• Can Machines Think?

Some people worry about robots taking over their jobs. This has already happened to many people. For example, today our cars are built mostly by robots in an assembly line, work which was previously done by people earning a good wage. Many fast food restaurants are replacing human workers with machines.

There are some people who dream of creating robots with human–like thinking. Their ambition is to create a robot similar to the character Data^<1> in the Star Trek series. Can this ambition become reality?

Computers are at the center of both the worry and the dream. Computers are very simple at the lowest level. Each unit of a computer's memory is called a bit. Each bit can be switched to either a 1 or a 0. Computers are designed with certain tasks in mind, for example your cell phone, or the computers that control your car. Computer engineers write the programs that run on computers, controlling everything they do. Computer applications seem endless. The Apps we download on our smart phones are computer programs.

Our smart phones have no idea what they are doing, why they are doing it, or even that they exist. They do not have self–awareness like people do. The same is true for all other computer applications, no matter how complicated they look to us.

Long before computers existed, philosophers tried to understand what makes us human. René Descartes said,

I think, therefore I am.

René Descartes, Discourse on the Method, 1637 AD.

Long before Descartes, Aristotle said:

whenever we think, we are conscious that we think, and to be conscious that we are ... thinking is to be conscious that we exist.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ~330 BC.

What is it about thinking that is different than the choices computers are programmed to make? Could a computer program ever, all on it's own, say I think, therefore I am?

Thinking requires the ability to make independent choices. Computer programs appear to make choices, but they have no freedom of choice. For example, my car has a collision avoidance feature. When it detects an object in its path, it will apply the brakes and stop the car. It activated once while I was driving in a city and a car suddenly pulled out in front of me. However, my car was not making a free choice. It may have saved me from an accident, but it did so because that is the way it was programmed. Given the inputs from its cameras, that was the action forced on it by the program. Some programmer designed it that way.

Some people claim our choices are not different than the choices computer programs control:

Though we feel that we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets ... so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.

Stephen Hawking, page 32 of [GrandDesign]The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, 2010 publisher: Bantam Books

His conclusion is based on the assumption that the material universe is all that exists. If that were the case, then I think his conclusion would be correct. However, even some atheistic philosophers reject this idea:

For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.

J. B. S. Haldane in "When I am Dead" page 209 of [PossibleWorlds]Possible Worlds by J. B. S. Haldane, 1927

If we are only biological machines, as Hawking asserts, then we have no reason to believe that any of our thoughts are true, as Haldane points out.

If we do have free will, the freedom to make truly independent choices, then there must be something about us that is not part of the material universe. We call that part of us our soul. Where did we get our souls? The Bible tells us God creates a soul for each of us at our conception.

We cannot make a robot that thinks, one that makes independent choices, because we cannot make anything that is not material. We cannot give a machine a soul.

What do you think? Is there any way around this? Please let me know on the comment pages, or on my face book page, PrincipledThinking.^<2>

Three previous posts related to this one are:

• Do We Have Free Will?^<3>
• The Convergence of Science and Theology^<4>
• What is Your Soul?^<5>