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Goal-directed activity of an artifact is described as minimizing the interval between its present state and its goal. All examples of this are characterized by 'circulation of information', i.e. by feed-back. A suitably designed artifact is capable of receiving, selecting, storing, and sending information, reacting to changes in its 'universe', reasoning deductively, controlling its own activity so as to further some goal, and changing its pattern of behaviour as a result of experience. These capacities are consequences of the principle that 'any pattern of observable behaviour which can be specified in terms of unique and precisely-definable reactions to precisely-definable situations can in principle be imitated mechanically' (p. 108). Further an artifact can be designed with a statistical device, so that its behaviour could not be predicted precisely but only with probability. By this means an artifact can display analogues to prejudices, preferences, originality, and capacity to learn. This is stated as a principle: 'Any pattern of observable behaviour which can be defined statistically, in terms of probable reactions to given situations, can in principle be shown by an artefact' (p. 112). Abstraction or recognition of pattern also has its analogue in artefacts. By reproducing patterns that resemble patterns of stimuli, a process here called 'replicating stimuli', an artifact has a means by which it can describe its own experience. It could even learn, it is stated, to recognize patterns it had not been built to recognize, and to form abstract hypotheses. In short the author fails 'to find any distinction in principle between the observable behaviour of a human brain and the behaviour possible in a suitably designed artefact' (p. 120). In addition he briefly considers the bearing of his results on the Cartesian concept of mind, dualism, identity of the self, and freedom of the will.