PHIL4615: Minds, Bodies, and Machines

Mind-body problem. Philosophical relevance of cybernetics, artificial intelligence, computer simulation.Mental phenomena present the philosopher with a number of deep but inescapable puzzles and challenges. We tend to suppose that we know what it is to have a mind, to have beliefs, desires, etc., and we think that we know how to explain our own behavior and that of others -- and all of this without any formal training in the relevant science. All of this is surely amazing; indeed it verges on the outrageous. We admit to not knowing the makeup of the simplest structures, to not knowing how to explain the behavior of the simplest organisms -- we, OF COURSE, leave such issues to scientific investigation. Yet, at the same time, we think we know how to explain the behavior of this most complex of systems; we know how to do it, and we know what we are talking about when we explain behavior by citing the relevant beliefs, desires, etc. And, to repeat, we know all of this with no formal training. Strange indeed. Not only is this initial confidence puzzling, but attempts to articulate the mental story and to integrate it into the larger scientific picture have all proven problematical. We start our investigation with a very brief glance at a mid-century proposal that initiated a very different way of thinking about mind: the proposal by Turing -- one of the great minds of the 20th Century--that machines of a certain kind could exhibit intelligence. A story told in part in the recent movie, The Imitation Game. We then turn to some more traditional approaches to mind: Cartesianism, Behaviorism and Materialism. prereq: one course in philosophy or instr consent

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