Uhm, an Aboriginal tends to see meaning in anything. The more the regularities, the more meaning she will form. Semiosis is the dynamic process of interpreting these signs.
If you were put in a Chinese room with no other input than some incomprehensible scribbles you will probably start considering that what you are doing has indeed a meaning.
Of course, a less intelligent human in the room or a human put under pressure would not be able to understand Chinese even with the right algorithm. My point is that the right algorithm enables the right human to understand Chinese. Do you see that?
In his paper, Searle brings forward a lot of arguments.
Early in his argumentation and referring to the Chinese room, Searle makes this argument (which I ask you not to mix with later arguments without care):
Later, he writes:
I am framing this argument in a way it can be analyzed:
1) P (the Chinese room) is X (a program capable of passing Turing test in Chinese);
2) Searle can be any X and not understanding Chinese (as exemplified by Searle being the Chinese room and not understanding Chinese, which can be demonstrated for certain programs)
thus 3) no X is understanding Chinese
Searle is arguing that “no program is understanding Chinese” (I stress this in order to reply to Said). The argument “P is X, P is not B, thus no X is B” is an invalid syllogism. Nevertheless, Searle believes in this case that “P not being B” implies (or strongly points towards) “X not being B”.
Yes, Searle’s intuition is known to be problematic and can be argued against accordingly.
My point however is that there is out there in the space of X a program P that is quite unintuitive. I am suggesting a positive example of “P possibly understanding Chinese” which could cut short the debate. Don’t you see that giving a positive answer to the question “can a program understand?” may bring some insight in Searle’s argument too (such as developing it into a “Chinese room test” to assess whether a given program can indeed understand)? Don’t you want to look into my suggested program P (semiotic AI)?
In the beginning of my post I made it very clear: