Understanding the Artificial: On the Future Shape of Artificial Intelligence

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction: Artificial Intelligence: Its Future and its Cultural Roots

   • Massimo Negrotti

   Pages 1-11

3. The Cognitive Dimension in the Processing of Natural Language

   • Mario Borillo

   Pages 13-31

4. Making a Mind Versus Modelling the Brain: Artificial Intelligence Back at the Branchpoint

   • Hubert L. Dreyfus, Stuart E. Dreyfus

   Pages 33-54

5. Alternative Intelligence

   • Massimo Negrotti

   Pages 55-75

6. Artificial Intelligence as a Dialectic of Science and Technology

   • Ephraim Nissan

   Pages 77-90

7. Biological and Artificial Intelligence

   • Alberto Oliverio

   Pages 91-100

8. Computers, Musical Notation and the Externalisation of Knowledge: Towards a Comparative Study in the History of Information Technology

   • Henrik Sinding-Larsen

   Pages 101-125

9. Cognitive Science and the Computer Metaphor

   • John R. Searle

   Pages 127-138

10. Intelligent Behaviour in Machines

    • Luigi Stringa

    Pages 139-147

11. Conclusions: The Dissymmetry of Mind and the Role of the Artificial

    • Massimo Negrotti

    Pages 149-154

12. Back Matter

    Pages 155-164

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In recent years a vast literature has been produced on the feasibility of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The topic most frequently discussed is the concept of intelligence, with efforts to demonstrate that it is or is not transferable to the computer. Only rarely has attention been focused on the concept of the artificial per se in order to clarify what kind, depth and scope of performance (including intelligence) it could support. Apart from the classic book by H.A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, published in 1969, no serious attempt has been made to define a conceptual frame for understanding the intimate nature of intelligent machines independently of its claimed or denied human-like features. The general aim of this book is to discuss, from different points of view, what we are losing and what we are gaining from the artificial, particularly from AI, when we abandon the original anthropomorphic pretension. There is necessarily a need for analysis of the history of AI and the limits of its plausibility in reproducing the human mind. In addition, the papers presented here aim at redefining the epistemology and the possible targets of the AI discipline, raising problems, and proposing solutions, which should be understood as typical of the artificial rather than of an information-based conception of man.

• artificial intelligence
• behavior
• culture
• epistemology
• information processing
• intelligence
• knowledge
• modeling
• natural language
• philosophy
• technology

• Istituto Metodologico Economico Statistico (IMES), Universita ’Degli Studi di Urbino, Urbino (PS), Italy

  Massimo Negrotti

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