Can computers think: Dictionary definitions and philosophical perspectives

¶ … computers think?

First coming to theaters in 1984, The Terminator was a movie that captured audiences and enveloped them in a world of unknown- robots, intelligence, destruction and the future. The cyborg assassin in the movie fostered society's greatest fear- technology that developed so rapidly that people would not be able to control it. But to what end could this scientific fantasy movie become a reality? Could the laptops that people use everyday suddenly be able to think, act and even cause the destruction similar to that in the blockbuster movie? As technology develops at a rapid pace in modern day society, it solicits the all important question, can computers think?

Foremost, an understanding to the term and concept of thinking must be established as a foundational framework to move forward with the dilemma of computers being able to think. There are two different components to the concept of thinking: the mechanical part as well as the emotional part. First, the mechanical part seems to be set by "the doctrines first set down in the 1950s" by Carnegie-Mellon University Professor's Allen Newell and Herbert Simon, who asserted that "thinking is information processing" and that "information processing is computation, which is the manipulation of symbols" and finally that "symbols, because of their relationships and linkages, mean something about the external world" ("The age of," 2001). The insights by these professors helps gain insight into the more mechanical understanding of what thinking is and in its simplest form, thinking can be broken down into the fundamental components that the professors have described. It is true that thinking is more or less processing the information that is perceived by the brain, and that the symbols that are being perceived are the images and relationships in the outside world; but, there is additional layer of thinking that also contributes to the overall concept, which is the emotional aspect. Rene Descartes, famously wrote in his work The Discourse on Method, "I think, therefore I am" (Skirry, 2008). The meaning behind this statement is that thinking comprises a person- it makes up the essence of a person as it allows them to exhibit a vast array of thoughts, feelings, expressions, ideas, among other things. Being able to think, makes a person the way that they are- it makes everyone individual and it is the power of thinking that essentially arms people to be who they are, when they choose to do it. The power to think allows people to make choices, bad and good. Between the mechanical and emotional components, the concept of thinking is more completely understood and can be used in the foundational framework in the debate over computers being able to think.

When it comes to the issue of finding out if computers can think, it seems the answer is most definitely not. The understanding of thinking came in a two-pronged explanation- the mechanical and the emotional. In the case of the computer, it seems that though the mechanical aspect is present, there is no emotional component that can be observed. When imagining a laptop computer, it begs the question: in what way is this laptop computer feeling when someone bangs on the keyboard to hard? Computers and other mechanical devices are programmed to perform in a certain way because they are made that way. The missing link to make an electric device, like a computer, to think is the emotional component- these devices have no ability to have nuances in emotions, a byproduct of being able to think at a level that society understands. Some may argue that robots, a more complex computing system, have the ability to think and express themselves in a more complex and human like manner; to that end, researchers in Japan have unveiled a new robot that has the ability to display seven human emotions (Barnett, 2009). This robot begs the question: how did it learn these emotions? It turns out that the robot was programmed with these expressive emotions, they were not learned over time through trial and error like living organisms do, robots and other computing devices do not have the option of making decisions for themselves or understanding the complexity and intricate nature of the symbols that they are computing in their power grids.