[goatlover]

Because of one thought experiment? It certainly generated a lot of conversation for being so trivially debunked. But it's not like it's the only thing he's ever talked about. And the old white dude reference is unnecessary.

But anyway, I think Searle had a point about semantics not being syntax with the Chinese Room. They system doesn't understand anything other than how to translate from A to B. And that's not what understanding language is about (see the later Wittgenstein or any philosophy of language).

However, as Daniel Dennett pointed out in his rebuttal, although one can produce a somewhat convincing fake to some people, similar to "passing" the Turing Test with ELIZA or any bot we've created so far, a genuine Chinese room would have to know the nuances of language at such a level that there would be no question that it understands what Chinese words mean. So Searle was wrong in his setup of the thought experiment, becuase it assumes the room is only following syntatic rules, instead of understanding the web of context and meaning that words take place in.