The mental life of artifacts. Explications, questions, arguments

Abstract

Our working assumption reads: Every mental property exhibited by a natural system can be exhibited by an artificial system, at least in principle. Is this true? The paper is in two parts. The first part is explicative: What do we mean by 'natural' or by 'artificial'? When are we ready to ascribe thinking to a system? We show that sometimes behavior is enough, sometimes underlying mechanisms are decisive. We study the difference between simulation and realization of a property and the kinds of explanation used in the philosophy of mind. The second part is argumentative. We collect and discuss positive arguments for and critical arguments against the working hypothesis. No decisive counterargument is found.