silber@sbphy.ucsb.edu (03/08/89)
(an aside:) The chinese room is inside the palace, the palace is inside the forbidden city, somewhere at the farthest reaches of the realm lies the great wall. The thinking/understanding "agents" in all these discussions are usually treated as localized systems of some kind which instantiate various functions through various means; the wave-mechanical/statistical view that upset physics a while back is lurking here too. any single "understanding" is embedded in the totality.