Question

Why does Searle think The Chinese Room proves that computers cannot 'understand' things in the way that humans can? Do you agree with him? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Searle thinks that; the Chinese Room proves that computers cannot 'understand' things in the way that humans can as according to him; programming a digital computer may make it apparent that it understands the language but in reality, it does not produce real understanding. Thus the thought experiment underscores; that computers merely use syntactic rules for manipulating the symbol strings, but have no understanding of the meaning or semantics. I agree with this argument as; our minds result from the biological processes; computers are just good at simulating these biological processes.