KISMET, http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/sociable/ongoing-research.html
Philosophy and
Artificial Intelligence*
Philosophy 29, 3 Credits
T,F:
Professor Seeley
Fall 2004
What are minds? Are minds like computers? If so, how much is a computer like a mind? Is it possible for a machine or a computer to think? If it were possible, what would these thoughts be like? Would they be just like ours? Could machines feel emotions or make genuinely moral choices? Do these questions have any bearing on the issue of the possibility of artificial intelligence? Underlying all these issues is a central question concerning the nature of thinking itself. Before we can know what sorts of things can be thinkers we must first come to an agreement on what it is to be a thinker at all.
It was once thought that thinking, the ability to form
rational thoughts, was what set human beings from the rest of the
universe. Today cognitive scientists
look to commonalities between minds and computers to help them understand
complex cognitive tasks like visual perception, rationality, and language
development. In this course we will examine and evaluate some contemporary concepts
and issues in philosophy and psychology that are critical to the computational
theory of mind and research in artificial intelligence such as: intentionality, representation,
consciousness, free will, behaviorism, the mind-machine analogy, and the
artificial intelligence model of the human mind.
*This
course is crosslisted as Computer and Information Science 32.1 and Psychology
57.2.