Mind-Bending Experiments: Challenging Our Understanding of Self

Experiment 1 :

Imagine a scenario where a secretive organization has taken captive three individuals, each undergoing an experiment in separate rooms. This organization is led by a brilliant neuroscientist who is renowned for their research on consciousness, perception, and intelligence. A powerful intelligence agency has contracted them to conduct research aimed at developing new understandings and technologies related to the mind.

Each room contains brains running experiments on thought.

In the first room, there is a man named John who has been completely isolated for some time, and no one is allowed in or out. He is provided food and water through a contactless delivery system. A woman who works at the lab has been instructed to periodically communicate with John by slipping him notes under his door. She does not know the person in the room or the purpose of the experiment.

One morning, John wakes up to find a note in his room. He is immediately curious and hopeful about what it might say. But to his great disappointment, when he picks it up to read it, he finds that it is written in Chinese, a language he does not know at all. However, boxes full of papers, pencils, erasers, and books containing comprehensive instructions for how to appropriately respond in Chinese to statements and questions the woman might write are also placed in his room.

John uses the books provided to locate and match the symbols the woman writes, allowing him to write back appropriate responses and facilitating a conversation. Despite not understanding Chinese, John engages with the woman, and as time passes, she becomes fond of him and believes he is a charismatic man fluent in the language.

This experiment, known as the Chinese room, raises questions about intelligence and understanding. With advancements in digital computing and artificial intelligence, the question of whether a machine can be considered intelligent, able to think, and possess understanding, is becoming more significant.

If John can convince the woman he is intelligent or fluent in Chinese based on what he outputs from the room but can do so without ever actually understanding Chinese and what he is saying, then the output of John's behavior is not sufficient to qualify him as intelligent or possessing an actual understanding of what he is saying.

The philosophical positions of functionalism and computationalism are called into question by this experiment.

Functionalism argues that mental states are to be identified by what they do rather than by what they are made of, and computationalism argues that the mind is an information-processing system and consciousness is merely a form of computation.

According to the Chinese room's proposition, for the intelligence of the mind to actually exist, there needs to be understanding, which is inevitably always missing from a digital computer.

This leads to a fundamental question: what constitutes understanding? Can John comprehend his actions in this scenario without knowledge of Chinese? Is a complete and comprehensive understanding necessary, or is a partial understanding sufficient? How can we determine this, and how can we verify it?

If the woman were to suddenly witness John expressing emotion and putting in effort as he writes his responses based on the instruction books, without necessarily understanding the language but grasping the significance of it and his role in the exchange, would this change things? Would the woman still love and consider John intelligent enough?

Similarly, if a machine could mimic understanding, behave as if it comprehended, and claimed to feel as if it did, all through a programmed code, would we believe it? How should we treat it, and what ethical considerations arise?

Experiment 2 :

As we move further to the next room, there's a woman named Mary.

In this experiment called "Mary's Room," a woman named Mary has been contained in a room since birth, completely cut off from the rest of the world. She has never seen colors and only communicates with people through an intercom system. Everything in her room is black and white, including her skin and hair, which have been modified and dyed using a delivery system. She has only been given food and drinks with black and white food coloring and spends her time reading books and research papers that only discuss color perception.

Despite never having seen colors, Mary has become an expert on color perception, understanding the physics behind it and how the brain interprets different wavelengths of light into different color perceptions.

However, soon Mary's door will be opened, and she will experience color for the first time. This experiment aims to answer the question of whether Mary will learn anything new about color when she finally sees it.

This experiment is also called the "knowledge argument" and suggests that there are truths related to the conscious experience that cannot be described or known through physical facts alone. It argues against the theory of physicalism, which claims that everything, including mental states, can be explained through physical means.

While it may seem obvious that Mary will learn something new about color, it raises the question of what exactly that new thing is. If it is physical, then Mary should have already known it theoretically. If it is not physical, then what is it? Perhaps this experiment is limited by the limits of language and knowledge itself. Nonetheless, with advanced language and understanding, it might be possible to describe the mental state equivalent to first-hand experience.

Experiment 3 :

As we enter the last room, we come across you. Imagine that your brain is floating in a tank of nutrients, connected to a machine that stimulates your brain's nerve impulses. The machine creates everything you experience and updates your memories to make them consistent with your perceptions. But how can you be sure that this is not actually happening right now? How can you be certain that anything exists outside of your mind or that your senses are not deceiving you?

Have you ever wondered if everything you see and experience is real or just a figment of your imagination?

This thought experiment poses the question: how can you be sure that what you believe is happening right now is actually happening? Can you be certain that anything exists outside of your mind?

Think about it - maybe you're living in a vat or in a lab, being observed by a neuroscientist. Perhaps everything you know and experience is just a simulation. But how can you really know for sure?

The only thing you can be certain of is that you exist as a thinking thing. Since all of your thoughts and knowledge occur inside your mind, there's no way to prove anything else. It's like being stuck inside your own mind, with no way to escape and verify the world outside of it.

So, what do you think? Are you sure that everything you experience is real, or could it just be all in your mind? This thought experiment invites you to explore the limits of your own knowledge and understanding of the world around you.

The above three thought experiments were created in the past, namely Chinese Room by John Searle in 1980, Mary's Room by Frank Jackson in 1982, and Brain in a Vat by Gilbert Harman in 1973, inspired by René Descartes' Evil Demon.

These thought experiments highlight how difficult it is to understand the mind from within the mind and how little we know about ourselves. They also show that thought, language, and knowledge have their limits and cannot go beyond their origins. However, these experiments also reveal that the brain is curious and resourceful, always looking for new ways to understand itself and explore the unknown.