To form an opinion on computers and thinking, I think it is important to first form an opinion on thinking itself. Now many people may feel that thinking is merely scientific - the application of facts and figures. I disagree; and therefore went to my dictionary to see if it correlated with my idea of thinking. There are many definitions as we do not yet know the workings of the mind; however their tone was all the same. Common words I found in the definitions were: reason, judge, decide, reflect, ponder, regard, believe, feel, suppose, expect, hope, intend, imagine, conceive, consider, etc. - in a word "soul." I realize that I just listed a lot of vocabulary, but this and much more is involved in thought and it is just not physically possible to duplicate.
I will go back to an earlier statement I made and that is that we do not yet know the workings of the mind. Many would use this as an argument in favor of computers and thinking. I find that argument to be empty because even if we could solve one of man's biggest mysteries, who is to say that we could reproduce it. Furthermore, I do not think we will ever be able to crack the puzzle of our brains - it is something even above science. I"m not saying we can't understand the simple actions, we are familiar with many functions and their parts, even a scientific layman like myself knows about neurons and waves, but it ends there. There is know way to understand and accordingly replicate a soul, and since that is the underlying catalyst behind thought, we cannot replicate thought.
On the other hand, computers can do many things that men cannot, not to say that we cannot do these things at all, but simply not as efficient and timely. Administrative work immediately comes to mind. A computer can sort through millions of documents or whatever you may fancy in a matter of seconds. I bring this up because this is the type of "thinking" that they are capable of - technical and exact.
