I was reading an article by J Mark Bishop "The danger of artificial stupidity" on ScientaSalon, where he quotes his own research, John Searle and Hilary Putnam, among others, as proof of the impossibility of strong AI. I've always felt that strong AI deniers were closeted substance-dualists. People who believed in souls, but were unwilling to come clean about their religious/metaphysical beliefs for fear of being ridiculed. So instead they come up with all sorts of pragmatic arguments against strong AI like qualia or computers lack of insight, which don't really hold.
My reasoning for why denying the possibility of strong AI implies substance dualism is the following:
Any finite sized physical phenomena can be reproduced given sufficient technological means and a sufficient understanding of the underlying physical processes.
Denying the possibility of strong AI means that no matter how advanced our technology and how comprehensive our knowledge of neuroscience and psychology will become, we will never be able to reproduce the functionality of the human mind.
Per 1) The only reason we would not be able to reproduce the mind's functionality is if there is something non-physical about how the mind works.
Saying there is something non-physical about how the mind works is the same as substance dualism.
My question is the following: Is this indeed the case, that denying the possibility of strong AI implies substance dualism?