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A great deal of intellectual effort is therefore spent these days—mostly by the computer scientists themselves—trying to reassure everybody that, as smart as a machine can get, it can never be as intelligent as its progenitor. In part, this effort is made in order to see that the wizened, noncomputer generation—which often regards the younger with the unbridled enthusiasm that the Chinese showed the Mongol hordes—feels that it has a safe and legitimate place in modernity. In part, the effort is made because the proposition is true: a computer cannot possess the full range of human intelligence. Yet, in terms of reconciling man and machine, this effort still misses the point. The cultural value of computers does not lie in perceiving what they cannot do, but what they can, and what, in turn, their capabilities show about our own. In other words, a computer may not display the whole of human intelligence, but that portion it can display could do a lot more good for man's self-confidence than continuing reassurances that he is in no immediate danger of death by robot.
Essentially, what one wants to know in sorting out this relationship is the answers to two questions: Can computers think (a technical problem)? And, should they think (a moral one)? In order to get at both, it is first necessary to agree on what thinking itself is—what thought means—and that is no quick step. Every period in history has had to deal with at least two main definitions of thought, which mirror the prevailing philosophies of that particular time and are usually in opposition. Moreover, these contending schools change from age to age. On a philosophical level, thought cannot know itself because it cannot step outside itself. Nor is it an activity that can be understood by what it produces (art, science, dreams). To Freud the mind was a house; to Plato a cave. These are fascinating, workable metaphors, but the fact is that in each case an analogy had to be substituted for an equation.
At the same time, certain aspects of thinking can be identified without encompassing the entire process. The ability to comprehend, to conceptualize, to organize and reorganize, to manipulate, to adjust—these are all parts of thought. So are the acts of pondering, rationalizing, worrying, brooding, theorizing, contemplating, criticizing. One thinks when one imagines, hopes, loves, doubts, fantasizes, vacillates, regrets. To experience greed, pride, joy, spite, amusement, shame, suspicion, envy, grief—all these require thought; as do the decisions to take command, or umbrage; to feel loyalty or inhibitions; to ponder ethics, self-sacrifice, cowardice, ambition. So vast is the mind's business that even as one makes such a list, its inadequacy is self-evident—the recognition of inadequacy being but another part of an enormous and varied instrument. .