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I agree with functionalists, specifically the strong Artificial Intelligence (AI) camp, concerning the concept of understanding. While John Searle poses a strong non-functionalist case in his AChinese Room@ argument, I find that his definition ....

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... through its cause and effect relationships, through its function. This thinking leads to the conclusion that the human brain is little more than a big, complex computer. All we humans do is take input, process it, and accordingly create output, just like a computer. In fact, functionalists who support strong AI go so far as to say that an appropriately programmed computer actually has all the same mental states and capabilities as a human. In AMinds, Brains, and Programs,@ John Searle outlines this argument: AIt is a characteristic of human beings= story understanding capacity that they can answer questions about [a] story even though ...