Artificial Intelligence A Philosophical Introduction [Paperback]

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 x

Acknowledgements Xl

Introduction 1

In outline 2

1 The beginnings of Artificial Intelligence: a historical sketch 4

1.1 The arrival of the computer 4

1.2 The Logic Theorist 7

1.3 The Dartmouth Conference 8

1.4 Alan Turing and the philosophy of AI 9

2 Some dazzling exhibits 11

2.1 Inside the machine 11

2.2 Parry the paranoid program 12

2.3 Eliza the psychotherapist 13

2.4 Shrdlu the robot 15

2.5 Hacker the program-writing program 18

2.6 Programs that play games 21

2.7 The General Problem Solver 24-

2.8 Sam and the Frump 26

2.9 Expert systems 30

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