Not a day goes by without us being told about the enormous progress computers are making. How they invade one field after another. How, mastering one task after another, they are already as smart as, or smarter than, those who make them and program them. And how, on the way, they are becoming more and more like humans.

So let me put forward a number of questions.

Does anyone think that computers can be afraid?

Does anyone think computers can experience ambition?

Does anyone think computers can experience anger?

Does anyone think computers can experience avarice?

Does anyone think computers can know what beauty is?

Does anyone think computers can have confidence?

Does anyone think computers can have a conscience?

Does anyone think computers can experience contentment?

Does anyone think computers can know what courage is?

Does anyone think computes can be curious?

Does anyone think computers can experience despair?

Does anyone think computers can experience disappointment?

Does anyone think computers can dream?

Does anyone think computes can make an effort?

Does anyone think computers can feel elated?

Does anyone think computers can get excited?

Does anyone think computers can experience frustration?

Does anyone think computers can have fun?

Does anyone think computers can experience generosity?

Does anyone think computers can come up with goals they want to achieve?

Does anyone think computers can experience goodwill?

Does anyone think computers can experience guilt?

Does anyone think computers can experience happiness?

Does anyone think computers can hate?

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Does anyone think computers can experience hope?

Does anyone think computers can be humane?

Does anyone think computers can experience joy?

Does anyone think computers can love?

Does anyone think computers can do anything on purpose?

Does anyone think computers can experience pain?

Does anyone think computers can experience pity?

Does anyone think computers can experience regret?

Does anyone think computers can relax?

Does anyone think computers can experience responsibility?

Does anyone think computers can be sad?

Does anyone think computers can have a sense of humor?

Does anyone think computers can be serious?

Does anyone think computers can experience sorrow?

Does anyone think computers can be stubborn?

Does anyone think computes can suffer?

Does anyone think computers can experience surprise?

Does anyone think computers can experience terror?

Does anyone think computers can know what being tired means?

Does anyone think computers can know what a sense of wonder is?

Does anyone think computers can worry?

 

And let’s not forget adoration, affection, amazement. avarice, awe, boredom—by no means the least important of the lot–camaraderie, competitiveness, disgust, embarrassment, empathy, fretfulness, friendship, honor, industriousness, longing, masochism, pleasure (pleasure!), possessiveness, respect, restfulness and its opposite, restlessness, revulsion, sadism, satisfaction, sluggishness, sympathy, trust, worship, and many others too. Along with any number of others these capacities control our thought. To paraphrase Nietzsche, it is not reason that controls our emotions. Instead, all it does is find more or less feeble excuses for them.

Much as our understanding of the world may have expanded, how what originally was mere dead matter—mainly oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen—ever acquired these and similar qualities is a mystery. One whose solution is not one iota closer than it was, say, fifty-thousand centuries ago when we still lived in extended family groups thinly spread along the savannah. And one that is likely to remain so for some time to come. Now turn the idea on its head. Suppose that, using chemicals, electrodes, a scalpel, or some combination of all of these, we succeed in excising them and eliminating them from our mind. What would remain?

You guessed it: Simply a computer.