We are no different than computers

[The Grand Nudger]

Guys, read about artificial neural networks. We are not talking about writing an algorithm that acts in some limited fixed ways here, as the colloquial use of the word "programming" would suggest.

This is true enough.  In fact, in a complex ANN, we STILL won't know how complex ideas form. Much as with the brain (maybe more so), we will only be able to wave toward our ANN and say, "Something happened in there. . ."
@OP
My question is this. Is it safe therefore to ASSUME that something which behaves like an emotional human therefore has an actual mind and actual feelings? How do you tell the difference between an actually sentient being and one that might seem to be sentient, but really isn't? Should robots that can pass the Turing test be given human rights? Should disabling one count as murder?

As Jor asked, how do you tell now?  The point of asking that question is not to cast doubt on whether or not you have a mind..but to help you to realize that you already employ a method in making the determination....and the method you use now, to decide that I, for example, have a mind...doesn't actually help you to determine whether or not -I- am "faking it".

My question is this. Is it safe therefore to ASSUME that something which behaves like an emotional human therefore has an actual mind and actual feelings? How do you tell the difference between an actually sentient being and one that might seem to be sentient, but really isn't? Should robots that can pass the Turing test be given human rights? Should disabling one count as murder?

The Turing test, no. Allow me to introduce the Dostoevsky test. When an entire dictionary is uploaded into a computer's language program, and pressed to take some time to express its "emotions" and "thoughts," if it can return with a work that approaches The Brothers Karamazov, perhaps writing notes about the process and how it came up with the ideas or subplots on the side, it will have sufficiently convinced me. Shit, I'd be happy if it produced something akin to Genesis 1 or even Dr. Seuss. Come to think of it, has anyone tried to write a book via a computer that formulates from its own software meaningful and/or artful syntax?

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Well, this is interesting:
http://singularityhub.com/2014/11/09/com...read-them/

......and yet many creatures exist which we claim "mind" for (with tons of provisions..granted) - that could not pass the test.  You're expecting a machine to be a human being in order to -prove- that it has a mind...but doing so would more accurately speak to whether or not the machine was human, not whether or not it had "mind".  Eh?
We simply don't know how human beings "do mind".  We have the beginning of an inkling, that's it.  Comp mind offers an n as to how mind might be achieved by asking how things like comparison -are- achieved....in machine implementation.  Perhaps our minds do comparison differently - here are some examples of how it -can be- done. Explaining the unknown by reference to the known.  No one actually expects to find an analog circuit in your skull...........nor do we expect to be able to create "human" machines......that's not the suggestion......and it's probably not the most meaningful point of reference to begin with.
-@Quatar, swarming algorithms actually do posess the ability to assess workload in the manner you described as being a "human difference". Most notable examples are ant sims. We know a little bit about how actual ants "consider" their labor allocation as well - they don't. An effect is achieved which seems, to us, to be labor distruibution...it is distribution-of-labor- but nary a single ant ever gives a moments consideration to the matter. Amazing stuff, really - very efficient, very risk adverse.