[bigDinosaur]

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert, but based on looking this up it seems like the systems reply is fairly convincing a response - Searle's argument seems to be, as others have noted in this thread, kind of at the level of saying the electricity and chemicals don't understand Chinese and then extrapolating it to 'no understanding is present'. How does that not apply to us? Otherwise if that's all he's saying it doesn't seem like a particularly interesting argument, because I'd agree that a chemical doesn't understand Chinese since our understanding isn't generated at the singular chemical or even singular neuron level.

What's your take on this (very rapidly acquired) impression?