Could robots be conscious?

Descartes believed that mere physical mechanisms could never think flexibly and use language in the ways that humans do. Nor, lacking res cogitans (substance that thinks), could they be conscious. However, the ability to think, use language and be conscious even in humans cannot really be explained by adding an immaterial substance ‘that thinks’, for the simple reason that all questions about how it is possible for humans to think, use language, etc. simply regress to res cogitans (see Chapter 2). Language and thought require the use of rules and procedures that need to be instantiated in some medium that can carry out such rules and procedures. Cognitive psychology takes it for granted that the embodying medium is the brain. Functionalism in cognitive psychology (psychofunctionalism) makes the added assumption that mind and consciousness are nothing more than forms of processing in the brain. Formally, mental or conscious states are identified with the causal relationships that state enters into with perceptual input, overt responses and other mental or conscious states. From this point of view, the study of mind and consciousness simply is the study of the rules and procedures people use when they think, solve problems, use language and so on, typically specified in information processing or neural network terms.