this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2026
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In this context the question is whether a Chinese room can suffer. We can't show a human isn't a Chinese room, humans can suffer so we can't show every Chinese room doesn't suffer.
The Chinese room argument is about understanding, not emotions. There is a large body of literature on the use and evolutionary benefit of emotion. While you can make an analogy to see if a system can have emotions the link between understanding is not trivial. For example, animals show emotion but don’t have the same understanding that a human may have. I don’t think you need to have understanding to have emotions. So the Chinese room argument is shoe horned in without making it clear what your argument is.