Problems with the Chinese Room Argument

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- M. Coeckelbergh, The Political Philosophy of AI: An Introduction (polity, 2022).
- B.G. Montero, Philosophy of Mind: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2022).

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[heliumcalcium]

This whole argument dissolves if you require the combatants to explain what they mean by "understand Chinese".

Imagine a man sitting at a desk. Show him a question written in Chinese, and he says " I can't read a single character of that, I have no idea what it says". Invite him to write a response with his right hand, and he writes "I cannot read Chinese". Offer him rewards, punish him for failure, nothing changes. But invite him to write with his left hand, and he writes a cogent answer to the question (in either language, it doesn't matter).

Does he understand Chinese? Well, yes and no. It is not the case that he understands it in the usual way. It appears that he is not an individual in the usual way. But if the phrase _" understand Chinese"_ has any coherent meaning, then someone or something at that desk does it..

To fixate on whether _he understands Chinese_:is to ignore reality in favor of conventional phrases.