Just as a note, the space of possible responses to Searle's argument have been pretty well enumerated here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ http

Just as a note, the space of possible responses to Searle's argument have been pretty well enumerated here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ I'm of the opinion that the room has an understanding entity inside of it, in talking about infinitely-sized books with an infinitely-sized index allowing any mechanical process to map an input to a correct output, you've hypothesized something complicated enough that it should be said to be an entity capable of understanding/meaning.