I am really just writing this as a test of the forum facility. When Jane Goodall first reported observing chimpanzees making and using tools, the academic world was amazed. Her mentor said if this is true, we will either have to redefine tool use, redefine what it is to be human or admit that chimpanzees are human. It seems to me that there has been a shifting of the goal posts every time an animal is found to have a particular skill. Chimpanzees make and use tools - "oh but that's not really what we mean by tool use". Chimpanzees use language - "Oh but that's not really language". Alex the parrot uses complex logic "Oh but that's not really reasoning" and so on. I'm sure if the goal post shifters were asked to give a definition of tool use or language or reasoning before the animal did it, the animal would have passed. Somehow we are reluctant to allow that.

I don't like the idea of "goal posts" like "language", "tool use" etc.   These ways of trying to "operationalize" what it is to have a mind are too crudely empirical.  The question "what is it to have a mind?" demands a philosophical answer - it's not strictly speaking something that can be answered by science.  We need to answer it as philosophical question first in order to know how to design research which may allow us to draw conclusions about who/what qualifies as "having a mind".

From a philsophical perspective I'd say that we would probably conclude that there isn't a clear line of demarcation between those who have minds and those who don't.  Instead there are probably "grades of mindedness".  Does a newborn baby have a mind - or just a brain?  If a newborn doesn't have a mind initially at what age does he/she qualify as having one????  I don't think many people would be prepared to offer a definitive answer to this question because it would rapidly become clear that the mind is something which develops rather springing into existence as a fully fledged thing. As far as animals are concerned we may want to end up saying that many of them have a degree of mindedness. 

This is not to say that we can't attempt to say anything about who/what has a mind.  There are important ethical issues hanging on our conclusions.  Some might argue that we should restrict our notion of "mind" to those entities who produce behaviour which is pretty much on a par with what humans are capable of producing - because that is what it is to have a mind  (ie exhibiting human-level behavioural patterns).  If we define "mind" in that way, then I think we'd have to have another category which I'd call "sentience" - something which may fell well short of human levels of self-awareness but clearly indicates a capacity to both suffer and enjoy. 

(Of course Some people will want to say that just being human is enough to qualify an entity with a mind ... in my view this stance is directly related to the broadly religious view that having a mind is akin to having an immaterial soul.)

A useful book to read on the whole issue of what "constitutes" a mind is by Daniel Dennett (a philosopher). It's called "Kinds of Minds".

The mind is a concept under development. We don't know what we mean by it with any great precision. Many of us like it that way because we feel it is appropriate that it is a concept with hazy permeable boundaries; physical, yes, but so affected by interactions beyond the individual brain.

I think that experiments investigating whether animals have minds are built on ever-shifting sands. It's not that the goal posts are changing, so much as that what we mean when we say 'mind' is being defined and redefined as a concept at the same time.