Abstract

A wide range of expressions are predicable literally or primarily only of human beings and of creatures that behave like them. The English word 'mind' is connected primarily with the intellect and the will. To have a mind to do something is to be inclined or tempted to do it, and to have half a mind to do something is to be sorely tempted, perhaps against one's better judgement. Artificial‐intelligence scientists insist that they are already building machines that can think and see, recognize and identify, make choices and decisions. Chess‐playing machines can 'beat' chess‐masters, and computers can 'calculate' far more efficiently and quickly than mathematicians. Machines, unlike living creatures, do not have a body, although they are bodies. Machines and their parts have purposes and functions: viz. those which they were designed to fulfil.