E1: John Searle does not Understand - The Chinese Room Argument

This time the Dawdlers are attempting to make sense of being in a room where they have to understand Chinese. John Searle sure can’t help! To remedy this, Harland and Ryan take a deep dive in a shallow pool, with a close consideration of John Searle’s Chinese Room Argument in the Philosophy of Mind from his 1980 paper “Minds, Brains, and Programs”. Can computers “understand”? What is the function of intuition in philosophy? What good are “intuition pumps”? What can the Turing Test establish? And more…