Mind as Program

What we call minds are simply very complex digital computer programs. Mental states are simply computer states and mental processes are computational processes. Any system whatever that had the right program, with the right input and output, would have to have mental states and processes in the same literal sense that you and I do, because that is all there is to mental states and processes, that is all that you and I have. The programs in question are “self- updating” or “self-designing” “systems of representations.”

2. The Irrelevance of the Neurophysiology of the Brain. In the study of the mind actual biological facts about actual human and animal brains are irrelevant because the mind is an “abstract sort of thing” and human brains just happen to be among the indefinitely large number of kinds of computers that can have minds. Our minds happen to be embodied in our brains, but there is no essential connection between the mind and the brain. Any other computer with the right program would also have a mind. . . .

3. The Turing Test as the Criterion of the Mental. The conclusive proof of the presence of mental states and capacities is the ability of a system to pass the Turing test, the test devised by Alan Turing and described in his article in this book. If a system can convince a computer expert that it has mental states then it really has those mental states. If, for example, a machine could “converse” with a native Chinese speaker in such a way as to convince the speaker that it understood Chinese then it would literally understand Chinese. . . .

We might call this collection of theses “strong artificial intelligence” (strong AI).* These theses are certainly not obviously true and they are sel- dom explicitly stated and defended.

5. Some MP3 players are of such high quality that it is sometimes impossible to distinguish the sound of the MP3 player from the sound of a live human voice. Would the Turing test show that such MP3 players can sing? Why or why not?