A short visit to the Chinese Room:
In the former case, although if he executes the procedures correctly he may make the right verbal responses in Chinese, he will never get the joke and feel the laughter because he, John Searle, still doesn’t really understand a word of Chinese, whereas in the latter case he will get the joke, find it funny and laugh because he genuinely does understand English.

It's really strange how seriously this Chinese Room Argument (CRA)is taken, and how long it is being discussed, while it's nothing more than just a much less general form of Turng Test. Turing very clearly (though implicitly) indicated very important things:

- intelligence is a continuum (an agent can be more intelligent, less intelligent, much less intelligent etc);
- intelligence is subjective: a 5-year old may find an agent to be intelligent, while a university professor would hold a different opinion);
- a physical nature of an agent is not important, irrelevant as far as intelligence is concerned.
- deterining intelligence of an agent is a process; never ending at that. There always may be a point when the agent is ruled to be a fake.

Getting back to CRA. Neither Chinese nor room is relevant, it should be very clear to anybody. One crucial thing is missing from the whole CRA discource: a concept of memory. No agent would pass Turing Test unless it does possess memory. To introduce concept of memory in CRA means changing the whole mode of operation: adding writing devices and capabilities. This, in turn, means very important thing: Chinese Room, as a whole, becomes dynamic, instead of being "preset". Or, to put it differently, it becomes "alive" - as opposed to "dead".

The main question, posed by Searle in CRM, is "where the understanding resides". Surely this question is completely irrelevant. CRM, if it operates correctly, i.e. fools the observer into thinking it intelligent, becomes an intelligent entity. Intelligence is a property. To ask where the intelligence (or understanding) resides, is the same as to ask where the weight of a body resides.

And, surely, if Chinese Room is smart enough to "make correct response to a joke", that is, to produce an answer, indicating that the joke is funny, adding a device with "canned laughter" and switching it on when making a response should not present an insurmountable problem ... see also  ¶ 11:10 AM