[Serious] Is ChatGPT a Chinese Room?

[Angrboda]

If we ignore phenomenal consciousness altogether (and so discard imagery and visualizing and all that), then what does it really mean to understand the meaning of a word or statement? When I'm focusing on a word on this screen, what exactly goes on in my head that constitutes the interpretation of it in a sense that's categorically different from how a computer treats words? Is it just a matter of structural differences? Complexity? Or is there something more to the distinction?

This stuff is challenging to me.

The way I've always looked at this question is to think of what we call 'understanding', whether phenomenally or neurally, as the measure of an idea/concept's integration and coherency. Coherency though is not the same thing as correctness, so you can be wrong in your understanding of something, because it's not a measure of truth but rather of how well things fit together, rightly or wrongly. So to me, to "understand" something is to be in a non-questioning state regarding that thing, but that understanding can still be wrong (as any experience of 'certainty' in the game of Mafia frequently attests ).

What beyond coherency would you say is required for truth?