Chinese Room
The Chinese room is a thought experiment presented by John Searle in order to challenge the claim that it is possible for a digital computer running a program to have a "mind" and "consciousness" in the same sense that people do, simply by virtue of running the right program. According to Searle, when referring to a hypothetical computer program which can be told a story then answer questions about it: Partisans of strong AI claim that in this question and answer sequence the machine is not only simulating a human ability but also (1) that the machine can literally be said to understand the story and provide the answers to questions, and (2) that what the machine and its program do explains the human ability to understand the story and answer questions about it.