Philip K. Dick : The Author

1 For an excellent book based around a junkies lifestyle see his novel A Scanner Darkly (1977). 2 The functionalist is not concerned with the stuff or the material that a possible thinking thing is made of, biological material and/or silicon, but with the way that it is put together and works. The functionalist is not hampered by the talk of the material of the possible thinking thing because the material is considered to be hardware and interchangeable. In principle, a computer can be made of any substance. The software is what tells the hardware how to operate. Obviously, the computer metaphor is already strongly at work here, and by drawing on the analogy of a computer to help explain the structure of the brain/mind, the functionalist can account for both mental states - software, and physical states - hardware. 3 Proponents of artificial intelligence speak of 'Turning Tests' as a way of testing whether computers possess intelligence. Roger Penrose states that in order to test we "simply ask that	it behave as a human being would" (The Emperor's New Mind, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 6). Furthermore, we "would say that the computer thinks provided that it acts; indistinguishably from the way that a person acts when thinking". The operational aspect characterised by the Turning Test possesses a few problems which Philip K. Dick explores. For instance, a person could ask a computer to perform a huge calculation which might give the computer away as it would violate the Turning criterion. The operational aspect of a Turning Test calls for the subject to act "indistinguishably from the way that a person acts when thinking' (Penrose, page 6). Due to the difficulties of a Turnin Test, rules are set up to keep the test fair. Most importantly, the communication between the testers and the computers is performed via terminals. Also there are a number of people mixed in with the computers to cast a measure of doubt on the testers as to whether they are indeed speaking to humans. Of course, if computers were to look like humans, the first criterion would be no longer needed. Philip K. Dick examines this problem in many of his stories and in his discussions of androids and humans.

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