Comment by slopinthebag
12 hours ago
The person who memorized the book doesn’t understand Chinese. In fact they don’t even understand that Chinese isn’t a language. Searle’s response stands.
12 hours ago
The person who memorized the book doesn’t understand Chinese. In fact they don’t even understand that Chinese isn’t a language. Searle’s response stands.
So you could put this person in a room with a bunch of native Chinese speakers, and he could hold conversations fluently with all of them. Yet you claim he doesn't understand Chinese? How can you possibly defend that? This is very close to "zombie theory" -- everyone else is an automaton except you. Nobody else has real thoughts. That obviously fluent Chinese speaker doesn't really understand Chinese.
If the person was told in Chinese to jump in the air, would they be able to follow that instruction? If they actually understood Chinese they would. But since they don’t and they’re just mechanically translating symbols without actually understanding the language conceptually they would not know to jump.
What's stopping the book from containing that information?
When you hear a certain set of symbols in a certain context you jump.
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