intelligent, rational persons into machines.
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Work consulted:
Searle, John. R. "Minds, brains and programs." Behavioural and Brain Sciences 3:3 (1980): 417-457.
