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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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"The room understands" is a common counterargument, and it was addressed by Searle by proposing that a person memorize the contents of the book.
And the room passes the Turing test, that does not mean that "it passes all the tests we can throw at it". Here is one test that it would fail: it contains various components that respond to the word "red", but it does not contain any components that exclusively respond to any use of the word "red". This level of abstraction is part of what we mean by understanding. Internal representation matters.
This is exactly Searle's point. Whatever the room is doing, it is not the same as what humans do.
If you accept that, then the rest is semantics. You can call what the room does "intelligent" or "understanding" if you want, but it is fundamentally different from "human intelligence" or "human understanding".
It's more than that. He says that all Turing machines are fundamentally the same as the Chinese room, and therefore no Turing machine will ever be capable of "human understanding".
Alternately, if anyone ever builds a machine that can achieve "human understanding", it will not be a Turing machine.