John Searle 1980(in Cooney, 2000), provides a thought experiment, commonly called the Chinese room argument (CRA), to show that computers, programmed to simulate human cognition, are incapable of understanding language. The CRA requires us to consider a scenario where Searle, who is illiterate in Chinese, finds himself locked in a room with a book containing Chinese characters. Additionally, he has a book containing a set of instructions written in English (which he understands), that allows him to match and manipulate the Chinese characters so that he can provide appropriate written responses (in Chinese) to incoming questions (also written in Chinese). Moreover, Searle has a pile of blank paper which he uses to write down his answers. Subsequently, Searle becomes so proficient in providing responses that the quality of his answers matches that of a native Chinese speaker. Thus, Searle in the CR functions as a computer would, where he is the system while the books are the program and the blank paper acts as storage.
Surely, we can conclude that Searle does not actually understand Chinese, but rather, he uses a set of rules, provided by the English instruction manual, to mix and match the Chinese characters, to give appropriate responses. Therefore, Searle functions in a syntactic (without meaning making) manner. Correspondingly, computers that perform operations, according to specific programming, do so in a syntactic way, and therefore, cannot understand language (Searle