What is a Concept?
I have been surprised to occasionally see some philosophers on Twitter denying that there is such a thing as non-conceptual experience -- what I might like to call "raw" experience.…
Continue Reading
What is a Concept?
Aversions to Idealism
I was reading John Heil's (fairly brief) discussion of idealism in his philosophy of mind book. It's an interesting read because he spends most of the time saying that the…
Continue Reading
Aversions to Idealism
Consciousness and A.I.
I am reading Stuart Russell's new book Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control, and highly recommend it. A lot has been written in the past few years…
Continue Reading
Consciousness and A.I.
Blogging “Artificial You,” Part IV
In Chapter 4 of the book, Schneider discusses possible tests of consciousness for artificial agents. I'll briefly summarize the tests here and add a few comments: The AI Consciousness Test…
Continue Reading
Blogging “Artificial You,” Part IV
Blogging “Artificial You,” Part III
Chapter 3 of Artificial You has three basic purposes: Explaining why AI might develop in such a way that superintelligent AIs are not conscious. Explaining that we might need to…
Continue Reading
Blogging “Artificial You,” Part III
Blogging “Artificial You”, Part II
In this post, I'll review Chapter 2 of Schneider's book Artificial You. The previous review post is here. The Problem of AI Consciousness In Chapter 2, Schneider introduces what she…
Continue Reading
Blogging “Artificial You”, Part II
Blogging Susan Schneider’s “Artificial You”, Part I
I've recently started reading Susan Schneider's new book Artificial You, and have decided to write about it as I go. The subtitle is "AI and the Future of Your Mind,"…
Continue Reading
Blogging Susan Schneider’s “Artificial You”, Part I
The Mindless Hypothesis
In the previous post, I talked about Alex Byrne's paper Skepticism about the Internal World (PDF). In that post, I focused on the first part of the paper, and in…
Continue Reading
The Mindless Hypothesis
Alex Byrne and Skepticism About the External World
I recently read Alex Byrne's paper Skepticism About the Internal World (PDF warning), and in this post I want to focus on the first part of the paper, where he…
Continue Reading
Alex Byrne and Skepticism About the External World
Machines and Understanding
This recent blog post by Thomas Dietterich has received much well-deserved attention. And while the title What does it mean for a machine to "understand"? sounds like a philosophical work,…
Continue Reading
Machines and Understanding