ABSTRACT
What is a mind? No universal definition exists. Solipsism notwithstanding, humans are said to have a mind. Higher-order animals are believed to have one as well, and maybe lower-level animals and plants, or even all life-forms. I believe that an artificially intelligent agent, such as a robot
or a program running on a computer, will constitute a mind. Based on analysis of those examples, I can conclude that a mind is an instantiated intelligence with a knowledge base about its environment, and although intelligence itself is not an easy term to define, the work of Shane Legg provides a satisfactory, for my purposes, definition (Legg and Hutter 2007). In addition, some hold a point of view known as panpsychism, attributing mind-like properties to all matter. Without debating this possibility, I limit my analysis to those minds that can actively interact with their environment and other minds. Consequently, I do not devote any time to understanding what a rock is thinking.
