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.cb ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND PHILOSOPHY - CASBS 1979-80


	The Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS)
is organizing a study group on the relations between artificial intelligence (AI)
and philosophy for the academic year 1979-80.  Participants include
philosophers, psychologists and computer scientists working in AI.

	Both artificial intelligence and philosophy are concerned with
intelligent behavior in material systems.  Both face conceptual problems
in characterizing such behavior.  On the philosophical side, Daniel
Dennett (a participant), among others, has characterized intentional
systems which are physical systems to which can be ascribed intentional
qualities such as beliefs and wants.  On the AI side, McCarthy, also
a participant, has studied when mental qualities can be ascribed to
machines.

	AI helps the philosopher, because intelligent programs provide
a domain of objects whose behavior is well-defined but to which one
must ascribe some intellectual qualities if one is to express what one
knows about their behavior.  For example,
what a particular person
knows about the state of a particular computer operating system
may be expressed as ascribing to the program an incorrect belief that
a certain user of the system does not want to run his program.
From the AI point of view, a program that plans travel must know
that travel agents know airline schedules and must know that
the gate at which a flight will leave an intermediate stop is
not knowable initially, but can easily be discovered by an English-speaking
traveller at the time the information will be required.

	While no-one expects to solve all the philosophical puzzles
concerning knowledge and and wants in the near future, joint work
by philosophers and AI people can identify and solve some of the
easier problems.  Sorting out the problems into easy and hard will
benefit both philosophy and AI.  Cognitive psychology has already
benefited from the concreteness of AI systems and will also benefit
from the identification and solution of the more straightforward
problems of knowledge, wanting and obligation.  Therefore, at least
one prominent psychologist will also take part.