Thanks for your question. I'd distinguish the undeniable claim that memory is fallible from the less plausible claim that memory is unreliable. I'm no psychologist, but it seems that the reliability of memory comes in degrees, depending on who's using it, under what conditions, and what its content is. The kind of remembering described in your question -- remembering what I was thinking just an instant ago -- doesn't seem especially unreliable, under favorable conditions anyway. Furthermore, we logically presuppose the reliability of memory in general even as we check whether some particular memory of ours is false: We ask those who are better-positioned what they remember, we trust that we correctly remember the meanings of words they use in their answers or the meanings of words we read in contemporaneous accounts of the event, and so on. Indeed, if we persist for any length of time in our belief that memory is fallible, that too depends on trusting our memory: it presupposes that we correctly remember that memory led us astray at least once in the past. So there seem to be limits to how sweeping any rational doubts about memory can become.

The other classic paper on this issue is Alan Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", from 1950, which articulates what has come to be known as the "Turing Test". Turing's idea was to set up an experiment. A modern version might use some kind of internet chat program. You are talking with two other "people". One really is a person. The other is a computer. You can talk to them for as long as you like, about whatever you like. Then if you can't tell the difference, Turing says, the computer is intelligent. Obviously, this is, at first blush, what Andrew calls an "epistemological" approach to the problem, but Turing doesn't see it just that way.

Let me mention, by the way, that 2012 is also the "Alan Turing Year", celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth. Turing had a very interesting, and tragic, life. Not only was he one of the founders of modern computer science, he put his genius to work for the British military during World War II and helped crack the German codes. The tragic part lies in Turing's being prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952 and then being forced to take female hormones as "treatment" instead of being sent to prison. He committed suicide in 1954, at the age of 41.

This is a great question, and one with a very long history. There's a key ambiguity in it though, that should be clarified at the start: 'what would it have to be for us to consider it sentient?' might be read metaphysically or epistemologically. To read it metaphysically is to ask what, in fact, is sufficient for the robot to be sentient; to read it epistemologically is to ask what evidence would be sufficient for us, or any third party, to judge that the robot is sentient. The difference is important because it might be that there is some essential feature to sentience, but it is not one which would ever allow us to judge with any confidence/reliability that some creature other than ourselves possesses it. ....

That said, a good starting point for you would be Descartes's Discourse on Method, where he argues (in brief) that the possession of genuine linguistic competence and general rationality are marks of the 'mental', or of 'sentience' broadly construed; he holds that no purely mechanical/physical account could ever explain why a creature demonstrates those properties, and while his account is dated, there's no question that 'language' and 'reason' remain very challenging things even today, for researchers in Artificial Intelligence to instantiate in 'robots.' Then, after Descartes, skip a few centuries and read John Searle's famous and controversial paper, "Minds, Brains, and Programs" originally in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, in 1980 -- which set of a decades-long debate over whether any computer or computer program could ever actually instantiate mental states (as opposed to merely mimic them). If you read that paper, and then google 'responses to Searle's Minds Brains Programs' (or more generally 'responses to Searle's Chinese Room Thought Experiment') you will get plenty for you to chew over as you contemplate your excellent question!

hope that's a useful start --

ap

Wonderful question!

There are some philosophers who are very committed to a form of determinism that rules out free agency and a thesis that seems quite contrary to common sense, namely that the self is an illusion or construct and not a real, substantial individual thing. For some of these philosophers, the idea that one might freely control one's body or one's agency is the equivalent of thinking we can do magic. I think Owen Flanagen believes that radical free will (in which a person could engage in libertarian free will) is like magic, and Daniel Dennett as well. But many of us are on the other side and believe that it is natural and plausible to think that we can act and have the power not to act in ways that are morally responsible or blameworthy. For a great book on this, check out Mawson's Free Will; A Guide for the Perplexed or Daniel Robinson's book On Praise and Blame.

Going on a bit further on the themes in you question magic and control I suppose the concept of the magical today is treated along the lines of miracles. A magical event (of the Harry Potter variety) is probably thought of as an event that someone brings about intentionally in a way that supersedes or goes beyond the non-magical, ordinary laws or course of nature. Magic, in this view, would involve a kind of extension of one's powers, so that under ordinary conditions it is not magic when I type this response, but it would be magic if I made these words appear to you in a dream (without using anything more than an incantation)! But you are right that what we think of as magic and control over our bodies does involve something in common: intentionality. In both cases, we intentionally bring about some state of affairs. In that sense, maybe they are "suspiciously similar ideas" though I suspect that there is nothing suspicious per se about acting intentionally.

The definition of "illness" that you are using was originally developed by Christopher Boorse, and many others who have looked for an "objective" concept of illness have also adopted it. You are correct to say that on this view, all illness, including mental illness, is due to some dysfunction. And you are correct to note that we do not know (for most mental illnesses) whether or not there is a brain dysfunction. In fact, some have suggested that depression can be a functional response to failure and/or loss.

Different concepts of illness are worth considering here. For example, "subjective" concepts in which "illness" is defined as an undesirable or unwanted state. According to such definitions, there is mental illness when there is (serious)mental distress (since distress is undesirable or unwanted).

In practice, much can hang on whether or not something is labelled an "illness": medical treatment, insurance reimbursement, sympathy, excuses, responsibility, etc. That's really too bad, in my opinion, because "illness" is such a flimsy concept!

That's one interpretation, but there are many others. My favorite interpretation focuses on this passage in Turing's classic 1950 essay, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (Mind 59:433-460):

I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

Of course, that century ended around the year 2000, and Turing's predicted "alteration" hasn't yet happened. But that's beside the point. Turing's claim, according to this passage, is that, if computers (better: computational cognitive agents or robots) pass Turing tests, then we will eventually change our beliefs about what it means to think (we will generalize the notion so that it applies to computational cognitive agents and robots as well as humans), and we will change the way we use words like 'think' (in much the same way that we have generalized what it means to fly or to be a computer, and have changed the way we use those words: Once upon a time, only animals like birds flew; now airplanes do, too. And once upon a time, only humans were computers; now machines are, too. (Take a look at an ad for a "computer" in The New York Times from 1892)

For more discussion, see:

James H. Moor (ed.), The Turing Test: The Elusive Standard of Artificial Intelligence (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003)

Shieber, Stuart M. (ed.) (2004), The Turing Test: Verbal Behavior as the Hallmark of Intelligence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

After reading this question, I first tried to transmit my answer to you telepathically, but it wasn't working, so I thought I'd try this more traditional method.

In any case, it strikes me that in order for something to count as telepathy, one would have to have some sort of direct and unmediated access to the thoughts of another. Suppose Jane and Clone Jane both go see a movie and, because they have identical genetic makeups and (let's suppose) similar past experiences, they each think something like "The ending would have been more emotionally satisfactory had the hero not gotten killed." Each of them is having the thought for the same reason, but they are each having it independently. That is, Jane's thought has no causal connection to Clone Jane's thought, and Jane does not have any direct access to Clone Jane's thought. And vice versa/ Their thoughts have similar (parallel) explanations, but no direct linkage to one another. So I don't see why this should count as a form of telepathy.

One way to put the point: Though Jane and Clone Jane "share a thought" in the sense that they each have an independent mental state with identical content, they do not "share a thought" in the sense that they each have access to the very same mind/brain state.

You are right that some philosophers have dismissed Freud's ideas on the grounds that they are "not scientific." I agree with you that this judgment is too harsh. Freudian interpretations are theories for which there can be evidence for or against. In practice, however, traditional Freudian analysts have been rather quick to accept and reject theories based on little evidence and much "intuitive plausibility." They have not considered that other interpretations of behavior and dreams may be equally likely. The philosopher of science Adolf Grunbaum thinks that the science of psychoanalysis is so sloppy that it should be thought of as "unscientific" or "pseudoscientic." But not all philosophers of science or psychologists reject psychoanalysis. Some think that Freud's specific account (in terms of id, ego, superego) is not as well confirmed as some other accounts (e.g. object relations theory).

Hm, good question. But does your question have an implicit premise -- that we do, or think we should, 'force' such people to change? When your conditions are truly met -- they're happy, not dangerous, and, presumably, adequately self-sufficient -- I'm not sure many people DO think we should treat them 'just for the sake of sanity' .... There's a nice novel called "Unless," by Carol Shields, that partly explores these themes -- a young woman suddenly decides to adopt a very alternative lifestyle and her very conventional mother can't help but think there must be something 'wrong' or 'mentally unstable' about her -- raises the question of when does 'difference' become 'illness' -- which I think is just underneath the surface of your question ....

hope that helps--

best, ap

Hm, good question. But does your question have an implicit premise -- that we do, or think we should, 'force' such people to change? When your conditions are truly met -- they're happy, not dangerous, and, presumably, adequately self-sufficient -- I'm not sure many people DO think we should treat them 'just for the sake of sanity' .... There's a nice novel called "Unless," by Carol Shields, that partly explores these themes -- a young woman suddenly decides to adopt a very alternative lifestyle and her very conventional mother can't help but think there must be something 'wrong' or 'mentally unstable' about her -- raises the question of when does 'difference' become 'illness' -- which I think is just underneath the surface of your question ....

hope that helps--

best, ap