Are not these individual Indians more like the individual neurons in a person’s brain than like the whole brain itself? No-one would suggest that neurons, whose firings apparently constitute the physical activity of a brain in the act of thinking, would themselves individually understand what that person is thinking, so why expect the individual Indians to understand the Chinese stories? Searle replies to this suggestion by pointing out the apparent absurdity of India, the actual country, understanding a story that none of its individual inhabitants understands. A country, he argues, like a
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