To clarify and illuminate the place of probability in science Ellery Eells and James H. Fetzer have brought together some of the most distinguished philosophers ...

John Searle distinguished between weak and strong artificial intelligence (AI). This essay discusses a third alternative, mild AI, according to which a machine may be capable of possessing a species of mentality. Using James Fetzer's conception of minds as semiotic systems, the possibility of what might be called ``mild AI'' receives consideration. Fetzer argues against strong AI by contending that digital machines lack the ground relationship required of semiotic systems. In this essay, the implementational nature of semiotic processes posited by (...) Charles S. Peirce's triadic sign relation is re-examined in terms of the underlying dispositional processes and the ontological levels they would span in an inanimate machine. This suggests that, if non-human mentality can be replicated rather than merely simulated in a digital machine, the direction to pursue appears to be that of mild AI. (shrink)

Jon Elster believes that methodological individualism is self-evident (Elster 1986, 66). Not finding it so, and being suspicious of philosophers who claim that their views are so obvious as to demand no arguments in their favor, I went back to retrace the outlines of the methodological individualism debate. It turns out that the participants to the debate disagree widely as to what they are arguing about; it is not obvious to them what methodological individualism is. The defenders of methodological individualism (...) agree with their critics much more than those critics acknowledge. Each side ascribes views to the other which its proponents disown explicitly. (shrink)