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From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Subject: Re: Does AI make philosophy obsolete?
References: <41gnj4$sl9@bigblue.oit.unc.edu> <41ndlq$fmi@venus.mcs.com> <41uvkr$gt5@Venus.mcs.com>
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Date: Mon, 4 Sep 1995 17:53:00 GMT
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In article <41uvkr$gt5@Venus.mcs.com> jorn@MCS.COM (Jorn Barger) writes:
>In article <JMC.95Aug28205510@Steam.stanford.edu> on rec.arts.books,
>John McCarthy <jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU> wrote:

>>     AI needs many ideas that have hitherto been studied only by
>>     philosophers.  This is because a robot, if it is to have
>>     human level intelligence and ability to learn from its
>>     experience, needs a general world view in which to organize
>>     facts.  It turns out that many philosophical problems take
>>     new forms when thought about in terms of how to design a
>>     robot.

>(I go further, though, I think, in claiming that philosophy that's
>meaningless for a robot is also meaningless for *me*...)

Meaningless from the point of view of a robot designer?

Meaningless from the point of the view of the robot itself?

As it happens meaningless from the point of view of some one of these,
or necessarily meaningless from the point of view of any conceivable
one?

It is very important in philosophy to express your vagueries
precisely.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@aifh.ed.ac.uk         +44 (0)131 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
"The mind reigns, but does not govern" -- Paul Valery
