Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence - Can A Machine Have A Mind, Consciousness and Mental States?

Can A Machine Have A Mind, Consciousness and Mental States?

This is a philosophical question, related to the problem of other minds and the hard problem of consciousness. The question revolves around a position defined by John Searle as "strong AI":

• A physical symbol system can have a mind and mental states.

Searle distinguished this position from what he called "weak AI":

• A physical symbol system can act intelligently.

Searle introduced the terms to isolate strong AI from weak AI so he could focus on what he thought was the more interesting and debatable issue. He argued that even if we assume that we had a computer program that acted exactly like a human mind, there would still be a difficult philosophical question that needed to be answered.

Neither of Searle's two positions are of great concern to AI research, since they do not directly answer the question "can a machine display general intelligence?" (unless it can also be shown that consciousness is necessary for intelligence). There are a few researchers who believe that consciousness is an essential element in intelligence, such as Igor Aleksander, Stan Franklin, Ron Sun, and Pentti Haikonen, although their definition of "consciousness" strays very close to "intelligence." See artificial consciousness. Turing wrote "I do not wish to give the impression that I think there is no mystery about consciousness ... ut I do not think these mysteries necessarily need to be solved before we can answer the question ." Russell and Norvig agree: "Most AI researchers take the weak AI hypothesis for granted, and don't care about the strong AI hypothesis."

Before we can answer this question, we must be clear what we mean by "minds", "mental states" and "consciousness".