FoundationalConceptsNeuroscience

whether HAL has a mind (by this definition) is to ask whether HAL
has an experience of what it is like to be HAL. For if HAL has mental
states like thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, then HAL, through its
experience of those mental states, would have an experience of being
HAL. A key feature here is that consciousness and mental experience
are irreducibly subjective phenomena.
So, what do you think about HAL? Does HAL have a mind?
It is clear that HAL is behaving as if it might have subjective mental
states of experience. But, really, who’s to say? HAL may even say that it
is experiencing feelings, but how can we know this? HAL may execute
sophisticated intentional behaviors, but we have no way of knowing if
this is accompanied by mental experience.
What are the conditions for mental experience to take place? This
is an unanswered question in science. We know the human capacity
for mental experience is related to the functioning of our brain and
nervous system. There is a lot of evidence for this, and some is dis-
cussed in this book. However, does this mean that something akin to
a brain and nervous system is necessary for mental experience, for
mind? Most neurobiologists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and
philosophers believe that this must be the case, that there cannot be
mind without something like a brain. Nevertheless, the fact that brain
and mind are intimately related does not prove that mind is solely a
product of brain and nervous system physiology and nothing more.
This brings us face-to-face with perhaps the greatest question in all of
science, and a longtime subject of great debate—what has been called
the mind-body problem: what is the relationship between our mental
experience and the physiology of our body and brain? I maintain that
this question contains within it the most profound questions we can
ponder: Who are we? What is our relation to everything else we be-
lieve we know and understand about physical reality? Indeed, what is