Machines, Animals and Humans
He claims that if such a machine was constructed (and it looked just like an animal) then
we could not tell that if was a machine from appearances and behaviour alone.
However, if a machine was built to mimic humans, we could tell immediately that it was a
Humans are motivated by knowledge and reason, whereas the actions of a machine are
initiated only by the particular configuration of its components.
Therefore, if we wanted to create a machine that looked and acted as human, we would have to build in a unique configuration for each action.
But, Decartes says, it would be impossible to anticipate every possible action and build the necessary configuration into a machine.
A machine may be able to do some things as well as or better than a human, but
there will always be actions which it cannot perform which a human can.
Humans use language creatively.
Humans put words together to form novel sentences in order to express our
Machines may be able to speak in response to external stimuli, e.g., by touching them in various places, but they could not use language creatively.