The Convergence Argument in Mind-Modelling: Scaling Up from Toyland to the Total Turing Test

Abstract

The Turing Test is just a methodological constraint forcing us to scale up to an organisms' full functional capacity. This is still just an epistemic matter, not an ontic one. Even a candidate in which we have successfully reverse-engineered all human capacities is not guaranteed to have a mind. The right level of convergence, however, is total robotic capacity; symbolic capacity alone (the standard Turing Test) is underdetermined, whereas full neurosimilitude is overdetermined.