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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 June 2025
Can Machines Think?
The philosophy of AI encompasses epistemological, psychological, ontological, technical and ethical issues. Even though these matters have different natures and theoretical implications, they are closely related to the fundamental problem in the philosophy of AI – whether machines can think.
The question ‘Can machines think?’ has received two plausible answers captured in a now-standard distinction in the field, namely, the weak and strong conceptions of AI. In this chapter, the former represents the view of AI as a valuable tool that simulates but does not display mentality (see Searle 1980, 417). Strong AI represents the conception of AI as being itself a mind rather than merely a set of simulating devices. In strong AI, as the programs are themselves minds and display cognitive states, their workings directly explain the functioning of the human mind (see Searle 1980, 417). In this regard, both conceptions of AI relate to different uses of psychological language. In weak AI, psychological language is applied to machines not literally but figuratively – it is as if machines learn, think or perceive, but they really don’t. In contrast, the strong view of AI is related to literal or ‘primary’ uses of psychological language – machines do (or in principle could) think, learn and perceive in the way humans do. Most of the answers to the question ‘Can machines think?’ lie either on one or the other side of the dichotomy and are based on different theories with specific ontological commitments, for instance, dualism, functionalism, biological naturalism, identity theory and the computational theory of the mind. Consider the following quote.
To the extent that rational thought corresponds to the rules of logic, a machine can be built that carries out rational thought. […] computation has finally demystified mentalistic terms. Beliefs are inscriptions in memory, desires are goal inscriptions, thinking is computation, perceptions are inscriptions triggered by sensors.
(Pinker 1997, 68, 78)According to this perspective, machines can display actual mental powers given that the nature of mentality can be instantiated in artificial devices. Strong AI might emerge from different philosophical sources.
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