In my worldview, the mind (consciousness, spirit, soul) is non-temporal, non-spatial and non-corporeal. There is no requirement of physical laws that it be anywhere, at any time or contained within or be comprised of anything corporeal.
That is why IMHO artificial intelligence may lead to a devise which cannot know that it is not alive.
Ryle's arguments may be of interest to you, if only to refine your own.
But even in your model the mind must consist of patterns which follow certain rules. Otherwise it doesn't make sense to even speak of a 'mind'.
I mean how are memories, for instance, stored in this non-temporal, non-spatial and non-corporeal mind? What changes when you learn something new?
More specifically, in my Christian worldview, the relationship between the mind and the physical body is one of sensory utility. IOW, it is the mind that uses the body not as Pinker would have it, that “the mind is what the brain does.” Evidently, your worldview is much closer to Pinker's.
And this is why I think that your model introduces more problems than it solves (actually I don't think it solves any problems because it just transfers them to a higher level).
This mind which exists in an other dimension or realm doesn't interact with the physical world except with some organic molecules that form a lump of matter which we call "brain". Now how does it do this? How are these molecules manipulated? And what kind of device do we need to detect it directly?
I mean if it can interact with molecules in a brain then it shouldn't be harder to detect than neutrinos for instance.
To the contrary, I would say that the mind can be simulated in matter by artificial intelligence. It would nevertheless be a simulation and not the real thing.
Well, then this mind is implemented in matter and not uh... spirit. So why shouldn't it be the real thing, especially if you cannot tell the two systems appart? If they are equivalent, you can't.
And even if you can create an artificial brain, how can you know that what you observe is only the product of this material brain and not a non-temporal, non-spatial and non-corporeal mind that has just connected to this brain?
Not at all. Viruses and bacteria have information content. The genetic code is much like a database and the living organism – of whatever size – communicates successfully among its members and its environment. At bottom, it is this information (successful communication) that separates the living from the non-living.
So a cyclohexane molecule doesn't have information content?
According to your definition every self-replicating molecule can be considered alive but some people think they're not and neither do they consider viruses to be alive.
So again, at this level the terms "alive" and "not-alive" become rather fuzzy.
What is the difference between a simulation and the "real thing"? Not anecdotally, but fundamentally? Remember that your answer should square with the Invariance Theorem and related concepts (e.g. Turing equivalence).
That is why IMHO artificial intelligence may lead to a devise (sic) which cannot know that it is not alive.
Replace "cannot" with "might not" and I may agree. What does "alive" really mean, beyond being an arbitrary set of properties that a machine may or may not have? A bacterium can be obviously reduced to a marvelously intricate piece of machinery and it is most certainly alive (and apparently unaware of this fact). A virus sits on the boundary because its machinery is far less sophisticated, being nothing more than a punchcard for a cellular Jacquard's Loom that is capable of making the loom produce more punchcards. Animals are special in that they have a tissue matrix capable of encoding high order patterns (neural tissue), but these tissues are alive in the same sense that a bacterium is.
Any device with sufficient capability to encode high order patterns also has the capacity for self-awareness. Capacity and literal expression are two different things though, which quite a chasm betwixt them.
So, is a computer virus alive?