John Puddefoot offers a Christian response to possibilities raised by the growing field of computer science and artificial intelligence (AI). What, if any, are the limits of AI? Can a computer have a mind? How does the advent of AI affect our understanding of the human soul? Does Commander Data of Star Trek have a soul and will he go to heaven? His treatment of the subject is intelligent, lucid and engaging. The slender volume is easy to read, though the author’s penchant for parenthetical statements is occasionally distracting. The text reads like a dialectic warning both those who exhibit too much enthusiasm for the potential of computers (‘strong AI’) and those who show too much fear or disbelief (many ‘religious people’). The author’s conclusions are suggestive rather than dogmatic.

God and the Mind Machine begins with the claim that ‘to become a creature such as ourselves an android will need a mind, an inside-looking-out quality such as we enjoy’ (p. 4). This is followed by an argument for a Spinoza-like monistic ‘dual-aspect’ theory of the mind (pp. 42–45). That is, there are not two-kinds-of-stuff (body and mind) but only one-kind-of-stuff (seen from the ‘outside’ as the brain and from the ‘inside’ as the mind). The mind, or ‘inside-out’ self-awareness, comes into being by means of the world stimulating the brain towards an outward orientation (p. 44). The author doubts, despite a future of spectacular advances, that symbol-processing computers will ever attain a mind in this sense (p. 135). But he does think that, possibly, minds could be grown in a manner similar to how he takes God to have grown human minds out of creation (p. 123). God created the universe and set into motion the processes of evolution. Through evolution God does indeed ‘plays dice’ with the world (p. 82) and in this creaturely freedom the possibility of human minds was actualized. The AI community, according to Puddefoot, will have its best chance of success if it sets up a free environment (perhaps with neural nets) in which a mind (of some kind) can be called forth by the outside world (pp. 135–136).

Puddefoot succeeds in his task to raise awareness of many thorny issues at stake in the AI debate. His warnings, such as against head-in-the-sand approaches towards the potential of AI, should not be ignored. Nevertheless the thoughtful Christian is likely to question some of the author’s philosophical and theological claims. Two come to mind. First, his monistic dual-aspect theory of the mind. Puddefoot rehearses some familiar points against dualism, such as its putative denigration of the material world (p. 39), its Greek origin (p. 40), and its failure to account for resurrection bodies (pp. 40–41). But dualists may feel that their view has been unduly caricatured in Platonic and Cartesian terms. Recently significant alternative dualist accounts have been proffered, such as Charles Taliafero’s ‘integrative’ dualism (Consciousness and the Mind of God, CUP, 1994), which attempts to avoid the perils of asceticism. One may also question whether the (pre-Hellenistic) Genesis account of mankind’s origin counts decisively for or against either view of the mind/body relationship. It is the NT which provides, arguably, the best evidence for dualism (cf. Mat. 10:28; Lk. 8:55; 2 Cor. 5:1–8; Phil. 1:22–24). But far more troubling is Puddefoot’s monistic account of bodily resurrection. He adopts a position (akin to John Hick’s) which suggests that at death ‘I’ cease to exist and that at resurrection another exact ‘I’ is recreated. He explains that ‘knowing what it is in its freedom allows the same thing to be remade in the same freedom’ (p. 130). But, many will want to know is this remade ‘same thing’ actually ‘me’? It is not just a second someone who is just like ‘me’?

Second, one may question his doctrine of creation. For example, even those who do not count themselves as literal six-day creationists are likely to be uneasy with Puddefoot’s robust an constant (almost Dawkinsian) enthusiasm for the explanatory power of the theory of biological evolution (cf. pp. 15, 18, 84, 85, 95, 97, 123). The virtual personification of Evolution and its causal role in the ‘production’ of life (p. 95) leave an impression of God’s action in the world which verges on semi-deism. There is also a tendency to diminish the biblical view of mankind’s special creation and unique relation to God. That is, the view which maintains that God created (bara) man in his own image, called him ‘very good’, intimately covenants with him, and in time even becomes a man to redeem a people for himself, does not fit well with the author’s claim that human beings ‘were displaced from their position as God’s special creation by Darwin’ (p. 85). In fact, according to Puddefoot God did not create human beings at all, he grew them (p. 123).

In the end whilst Puddefoot’s argument prods and pokes, it fails to persuade. If one finds dualism logically viable and theologically satisfying, and affirms God’s continued activity in the world and immediate special creation of man (including soul and mind), the likelihood that humans will prompt a computer to grow a mind or soul out of matter is virtually precluded as the author himself admits (pp. 39–40). Despite this I would recommend God and the Mind Machine to those interested in acquainting themselves with the basic technological and philosophical issues surrounding AI. But I suspect that those seeking deeper theological analysis of AI and computer science will wish, alas, that there had been a bit more substance to its body.