I noted in the original article (Eliasmith this collection) that I was attempting to avoid becoming mired in tangential debates regarding what it is to have a mind by simplifying the criteria for mindedness (for the purposes of that article). Exactly the kinds of debates I was attempting to avoid are raised in Hill’s commentary. For example, I don’t think we know if there is a clean contrast between a “fully minded agent” and a “merely cognitive agent” (Hill this collection, p. 6). Perhaps there is, and perhaps it is that a fully minded agent can “experience herself as a cognitive agent”, (Hill this collection, p. 6) but perhaps not. This does not strike me as a decidable question at present.
So, perhaps my unwillingness to venture into the murky waters of necessary and sufficient conditions for having a mind came off as making me look like a behaviourist. But in truth, my purpose was rather to focus on providing a variety of evidence that I think suggests that artificial minds are not as far away as some have assumed. There is, I believe, a historically unique confluence of theory, technology, and capital happening as we speak.