Comment by tstactplsignore

I can't see your side of the chinese room. A sufficiently complex digital system can simulate any analog one; the human brain is an analogy system; therefore, a digital system could simulate the human brain; therefore, if a human brain is conscious, or can produce meaning, a digital program can do the same thing. The simulation might be probabilistic, it might be stochastic, but it'd still be a digital simulation. We could simulate it atom by atom with a computer the size of the sun if that's what it'd take, but it could still be done. I don't see how the specific "hardware" that the mind runs on, whether made of membranes or transistors, has anything to do with it, nor the level of abstraction. How is there anything more to the discussion?