John Searle The Chinese Room

The Chinese Room is a thought experiment developed by John Searle. Searle imagines himself in a room receiving pieces of paper inscribed with Chinese symbols through a slot. Searle himself does not understand any Chinese. Searle locates the set of symbols he receives in an English instruction book and then sends out the corresponding set of symbols representing a response as identified in the book back through the slot; similar to how a computer follows the instructions of its program. The person on the outside is inclined to believe that Searle himself understands Chinese when in fact all he is doing is receiving inputs, following instruction then providing outputs all the while understanding nothing of what is being discussed. Searle then carries this example into the realm of computers stating that for the same reasons
Searle uses this thought experiment as a rebuttal to the possibility of “Strong AI”; which he defines as a computer that is programmed to the extent in which it really has a mind that is to say it can experience various mental states and truly understand content. Searle believes that for “Strong AI” to be plausible a program must be able to be developed that can truly understand Chinese when communicating it. The Chinese Room example is an attempt to prove that a program can display all the signs of understanding when in fact it understands nothing. One intriguing response to Searle’s Chinese Room argument is the Brain Simulator reply. Proponents of this rebuttal consider a program that simulates the actual sequence of neurons firing in the brain. So when receiving questions asked in Chinese, the program would simulate the firing of each neuron in the human brain that would be triggered when presented with the same line of questioning. This reply infers that if we do not accept this as a sufficient rebuttal than a Chinese speaker