An Intentional Look at the Chinese Room

Abstract: The Philosophy of Mind, which pertains to the study of mental properties and physical properties in relation to the world, has been around since the 4th century with philosophers like Socrates and Plato. The Mind and Matter Problem, also known as the Body and Soul Problem, deals with the issues of identifying and understanding the apparent difference between the mental mind or soul and the physical matter or body. Through history many resolutions to this problem have been presented. For example, Ontological Dualism claims that the mind and body are two distinct substances. Property Dualism claims that the mind is independent of the body, because it has its own properties, but it is not a distinct substance. Idealism claims that the physical can be reduced to the mental, and Monism claims that the mental can be reduced to the physical, whereas Neutral Monism claims that the mental and the physical are two attributes of one “unknown” substance. So as we can see the Mind and Matter Problem can be approached in a variety of ways. The purpose of this paper is to present and analyze two articles on the topic of the thought experiment called the Chinese Room, which pertains to the Mind and Matter Problem within Monism. A common view of contemporary philosophers is within the realm of Physicalistic Monism which includes Identity Theory, Behaviorism, Functionalism and Eliminative Materialism. In this paper I will not go into the different aspects of the variations of Monism. My intention is to focus on one of the monist theories that deals with Biological Naturalism, which entails the view that mental properties and physical properties are not two separate properties but rather two different properties of the biological brain.