Imagine that in 2020 the computational structure of the brain has been mapped out. 4 billion Norwegians spread out across Texas are attempting to build Gigantor—an enormous Turing machine composed of the Norwegians, railroad cars, tracks, blackboards, erasers, and golf carts. Furthermore, the Norwegians have been drugged, covered with electrodes hooked to a central console, and are under the control of whatever impulses are sent to them. Their actions are now under the dictate of natural law.

Because Gigantor lacked mental states before the electrode intervention, it seems unlikely that Gigantor will have any mental states after the intervention.

Selmer Bringsjord (1992).

The Bringsjord argument

Here is the argument in Bringsjord's words:

"It's the year 2020. The big state of Texas, you hear one day, has been purchased by the Norwegians, who, though confined to a thin sliver of Scandinavian land in 1991, and at that time only 4 million in number, now outnumber the Chinese, and are extremely wealthy. Furthermore, the Norskies go in for gargantuan engineering projects in this day and age; in particular, they want to build a standard Turing machine down in Texas which represents the flow chart which describes the human brain. . . Sometimes the Norwegians "sub out" to foreign contractors; you are such a person. The Norwegians have hired you to help build an agent, a person, something they call 'Gigantor.' Gigantor is to be Texas-sized; and his "brain" is to be composed of a standard Turing machine stretching across the Lone Star State—a Turing machine which is isomorphic to flow charts for human brains. The Turing machine that you have been hired to help build is to be made of Norwegian citizens themselves... Norwegians and railroad ties and tracks, and blackboards and chalk and erasers. So there you are: picture yourself with a hard hat on, picture golf carts for moving Norwegians around the construction site, picture them dutifully linking railroad track together, picture them feverishly writing symbols on the blackboards placed in the squares between ties, and so on and so on" (S. Bringsjord, 1992, p. 210-211).

However, the next step in Bringsjord's argument goes a step further:

"There is a neurologist, Jones, who has a bird's eye view of the Norwegians all working away. Jones, we can assume, gets some overhead satellite shots of the Norwegians in their tracks with a special drug of his invention, and then he hooks up electrodes to each brain in the Lone Star complex, and runs these electrodes, with the help or wires, back to a special console of his design. When the drug wears off, Jones will be able to sit comfortably at his console and punch into his keyboard permutations which causally necessitate that the Norwegians behave as they were behaving when they were going about their work willingly. The important thing to notice... is that the Norwegians are now acting not of their own free will, but under the dictates of physical law. And yet it seems obvious that Jones' actions can't suddenly have taken us from the absence of mentality to Gigantor, a genuine agent with hopes and fears like our own" (S. Bringsjord, 1992, p. 221-222).

References

Bringsjord, Selmer. 1992. What Robots Can and Can't Be. Boston: Kluwer.