  Are intelligent machines really intelligent? Is the underlying philosophical
concept of intelligence satisfactory for describing how the present systems
work? Is understanding a necessary and sufficient condition for intelligence?
If a machine could understand, should we attribute subjectivity to it? This
paper addresses the problem of deciding whether the so-called "intelligent
machines" are capable of understanding, instead of merely processing signs. It
deals with the relationship between syntaxis and semantics. The main thesis
concerns the inevitability of semantics for any discussion about the
possibility of building conscious machines, condensed into the following two
tenets: "If a machine is capable of understanding (in the strong sense), then
it must be capable of combining rules and intuitions"; "If semantics cannot be
reduced to syntaxis, then a machine cannot understand." Our conclusion states
that it is not necessary to attribute understanding to a machine in order to
explain its exhibited "intelligent" behavior; a merely syntactic and
mechanistic approach to intelligence as a task-solving tool suffices to justify
the range of operations that it can display in the current state of
technological development.
