Chinese Room Thought Experiment
From The Transhumanist Wiki
The Chinese Room Thought Experiment goes like this: There's an okay test for comprehension of a language in which you tell an intelligence to read the story, then ask it questions.
If you, a monolingual English speaker, were locked in a room and given the story in chinese (just looks like a random dispersal of brush strokes to you), the questions (also in chinese), and a script in english describing how to pick out or relate various characters (and also given the description of characters and such) and transcribe them onto a blank paper. (these are then the answers)
Searle argued that you still wouldn't understand Chinese. (you're just following instructions)
