Comment by Analemma_

Searle does not prove that the distinction between "actually understanding Chinese symbols" and "simulating the ability to understand Chinese symbols" is a real one. Physicalists, including me, believe this is just a confusion generated from our inside view of our consciousness, and that "really understanding" is just something a computer program thinks it can do once it gets complex enough to be conscious. At the bottom level it's still just pushing symbols around via syntactic rules (in the case of the mind, natural law).