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1-Page Summary of The Mind Club

What Is the “Mind Club?”

People often ask questions about behavior and existence. They wonder what others think, feel or do in certain situations. These inquiries shape many different philosophies, daily lives and legal systems. People also wonder if animals can understand their owner’s intentions or determine if criminals know that murder is wrong and choose to break the law anyway.

Any entity that thinks and feels is a member of the mind club. People who are living normal lives belong to this club. Beyond that, you can make critical distinctions: If someone is declared brain dead, they shift from personhood to being an organ donor. People use perception in order to make the best judgments possible about their surroundings. Mathematician Alan Turing created a test called the “Turing Test” which asks people questions without telling them whether it’s coming from another person or computer program; when they cannot tell the difference between these two sources, does this mean that the computer has become functionally equivalent to a thinking human?

More than 2,000 people took a survey on minds and compared various mental capacities. The results showed that most people see the mind as having two axes: one for experience (how aware is it?) and another for agency (is it able to act?). These factors are what define a mind’s “inside” versus “outside.”

The mind has two elements: experience and agency. The average person is high in both of them, but babies are low in both of them. Babies deserve moral rights because they have no agency, and people with experience deserve moral rights because they have no experience.

Moral agents are responsible for the moral or immoral actions they take, while moral patients suffer from those actions.

Animal Minds

People think that animals have different levels of intelligence based on how quickly they move. Slower moving animals are seen as less intelligent than faster moving ones. Complex actions performed by an animal is a clear sign of intelligence, like the use of tools by chimpanzees or environmental manipulation by birds such as ravens and blue jays. The rhythmic motion produced by some animals is also indicative of their intelligence.

When we are aware of mind, it shows that there is a mind. Chimps act differently when they know other chimps are watching them. Humans see this awareness as more evident in creatures that resemble humans and animals that feel emotions, especially complex emotions. Elephants help other elephants and mourn their dead band members because they understand fairness and find unfairness upsetting.

Machines

For most people, a machine that seems to have a mind is more real than one that doesn’t. People see minds in machines when they: 1) have faces; 2) mimic the way humans interact with each other; or 3) seem needy, like 1990s Tamagotchi toys. Machines are seen as having minds when they frustrate users by not working properly or obeying commands.

People have been wondering if machines will develop minds. Futurist Ray Kurzweil argues that computers can increase their own intelligence and reach super-intelligence status. Computers are already performing tasks the human mind performs, such as playing Jeopardy and winning against champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

People have a natural resistance to granting full humanity to machines. However, people who are empathetic with robots find it easier to treat them as if they had their own minds.

Patients and Enemies

The word patient is used to refer to people who are vulnerable and feel intense pain. This includes medical patients, but also those who suffer from something else that causes them pain. Pain has two components: the sensory component, which is a form of perception; and the affective component, which involves emotions and feelings. These two components interact with each other in a complex way that leads to the well-known placebo effect, where patients experience real changes despite not having any physical damage done to them.