Consciousness

If there were machines which bore a resemblance to our body and imitated our actions as far as it was morally possible to do so, we should always have two very certain tests by which to recognise that, for all that, they were not real man. The first is, that they could never use speech or other signs as we do when placing our thoughts on record for the benefit of others. For we can easily understand a machine’s being constituted so that it can utter words, and even emit some responses to action on it of a corporeal kind, which brings about a change in its organs. …the second difference is, that although machines can perform certain things as well as or perhaps better than any of us can do, they infallibility fall short in others, by the which means we discover that they did not act from knowledge, but only from the disposition of their organs. 116

The fact that [machines] do better than we do, does not prove that they are endowed with mind. 117

A clock which is only composed of wheels and weights is able to tell the hours and measure the time more correctly than we can do with all our wisdom. 117

Our soul is in its nature entirely independent of body, and in consequence that it is not liable to die with it. 118

Meditation

I found here that thought is an attribute that belongs to me; it alone cannot be separated from me.

To speak accurately I am not more than a thing which thinks, that is to say a mind or a soul, or an understanding, or a reason, which are terms whose significance was formerly unknown to me. I am, however, a real thing and really exist; but what thing? I have answered: a thing which thinks. 152

So serious are the doubts into which I have been thrown … that I can neither put them out of my mind nor see any way of resolving them. It feels as if I have fallen unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom nor swim op to the top.