[dnautics]

I was never satisfied with the chinese room thought experiment. Let's momentarily replace the thing in the chinese room with a human, to parse Searle's notion of "understanding". Searle would argue that a human trained in to emit meaningful chinese characters would still lack understanding. But I think this is backwards and speaks to your identification of Searle begging the question: the only way a human could emit meaningful chinese responses would be if it had an understanding of chinese. Consequently if a machine is outputting meaningful chinese, it too must already understand chinese, and any argument otherwise is kind of a pro-biology bigotry with a shaky underlying logic at best.

This then devolves into semantics. Can a person locked in a room really come to "understand" chinese culture, for example, if only non-experiential learning were used as data inputs? I think we have to say the answer is yes. I am a chemist. I have never seen an atomic orbital with my bare eyes, yet I can design chemical reactions that work with my understanding of chemistry. Because I have not experienced an atomic orbital does that mean I do not understand? Even, when I set up my first reaction, I did not have any experience, and knew what I was doing only through what could be described as sophisticated analogy. I would say my understading was low, but it was certainly non-zero. Where does one draw the line?

[rjsw]

I have always felt that the human in the room would start to recognize patterns and develop an "understanding". Their "understanding" may have no basis in reality but I don't see that it is any less valid to them.

If Searle is right then we should be able to perform a MRI on a blind person while they are talking to someone and spot the point where their brain switches into "symbol manipulation mode" when the conversation subject becomes something visual.

[qbrass]

The guy in the room can memorize all of the rules and the ledgers and give you the same responses the room did, and if you asked him in his native language if he knew Chinese, he'd honestly tell you no.

He could have an entire conversation with you in Chinese, and only know that what you said merits the response he gave. He doesn't if he's telling you directions to the bathroom, or how to perform brain surgery.

[dnautics]

What about Latin? I learned Latin in a somewhat sterile environment, that in many ways is akin to symbol manipulation. I certainly never conversed with any native Latin speakers. Do I not understand Latin? Why or why not?