Thinking about Android Epistemology (Paperback)

Description

For millennia, "from Aristotle to almost yesterday," the great problems of philosophy have all been about people: questions of epistemology and philosophy of mind have concerned human capacities and limitations. Still, say the editors of Thinking about Android Epistemology, there should be theories about other sorts of minds, other ways that physical systems can be organized to produce knowledge and competence. The emergence of artificial intelligence in mid-twentieth century provided a way to study the powers and limits of systems that learn, to theorize and to make theories sufficiently concrete so that their properties and consequences can be demonstrated. In this updated version of the 1995 MIT Press book Android Epistemology, computer scientists and philosophers--among them Herbert Simon, Daniel Dennett, and Paul Churchland--offer a gentle, unsystematic introduction to alternative systems of cognition. They look at android epistemology from both theoretical and practical points of view, offering not only speculative proposals but applications--ideas for using computational systems to expand human capacities. The accessible and entertaining essays include a comparison of 2001's HAL and today's computers, a conversation among aliens who have a low opinion of human cognition, an argument for the creativity of robots, and a short story illustrating the power of algorithms for learning causal relations.

Contributors:
Neil Agnew, Margaret Boden, Paul Churchland, Daniel Dennett, Ken M. Ford, Clark Glymour, Pat Hayes, Henry Kyburg, Doug Lenat, Marvin Minsky, Joseph Nadeau, Anatol Rappoport, Herbert Simon, Lynn Andrea Stein, Susan Sterrett

Kenneth M. Ford is Founder and Director of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Pensacola.

Clark Glymour is Senior Research Scientist at IHMC and Alumni University Professor of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Patrick J. Hayes is a Senior Research Scientist at IHMC.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
Clark Glymour, Kenneth M. Ford and Patrick J. Hayes vii
 
 Part One: Why Android Epistemology? 
 
1 The Prehistory of Android Epistemology
Clark Glymour, Kenneth M. Ford and Patrick J. Hayes 3
 
2 On Computational Wings
Kenneth M. Ford and Patrick J. Hayes 25
 
3 The Vitalists' Last Stand
Anatol Rapoport 37
 
4 Silicon Reflections
Clark Glymour 47
 
 Part Two: Designs for Cognition 
 
5 Machine as Mind
Herbert A. Simon 57
 
6 From 2001 to 2001: Common Sense and the Mind of HAL
Douglas B. Lenat 75
 
7 Imagination and Situated Cognition
Lynn Andrea Stein 89
 
8 Conceptual Similarity Across Sensory and Neural Diversity: The Fodor / Lepore Challenge Answered
Paul M. Churchland 107
 
9 Alienable Rights
Marvin L. Minsky 137
 
 Part Three: The Frame Problem 
 
10 Cognitive Wheels: The Frame Problems of AI
Daniel C. Dennett 147
 
11 Dennett's Beer
Henry E. Kyburg, Jr. 171
 
12 Goldilocks and the Frame Problem
Patrick J. Hayes, Kenneth M. Ford and Neil M. Agnew 183
 
 Part Four: Android Abilities 
 
13 Too Many Instincts: Contrasting Philosophical Views on Intelligence in Humans and Nonhumans
Susan G. Sterrett 187
 
14 Could a Robot Be Creative--And Would We Know?
Margaret A. Boden 217
 
15 Only Androids Can Be Ethical
Joseph Emile Nadeau 241
 
16 The Adventures Among the Asteroids of Angela Android, Series 8400XF, with an Afterword on Planning, Prediction, Learning, the Frame Problem, and a Few Other Subjects
Clark Glymour 249
 
 Part Five: Conclusion 
 
17 Humanity, the Computer, and Cognitive Prostheses
Kenneth M. Ford, Clark Glymour and Patrick J. Hayes 263
 
 Bibliography and References 267
 
 Index 277