Secondly, Descartes states that machines cannot act meaningfully in unforeseen circumstances. It is not entirely impossible for a machine to be created where its algorithms give it the capability to create meaningful conversation in unpredicted circumstances, paralleling the human experience of learning. For example, chatbot programs like Cleverbot ‘learns’ from its conversations with people. It stores information in a database and mimics past human responses in future conversations.

However, despite Descartes’ argument weakened in the face of technological advancement, the crux of his argument should not be invalidated. His rules to test the meaningful use of language and reasoning abilities are more appealing to our intuition than Turing’s. In the Turing test, there is no need for an immaterial thinking substance. The test is rather clinical, disregarding qualities like emotions or motivation that sets us apart from machines. These qualities, the act of thinking about something is known as intentionality, and is discussed by Searle. I will present his argument below.

Searle’s Chinese Room offers a different perspective. The thought experiment is a scenario where a person in a room receives papers with Chinese on them. He also receives an English instruction book that contains rules, aiding the person to match a set of characters to another to from meaningful responses. When his replies are taken out of the room, they are no different from native Chinese speakers (Searle:144). The process parallels computer process, where Turing’s machine has inputs and outputs and symbol matching. There is no difference between the role of the computer and the person. Each follows a program, and mimics behaviour.