<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Dec 12, 2009, Gordon Swobe wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">Searle designed the Chinese Room thought experiment to prove that third premise in his formal argument.<br></span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>And made a fool of himself when he failed. </div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><br><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 33px; ">I want to tell you about Clark's Chinese Room. You are a professor of</span><br style="font-size: 33px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 33px; ">Chinese Literature and are in a room with me and the great Chinese</span><br style="font-size: 33px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 33px; ">Philosopher and Poet Laotse. Laotse writes something in his native</span><br style="font-size: 33px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 33px; ">language on a paper and hands it to me. I walk 10 feet and give it to you.</span><br style="font-size: 33px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 33px; ">You read the paper and are impressed with the wisdom of the message</span><br style="font-size: 33px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 33px; ">and the beauty of its language. Now I tell you that I don't know a word of</span><br style="font-size: 33px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 33px; ">Chinese, can you find any deep implications from that fact?</span><br style="font-size: 33px; "><br style="font-size: 33px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 33px; ">I believe Clark's Chinese Room is just as profound as Searle's Chinese</span><br style="font-size: 33px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 33px; ">Room. Not very.</span></span><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">The Englishman in the room shuffles the Chinese symbols according to the rules of Chinese syntax, and he does this well enough to pass the Turing test, yet he never understands a word of Chinese.<br></span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>At this very instant the neurotransmitter acetylcholine is shuffling around electrons in your brain in response to this English sentence. And yet acetylcholine does not know one word of English. Do you find that fact profound too? </div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark</div></div></body></html>