INTERROGATING THE MINDS OF ROBOTS

Abstract

This paper raises the question; do robots have minds? In its appraisal of recent ascription of intelligence to machine, the paper argues that intelligence is an attribute of a first-order mentality which only human mind possesses. Mind, in the Cartesian glance, is a conscious and thinking substance. The paper therefore examines whether robots which perform these acts have minds. While theorists like Hilary Putnam and Gilbert Ryle deny that mind (as a non-physical substance) exists, others like John Searle contend that machines can perform mental activities attributed to the mind. While opposing firstorder-mental acts to robots, we argue that robots’ actions are solely determined; thus robots lack real, spontaneous emotion and introspective capacity which are bases for moral intelligence.