> The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese? Se

> The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese? Searle calls the first position "strong AI" and the latter "weak AI". I don't know why anybody thinks this is a profound question worth spending time thinking about. All it boils down to is whether or not we reserve the word "understand" for beings with souls or whether we allow it to describe machines too.. and BTW there's no empirical test for souls (not even for people!) so it's really just asking if "understand" is some sort of holy word reserved for people who have faith and believe in souls. The question isn't about machines and their empirical capabilities at all, it's just about how humans feel about that particular word.