God’s Machines: Descartes on the Mechanization of Mind
نویسنده
چکیده
In 1637 the great philosopher, mathematician and natural scientist Rene Descartes published one of his most important texts, namely the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting one’s Reason and Seeking the Truth in the Sciences, commonly known simply as the Discourse (Cottingham et al. 1985a). This event happened over 300 years before Turing, Ashby, Newell, Simon and the other giants of cybernetics and early artificial intelligence (AI) produced their seminal work. Approximately the same timespan separates the Discourse from the advent of the digital computer. Given these facts it will probably come as something of a surprise to at least some readers of this volume to discover that, in this text, Descartes reflects on the possibility of mechanizing mind. Not only that but, as I shall argue in this chapter, he elegantly identifies, and takes a far from anachronous or historically discredited stand on, a key question regarding the mechanization of mind, a question that, if we’re honest with ourselves, we still don’t really know how to answer. As I said, never underestimate Descartes.
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تاریخ انتشار 2008