Why and How We Are Not Zombies

A robot that is functionally indistinguishable from us may or may not be a mindless Zombie. There will never be any way to know, yet its functional principles will be as close as we can ever get to explaining the mind

There is Only One Mind/Body Problem

In our century a Frege/Brentano wedge has gradually been driven into the mind/body problem so deeply that it appears to have split it into two: The problem of “qualia” and the problem of “intentionality.” Both problems use similar intuition pumps: For qualia, we imagine a robot that is indistinguishable from us in every objective respect, but it lacks subjective experiences; it is mindless. For intentionality, we again imagine a robot that is indistinguishable from us in every objective respect but its “thoughts” lack “aboutness”; they are meaningless. I will try to show that there is a way to re-unify the mind/body problem by grounding the “language of thought” (symbols) in our perceptual categorization capacity. The model is bottom-up and hybrid symbolic/nonsymbolic

For whom the gate tolls? How and why to free the refereed research literature online through author/ institution self-archiving, now

"All refereed journals will soon be available online; most of them already are. This means that anyone will be able to access them from any networked desk-top. The literature will all be interconnected by citation, author, and keyword/ subject links, allowing for unheard-of power and ease of access and navigability. Successive drafts of pre-refereeing preprints will be linked to the official refereed draft, as well as to any subsequent corrections, revisions, updates, comments, responses, and underlying empirical databases, all enhancing the self-correctiveness, interactivity and productivity of scholarly and scientific research and communication in remarkable new ways. New scientometric indicators of digital impact are also emerging (http://opcit.eprints.org) to chart the online course of knowledge. But there is still one last frontier to cross before science reaches the optimal and the inevitable: Just as there is no longer any need for research or researchers to be constrained by the access-blocking restrictions of paper distribution, there is no longer any need to be constrained by the impact-blocking financial fire-walls of Subscription/Site-License/Pay-Per-View (S/L/P) tolls for this give-away literature. Its authors/researchers have always donated their research reports for free (and its referees/ researchers have refereed for free), with the sole goal of maximizing their impact on subsequent research (by accessing the eyes and minds of fellow-researchers, present and future) and hence on society. Generic (OAi-compliant) software is now available free so that institutions can immediately create Eprint Archives in which their authors can self-archive all their refereed (published) papers for free for all forever (http://www.eprints.org/). These interoperable Open Archives (http://www.openarchives.org) will then be harvested into global, jointly searchable 'virtual archives' (e.g., http://arc.cs.odu.edu/). 'Scholarly Skywriting' in this Post Gutenberg Galaxy will be dramatically (and measurably) more interactive and productive, spawning its own new digital metrics of productivity and impact, allowing for an online 'embryology of knowledge'." (author's abstract)"Alle referierten Fachzeitschriften (refereed journals) werden bald online verfügbar sein; die meisten sind es schon. Das bedeutet, dass jeder von jedem vernetzten Arbeitsplatz in der Lage sein wird, Zugang zu diesen Zeitschriften zu haben. Die Literatur wird durch Zitierung, Autor und Schlagwort-/ Gegenstand-Links vollständig untereinander verbunden sein, wobei einmalige Leistung und Nutzungsfreundlichkeit in Zugang und Navigation gewährleistet werden. Fortlaufende Entwürfe von vorreferierten Vordrucken werden mit den offiziell begutachteten Entwürfen verlinkt, genauso wie mit allen anschließenden Korrekturen, Revisionen, Aktualisierungen, Kommentaren, Antworten und zu Grunde liegenden empirischen Datenbanken. All das verbessert die Fehlerbehebung, Interaktivität und Produktivität von wissenschaftlicher Forschung und Kommunikation auf bemerkenswerten, neuen Wegen. Neue wissenschaftsmetrische Indikatoren digitaler Auswirkungen kommen gerade auf (http://opcit.eprints.org), um den Online-Verlauf des Fachwissens auszuwerten. Jedoch gibt es eine letzte Barriere zu überwinden, bevor Wissenschaft das Optimum und das Notwendige erreicht: Gerade weil Forschung und Forscher nicht mehr an den Zugang blockierende Beschränkungen der Papierverteilung gebunden sind, gibt es auch keinen Bedarf mehr, abhängig von den wirkungsgehemmten finanziellen Fire-Walls von Gebühren für Subscription/Site-License/Pay-Per-View (S/L/P) für give-away Literatur zu sein. Deren Autoren/Forscher haben ihre Forschungsberichte immer umsonst gestiftet (und deren Gutachter/Forscher haben umsonst beurteilt) mit dem alleinigen Ziel, die Auswirkungen auf ihre nachfolgende Forschung (indem sie auf die Sicht und Meinung von Forschungskollegen aus Gegenwart und Vergangenheit zurückgriffen) und somit auch auf die Gesellschaft zu maximieren. Generische (OAi-konforme) Software ist nun frei zugänglich, so dass Institutionen sofort Eprint-Archive erstellen können, in denen ihre Autoren die Möglichkeit haben, alle ihre begutachteten (veröffentlichten) Dokumente kostenfrei für immer selbst zu archivieren (http://www.eprints.org/). Diese vollständig kompatiblen Offenen Archive (http://www.openarchives.org) werden dann in globalen, untereinander durchsuchbaren 'virtuellen Archiven' gesammelt (http://arc.cs.odu.edu/). 'Wissenschaftliche Himmelsschrift' (Scholarly Skywriting) in dieser PostGutenberg Galaxie wird grundlegend (und messbar) interaktiver und produktiver, indem sie ihre eigenen, neuen digitalen Maße der Produktivität und Auswirkung erzeugt, wobei eine online 'Embryologie des Fachwissens' berücksichtigt wird." (Autorenreferat

A Philosophical Survey of Artificial Intelligence

Thesis written by a student in the UNT Honors College discussing artificial intelligence, philosophy, the anthropomorphization of computers, related science fiction, possible rights of an artificial intelligence, and possible threats

The informational nature of personal identity

“The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com” Copyright Springer [Full text of this paper is not available in the UHRA]In this paper, I present an informational approach to the nature of personal identity. In "Plato and the problem of the chariot", I use Plato's famous metaphor of the chariot to introduce a specific problem regarding the nature of the self as an informational multiagent system: what keeps the self together as a whole and coherent unity? In "Egology and its two branches" and "Egology as synchronic individualisation", I outline two branches of the theory of the self: one concerning the individualisation of the self as an entity, the other concerning the identification of such entity. I argue that both presuppose an informational approach, defend the view that the individualisation of the self is logically prior to its identification, and suggest that such individualisation can be provided in informational terms. Hence, in "A reconciling hypothesis: the three membranes model", I offer an informational individualisation of the self, based on a tripartite model, which can help to solve the problem of the chariot. Once this model of the self is outlined, in "ICTs as technologies of the self" I use it to show how ICTs may be interpreted as technologies of the self. In "The logic of realisation", I introduce the concept of "realization" (Aristotle's anagnorisis) and support the rather Spinozian view according to which, from the perspective of informational structural realism, selves are the final stage in the development of informational structures. The final "Conclusion: from the egology to the ecology of the self" briefly concludes the article with a reference to the purposeful shaping of the self, in a shift from egology to ecology.Peer reviewe

Turing test: 50 years later

The Turing Test is one of the most disputed topics in artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. This paper is a review of the past 50 years of the Turing Test. Philosophical debates, practical developments and repercussions in related disciplines are all covered. We discuss Turing's ideas in detail and present the important comments that have been made on them. Within this context, behaviorism, consciousness, the 'other minds' problem, and similar topics in philosophy of mind are discussed. We also cover the sociological and psychological aspects of the Turing Test. Finally, we look at the current situation and analyze programs that have been developed with the aim of passing the Turing Test.We conclude that the Turing Test has been, and will continue to be, an influential and controversial topic. © 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers

Turing Test and conversation

Ankara : Department of Computer Engineering and Information Science and the Institute of Engineering and Science of Bilkent University, 1999.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 1999.Includes bibliographical references leaves 191-201.Saygın, Ayşe PınarM.S