In the previous episode we looked at what I consider to be the best hope and strongest motivation for the belief that artificial intelligence could one day become actually intelligent. That is the philosophical view called physical reductionism. We saw that there is widespread belief among computer scientists, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers of mind that the human mind is nothing more than a kind of biological computer. According to this view, mental states and processes are nothing over and above the physical states and processes of the brain. We also saw that, if this is true, then the idea of machine sentience is not only possible, but is already actual, since every person on the planet is already a kind of wholly material thinking machine. So that the idea of creating a machine that is as intelligent and even more intelli ...