A new issue has come about since the building of computers. But the idea behind
it is not such a new issue, for as long ago as Plato and Aristotle, the idea of
a mind was pondered about. With the up-and-coming technology, the idea of
artificial intelligence has exploded. It is one that many fiction writers have
prospered on. But how far away are they from the truth? Take the story of The
Bicentennial Man by Isaac Asimov, written in 1976, when most of the population
didn’t know what a computer was capable of. The idea of the unknown scared us,
a robot that appeared to be just like us, but it was also intriguing, as
demonstrated by the story’s success. What was it that attracted the population
to this story? The reasonable answer lies within the question this paper will
attempt to answer. That is, Can a computer have a mind? The answer to this
question is an obvious one, but we will examine it anyway, as it needs to be
addressed because of all of the popular science-fiction writings. A computer can
have a mind, and as you read further into this, you will see that computers are
made of the same things we are, they transfer information using the same
techniques we do, they are complex enough, and they are aware. This is enough to
give them the possibility to posses a mind. Starting with the first part of the
definition of mind, one might conceive of a computer that can posses a mind. The
Biologist might make an argument against me, stating that only living things can
have mind, that it is only those things that are biological, consisting of
organic compounds, that may have the potential to posses mind. But I say to the
Biologist, what is it that makes up these organic compounds? What is it about
these molecules that makes them construct themselves into a biological being?
The answer is a simple one to any Chemist, for he knows that organic molecules
are made up of elements and these elements are indeed atoms. The Physicist will
most definitely agree that these atoms are made up of protons, neutrons, and
electrons. These protons, neutrons, and electrons are what make up every atom in
the universe; the same three particles come together and form all the materials
known to man. The biological systems that produce mind are made up of the same
particles as the inorganic computers. Therefore organic and inorganic are just
ways of explaining the same thing. Think of a cat, either white or black. But it
is still a cat, the same way that organic or inorganic explain matter. So it is
not the fact that computers and humans are made of different things, but in
reality, that they are made of the same things that gives the possibility of a
computer to have a mind. Examine for a moment if you will, just what is it that
causes an image of your first love to appear in a field of wildflowers. We will
revisit this image again, but first we will examine the aspects of the brain
relating to the physical attributes that some insist make a human mind different
and therefore unattainable by a computer. Anything that occurs in the brain
requires a firing of synapses. This can be understood by thinking that as you
read this, there are millions of neurons firing. But I ask you this, what is a
neuron firing? And one will very easily respond back that it is the transferring
of electrical impulses, which can also be defined as a motion of electrons from
one nerve to another. Electrical impulses, such as the ones of this computer,
allow the letters as I have typed them to appear on the screen and then finally
be transferred to the paper you are reading. They are of the same particles,
that of the biological body as well as in the mechanical body, and they transfer
information in the same manner. You see, it is beyond the level of organic
chemistry, even deeper than just the elements themselves, but those things that
make up the elements, they are what hold the key in comparison and answering
this difficult question. These electrons, those things we have in common, could
be a basis for giving a computer a mind. Returning to the topic of biology in
just a moment, let’s examine John Searle’s argument for believing that
computers cannot posses a mind. He claims that the mind is an emerging property
from the biological functions of the brain (which we have already proven to not
be limited to biological functions), and that the complexity of the brain has
lead to the production of a mind. He uses the image of water and wetness, saying
that one molecule of water doesn’t feel wet but many water molecules together
become more complex and have this property of wetness or the feeling of wetness
(DesAutels lecture 6-14-00). From his point of view in verifying that only
biological systems can be complex enough to have mind, this is true. Back to the
Biologist, first we must assume that you, the reader, has some understanding of
the theory of evolution. Lets assume that humans evolved from a single cell
(which they do in utero if we are talking of conception in one generation) like
that of a single celled bacterium. We know that bacteria do not have brains, but
they do have biological functions that might lead one to believe that the
bacteria has some sort of mind, but remember that Searle will say bacteria
don’t have minds because they lack complex brains. So the bacteria got
together – literally, and stayed together after many years of evolution and a
slug was formed. Now the slug, a bit more complex than just a single cell, still
does not have a brain and therefore it has no mind because in Searle’s terms,
it’s not complex enough to allow a mind to emerge from it. So the bacteria got
together again and eventually after a few million years, a human is formed. This
human has a brain, which entitles it to a mind, and according to Searle, it has
this mind because its brain is complex enough, or in his terms, there is enough
water to make it wet (DesAutels Lecture 6-14-00). I would now like to ask, did
that bacterial cell have a mind, the one we started with? NO. Did the slug have
a mind? NO, it too lacked a brain. Do the cells in a human have a mind? Remember
they themselves have no brains, so they can’t have mind, but collected
together as a whole they do, and the human is attributed with mind. So the
question still remains, Can a computer have a mind? It is made up of parts, like
the cells that make up a human, and these parts on their own lack mind (like the
cogs in a clock. Just as an aside, the clock that Searle doesn’t believe is
complex enough to have mind is equivocal to the slug in biological terms) (DesAutels
Lecture 6-14-00). So we, like the bacteria, go back to the drawing board, in
search of another way to obtain mind, complexity. And what we return with is
something as complex as a human, a computer. Now who is to argue the complexity
here? Searle’s argument falls short because it works both for him, in the case
of the clock, and against him as time moves on and computers become more
complex, comparable to the biological analogy. The problem he faces is the more
complex a computer may become, the more of an emerging mind it may show. But
back to biology for just a moment, humans too are made up of parts, cells, that
do not know what they are doing, in the sense they are unaware while a
combination of these cells into an entire human, is aware. Using this analogy,
it can also be said that the computer components are not aware, in the sense
that the cells aren’t aware, but the computer, a collection of parts, (like
the human of cells) can be aware. There is a technology that has a learning
capacity based on its awareness of a situation. The example we will be looking
at here is used in car computers that are “aware" of how the driver
drives. If she is a consistent driver, it will set itself to obtain the maximum
gas mileage. When a new driver gets behind the wheel of the car and drives very
inconsistently in speed, (like myself on my way to this class), the
computer then sets itself to obtain the maximum torque (Baker Interview
6-14-00). This technology has a bit of awareness, doesn’t it? Lets now move
away from the biology aspect in specific terms and move more towards a problem
that has been raised. Return with me if you will, to the image of your first
love laying in a filed of wildflowers. It has been suggested that one cannot
program a computer to be entirely like a human in all of its behaviors etc., due
to the fact that the storage capacity of a computer is no where near the size it
would need to be to store the information needed to be completely human. In
other words, a computer cant possibly remember its first love laying in a filed
of wildflowers, because computers don’t know what wildflowers are, or what a
field is, and they don’t know what a first love is, in the same way we do.
They point to the human brain, and take particular notice of the incredible
amount of storage space. The brain takes in every second of every day and stores
it for later access that can be retrieved when the information is desired or
under hypnosis (DesAutels Lecture 6-12-00). How can a computer take in this much
information and store it? Although it is true to date that storing this amount
of information hasn’t yet been achieved in a computer, it may soon be able to
be done. Just look at how far we have come from just ten years ago in the
technology industry. Even in the age of the compact disk, we have already seen
the making of a mini disk, a smaller version of a CD that stores just as much
information, if not more. It is only a matter of time before information storage
will no longer be seen as a limiting factor. I would like to close with some
thoughts from Thomas Nagel. He insists that although we can be told what it is
like to be something else, we cannot truly know what it is like. He uses the
example of a bat, claiming “that there is something it is like to be that
organism” (Nagel 391), but that we will never know what it is like to be a
bat. We can be told what it is like, but we will never experience what a bat
sees, or what it hears (DesAutels Lecture6-16-00). He calls this subjective
experience, and no matter how hard we try to explain what it may be like, even
to be ourselves, no one will understand, because it is our own unique point of
view (DesAutels Lecture 6-16-00). The problem with science is that it is
objective, you can only learn about it, but you can never truly experience it (DesAutels
Lecture 6-16-00). You may be wondering just what this it is, consciousness. You
have consciousness and you can tell me about it, but I can’t prove that you
have consciousness, the same way that we can’t prove a computer has
consciousness. But we can’t say that a computer can’t have consciousness,
either, because no proof can be provided either way. So we still sit, wondering
if a computer can have a mind, most things I have pointed to here would indicate
yes, a computer could have a mind. But the truth of it is, as Nagel had claimed,
that we would never know. A computer may already have a mind that is unlike our
own, so we cant explain it, and we don’t understand it, but that doesn’t
meant the computer cant have a mind. So yes, I believe that a computer can have
a mind, and one-day, we may better understand this.

BibliographyBaker, Brent, Electronics Engineer and Sales Rep. Interview on 6-14-00.
DesAutels, Peggy Dr. Lecture dates from 6-12-00 through 6-16-00. Nagel, Thomas.
“What is it Like to be a Bat?” A Historical Introduction to Philosophy of
Mind. Peter A. Morton. Orchard Park; Broadview Press, 1997