 Searle’s CR argument was thus directed against the claim that a computer is a mind, that a suitably programmed digital computer understands language, or that its program does. Searle’s thought experiment appeals to our strong intuition that someone who did exactly what the computer does would not thereby come to understand Chinese. As noted above, many critics have held that Searle is quite right on this point – no matter how you program a computer, the computer will not literally be a mind and the computer will not understand natural language. But if minds are not physical objects this inability of a computer to be a mind does not show that running an AI program cannot produce understanding of natural language, by something other than the computer (See section 4.1 above.) 