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The best-known response is called the systems reply.
It agrees that the person does not understand Chinese. But the person is only one part. The complete system includes the person, the rulebook, the stored symbols, and the whole process that produces each reply.
The reply argues that understanding could
Searle answered: let the person memorize the rulebook and do every step in their head. The person now contains the whole system, he argued, but still does not know what the Chinese symbols mean.
The disagreement remains: can understanding belong to a whole system when none of its individual parts understands?