Philosophical issues in AI

The mind-body problem

The Turing Test

The mind-body problem

• Recall the question “Where does the body end and the mind begin?”

• Where one ends and the other begins in the context of intelligence is the mind-body problem

Is the mind separate from the body?

• The answer depends upon which philosophical view you follow:-

– Materialism, where only the material body exists and the mind does not and the brain carries out the functions of thought and intelligence

– Interactionism, where the mind has a spiritual existence rather than a physical

– Functionalism, where the way the mind exists is of no consequence

Philosophic Issues

• In 1950 Alan Turing, a British computer scientist devised a test to determine whether a computer could be called intelligent.

• The test was devised in response to the question “Can a computer think?”

The Turing Test

• The Turing Test is :– One person sits at a computer and types

questions– The computer is connected to two other

hidden computers– At one computer a human reads and

responds to the questions– At the other a computer with no human aid

runs a program to provide responses

The result

• If the person typing the questions can not tell the difference between the human responses and the computer responses then according to Turing the computer is said to be intelligent.