Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction

Presupposing no familiarity with the technical concepts of either philosophy or computing, this clear introduction reviews the progress made in AI since the inception of the field in 1956. Copeland goes on to analyze what those working in AI must achieve before they can claim to have built a thinking machine and appraises their prospects of succeeding. There are clear introductions to connectionism and to the language of thought hypothesis which weave together material from philosophy, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. John Searle′s attacks on AI and cognitive science are countered and close attention is given to foundational issues, including the nature of computation, Turing Machines, the Church–Turing Thesis and the difference between classical symbol processing and parallel distributed processing. The book also explores the possibility of machines having free will and consciousness and concludes with a discussion of in what sense the human brain may be a computer.

List of Figures. Acknowledgements. Introduction. In outline. 1. The beginnings of Artificial Intelligence; a historical sketch. 2. Some dazzling exhibits. 3. Can a machine think?. 4. The symbol system hypothesis. 5. A hard look at the facts. 6. The curious case of the Chinese Room. 7. Freedom. 8. Consciousness. 9. Are we computers?. 10. AI′s fresh start: parallel distributed processing. Epilogue. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

Jack Copeland is Senior Lecturer in philosophy and logic at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He has published widely on logic, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, and is editor of Logic and Reality (1993).

"An excellent job ... the most balanced treatment of the hopes and claims of AI I have yet seen." Hubert Dreyfus, University of California <!––end––>"The best philosophical introduction to artificial intelligence available." Justin Leiber, University of Houston