What Searle was saying

Searle argued that a computer program is like the person in the room.

The program receives symbols, follows rules for arranging them, and produces more symbols. The answers can be correct even if the program has no grasp of what the symbols mean.

Those answers might be convincing enough to pass the . But for Searle, passing would show only that the machine can produce human-like replies. It would not show that the machine understands the meaning of those replies.

He described this as a difference between and .

His claim was that following rules can produce correct syntax without producing semantics.

The next reply asks whether Searle is looking for understanding in the wrong place.