> What is missing is the man's ability to memorize the function and carry it out without the book. If he could, and the function truly produced a normal respons

> What is missing is the man's ability to memorize the function and carry it out without the book. If he could, and the function truly produced a normal response to any Chinese phrase in existence, then he would speak Chinese. No, the function would. My CPU doesn't speak HTML. My web browser does. Does running my web browser mean the CPU speaks HTML, even if the whole browser is loaded into cache? I don't think it does; the CPU is still running machine code. If I memorise a Turing machine, does that mean I understand the computation it's performing? No; I'd have to pick it apart and work out what each bit does, then put that meaning back together, in order to try to work out how it works. Memorising the function would enable the man to teach himself Chinese (whichever language “Chinese” is), just like memorising a good mathematics would allow most people to teach themselves the concepts therein. But memorisation isn't understanding.