or one generation for millennia that would allow a visiting human observer scientist social type to view something akin to culture, linguistic change over time. On another note: could generations of the Chinese room experiment not produce any linguistic output variation that a community could produce? This makes the' thought experiment' a bit out there, but it does capture what is problematic about strong AI theory. The claim that there is a one to one correspondence between what human culture does and what AI does as intentional agents. AI weak, as it is currently viewed, 'at least i hope' would be a static type of output that lacks a sense of primordialism, be that true or false, it exists as sense of temporal flow. Nige : 22 Apr 2012 8:04:38pm Surely, although the person inside Searle`s `Chinese Room` does not understand Chinese, the entire system (ie room and contents ) does. Also, when we humans claim to apprehend meaning, doesn`t that just mean we have a certain feeling that accompanies a task or behaviour, related to our facility in that area? Is it not just an illusion that there is something else called `meaning` above and beyond that facility? Over the last few years I have slowly mastered German, and to begin with I was not able to apprehend the `meaning` of a passage in this language. Gradually however, I became able to string words together in the appropriate way, but with much difficulty and with only partial technical accuracy,