How Artificial is Intelligence in AI? Arguments for a Non-Discriminatory Turing Test?

Friedrich von Hayek’s The Sensory Order (1952) presents a physicalist identity theory of the human mind. In a reaction to Karl Popper’s criticism that such a “causal” theory of the mind cannot explain the descriptive and critical-argumentative functions of language, Hayek wrote a paper that was never published. It contains the description of a thought experiment of two communicating automata. This paper confirms the impression of the AI-like character of the structuralism and functionalism of Hayek’s Sensory Order . In some important respects, what Hayek tries to do in his paper is similar to Turing’s discussion of the question “can machines think?” Arguments will be given why according to a functionalist and physicalist identity theory of mind the distinction between artificial and “natural” intelligence cannot be upheld. According to such a theory, Turing tests are unnecessarily restrictive and discriminatory vis-à-vis machines. In the end, the question whether or not machines can think is not meaningless, as Turing thought. It can be replaced by the question if artificial minds are capable of consciousness. The Turing test , however, cannot give the answer.