A survey of the main approaches in a mind study -oriented part of Artificial Intelligence is made focusing on controversial issues and extreme hypotheses. Various meanings of terms: "intelligence" and "artificial intelligence" are discussed. Limitations for constructing intelligent systems resulting from the lack of formalized models of cognitive activity are shown. The approaches surveyed are then recapitulated in the light of these limitations.

Are LLMs cultural technologies like photocopiers or printing presses, which transmit information but cannot create new content? A challenge for this idea, which we call "bibliotechnism", is that LLMs often do generate entirely novel text. We begin by defending bibliotechnism against this challenge, showing how novel text may be meaningful only in a derivative sense, so that the content of this generated text depends in an important sense on the content of original human text. We go on to present a (...) different, novel challenge for bibliotechnism, stemming from examples in which LLMs generate “novel reference”, using novel names to refer to novel entities. Such examples could be smoothly explained if LLMs were not cultural technologies but possessed a limited form of agency (beliefs, desires, and intentions). According to interpretationism in the philosophy of mind, a system has beliefs, desires and intentions if and only if its behavior is well-explained by the hypothesis that it has such states. In line with this view, we argue that cases of novel reference provide evidence that LLMs do in fact have beliefs, desires, and intentions, and thus have a limited form of agency. (shrink)

What is the mind? Is consciousness a process in the brain? How do our minds represent the world? Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings is a grand tour of writings on these and other perplexing questions about the nature of the mind. The most comprehensive collection of its kind, the book includes sixty-three selections that range from the classical contributions of Descartes to the leading edge of contemporary debates. Extensive sections cover foundational issues, the nature of consciousness, and the (...) nature of mental content. Three of the selections are published here for the first time, while many other articles have been revised especially for this volume. Each section opens with an introduction by the editor. Philosophy of Mind is suitable for students at all levels and also for general readers. (shrink)

John Searle and Roger Penrose are two staunch critics of computationalism who nonetheIess believe that with the right framework the mind can be naturalized. while they may be successful in showing the shortcomings of computationalism, I argue that their alternative noncomputational frameworks equally fail to carry out the project to naturalize the mind. The main reason is their failure to resolve some fundamental incompatibilities between mind and science. Searle tries to resolve the incompatibility between the subjectivity of consciousness and the (...) objectivity of silence by means of conceptual clarification. He, howeve4 fails to deal with the concepts crucial to this incompatibility, namely, the publicness of scientific knowledge and the privacy of psychological knowledge. Penrose tries to resolve the incompatibility between the non-computationality of psychological process and the computationality of scientific process by expanding the scope of science through some radical changes in quantum physics. His strategy, howeve4 has the danger of trivializing the distinction between science and non-science thereby putting into question the very value of the project to naturalize the mind. In addition, the feasibility of this strategy remains dubious in light of the mysteries that still surround quantum physics. (shrink)

I am populating this file from the bottom up. Later years are still empty. Try stuff in or before 1998 for a start. My Oxford DPhil Thesis (1962) is the oldest item available here.

Problem setting. Modern IT technologies consolidate a new attitude to legal knowledge, which from a technological point of view is a "raw material" for artificial legal systems. Technological approach to legal knowledge can not be identified with technology or method, as it is a special operational system of legal acts with legal knowledge for the purpose of its translation from society into an artificial dialogue system, in particular intellectual. Therefore, it is necessary to study the cognitive and informational aspects of (...) the movement of legal knowledge, in particular, their means of obtaining, the mechanisms for selection, dissemination, transformation, accumulation, translation and application, as well as ways to automate these complex processes based on modern high-tech digital devices. We are talking about little-known and extremely topical issues of processing legal knowledge and transforming them into an active information resource. These problems require comprehensive, multidimensional comprehension. Recent research and publications analysis. The results of the analysis of scientific sources and publications indicate that these trends require a deep and thorough study of the particularities of the practical relationship to legal knowledge. New information technologies have contributed to the development of the idea of the diversity of human knowledge. The results of the research of these problems give an opportunity to note that, in general, systematic scientific comprehension of the complex, volumetric and multidimensional problems of practical relevance to legal knowledge need further study. Paper objectiv. The purpose of this article is to consider certain aspects of the practical relation to legal knowledge based on the results of understanding this issue by various representatives of the humanities and interdisciplinary researchers. Paper main body. The article substantiates that the practical attitude to legal knowledge with the advent of artificial intellectual systems has highlighted the problem of extracting, representing and using knowledge in the field of jurisprudence. It is revealed that new information technologies have translated the issues of the specifics of human knowledge, the peculiarities of the interrelation of its main levels into the plane of practical problems associated with the transformation of personal knowledge into formalized. It is determined that the practical attitude towards legal knowledge cannot be identified with either technology or method. It is shown that the attitude towards knowledge as a resource includes the operation of "extracting" knowledge from an expert. The questions are analyzed how and in what way the subject can become aware of the implicit components of personal knowledge. Conclusions of the research. Technological attitude to legal knowledge - mandatory stage in the design of artificial intelligence systems, which includes an action on the study of the microenvironment, as well as the design of the intellectual basis of the computer, so that the latter becomes a quasi-subject in communication with the user, that is, the computer understands the system's requests, stores the subject of the dialogue, knowledge of the subject area and poorly structured problems, secondary texts - the arguments of one or another computer solution. The analysis of technological attitude to legal knowledge requires new methodological schemes. Technological attitude to legal knowledge is not identical neither with formalization, nor with algorithmic methodology. The methodology of technological relation to legal knowledge is a complex problem that can be solved on the basis of a constructive dialogue between the developers of artificial intelligence systems and lawyers. The structure of knowledge is fundamentally complex, it includes various facts from the relevant field of law, the relationship between them, the rules of action, knowledge of how to include knowledge in the artificial intelligence system. All this translates into the specifics of human knowledge, the peculiarities of the relationship between its main levels in the area of actual practical problems that require the attention of scholars, therefore the prospects for further research in this direction are directly related to the study of the structure of knowledge in the field of law. (shrink)

These notes discuss self-awareness in humans and machines. The goal is to determine useful forms of machine self-awareness and also those that are on the road to human-level AI. This is a draft which is to be improved, and suggestions are solicited. There are a few formulas in this version. The final version will have more.

This article is the basis of an invited talk at KR-96 in 1996 November. It has been modified from the version that appeared in the preprints of that meeting. There is an html version, a.dvi version,.pdf version and a.ps version. Up to: Main McCarthy page Up to: Send comments to mccarthy @stanford.edu. I sometimes make changes suggested in them. - John McCarthy.