Android EpistemologyThe assumption underlying much of the work in AI is Alan Turing's assertion that if the simulation is convincing enough, questions regarding the difference between our mind and a machine's are moot. The skeptic, however, wonders if the parlor trick is not still just a trick even though its sophistry is effective. Thankfully, Android Epistemology asks some of the same questions. The 16 essays in Android Epistemology provide a plethora of views and approaches to some of the thornier philosophical issues surrounding current attempts to engineer minds.
Herbert Simon, among other writers here, is maddeningly impoverished in his view of the uniqueness of the mind, and seems intent on denying "mystery" in any form when considering the human mind in relation to its simulations. Other writers raise profound questions concerning our tricky relationship to our own consciousness and the reductionism involved in the attempt to model the mind using current AI techniques.
The relationship between mind and embodiment is questioned by Margaret Boden in her thoughtful essay on robot creativity. And the sophisticated outline of the hermeneutics of human mentation and its complex, "essentially inscrutable" play of time, memory, and narrative - provided by Kalyan Shankar Basu - steps in where Simon fears to tread.
The book closes with an amusing alien dialogue, questioning the possibility of human intelligence, written by Marvin Minsky. The aliens seem to suggest that we poor, undesigned, bags of water and bone may just be left sputtering in the dust.