In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time.
For the moment, machines able to 'think' in anything approaching a human sense remain science-fiction. How we should prepare for their potential emergence, however, is a deeply unsettling question - not least because intelligent machines seem considerably more achievable than any consensus around their programming or consequences.
I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence.
An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
If the history of resistance to Darwinian thinking is a good measure, we can expect that long into the future, long after every triumph of human thought has been matched or surpassed by 'mere machines,' there will still be thinkers who insist that the human mind works in mysterious ways that no science can comprehend.
There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
We must develop as quickly as possible technologies that make possible a direct connection between brain and computer, so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it.
The distinguishing characteristics of mind are of a subjective sort; we know them only from the contents of our own consciousness.
The science of the mind can only have for its proper goal the understanding of human nature by every human being, and through its use, brings peace to every human soul.
The brain-mind is not a computer, and regarding it as one has led to a variety of theoretical dead ends.