[Most of the articles for the group labeled, “Foundations,”] state or beg the question, “Can machines think?” Another way of asking this question is, “Is cognition distinctly a human phenomenon?” Turing may have been one of the first to promote intelligent capabilities in machines. As technology increases, it seems that Turing may have been right. Today, it is unclear that intelligence and cognition are strictly human. Some of the most heated arguments against science, particularly psychology and biology, seem to center around a perceived threat against humanity. For example, evolution was and still is challenged, in large part, because to believe in evolution means accepting natural selection and similarity among evolved species. Evolution threatens the uniqueness and even the superiority of humankind, according to many opponents. Similarly, the possibility of language in primates is refuted by many, I believe, in large part because this cognitive ability has been believed to be reserved only for humans. John Searle seems to be making a similar argument against what he refers to as “strong” artificial intelligence. Searle argues that “instantiating a program” (422) cannot lead to understanding as a human, or even an animal understands. Searle argues that machines or programs lack “intentionality”, and are meaningless. I sympathize with Searle that it is difficult to accept a machine that shares cognitive capabilities with a human. Such a hypothesis seems to challenge the core values of humanity, such as our individuality and our unpredictability, or diversity. The rational human mind is something that has set humans apart from all other things even before Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum.” However just as evolution and language capabilities among primates have challenged core beliefs about humanity, more recent discoveries made in cognitive neuroscience and cognitive