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You might as well conclude that my fingers typing this post aren't conscious. It's a weird argument.

The analogy might be more valid if arguing its not possible for a third party to actually determine whether an entity/system is conscious (irrespective of whether the entity is conscious or not)

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The argument about a third party is trivial in my opinion. Someone responds correctly in Chinese, and the onus just falls on that element of the system to be conscious or not. It's another argument and I don't even see how this experiment is particularly enlightening in that case. I think in that case, people just confuse it with the Turing test.

Instead, the core matter is about form versus meaning - something that is indeed not observable from the outside, and yet is a distinction to the person inside the Chinese room.

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