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Is the Chinese Room the Real Thing?

In his recent attacks on the claims of Artificial Intelligence,' Searle expresses himself surprised that anyone should ever have thought that a program which simulates understanding might also understand-even if the simulation is behavourially indistinguishable from the real thing. After all, he remind us, no one supposes that a computer simulation of a five-alarm fire will burn the neighbourhood down or that a simulated earthquake will lead to real casualties, so why should we expect understanding from a mere simulation of understanding? At first glance, Searle's view is quite in line with our intuitions. During election times we have all seen computer simulations of the effects of voters casting their votes in the way respondents to opinion polls have indicated. The commentator will type in a few variables: the projected number of voters, the percentage of the total vote that was polled for each of the parties at the last election, the results of the various polls and so on. In a moment we are shown a computer generated pie chart showing the parliamentary cake divided between the contending parties. This projection might well turn out to be exactly right but no one supposes that the computer running the simulation has any voting actually going on inside it. No one is inclined to argue that since it is simulating human decision-making behaviour the computer is actually making human decisions. The case with understanding appears to be just the same: of course the computer can simulate understanding but that is no reason to suppose that the computer actually understands anything. We might imagine a computer simulation of the chemical process of lactation. The machine would have elaborate programming which enabled it to tell us what grade and quantity of milk would be produced if grass of such and such a type were fed to a cow with the characteristics programmed into the computer. We could test the accuracy of the computer's simulation and might discover that it was always exactly right. But no one would expect to get milk from it. Why then should