This chapter introduces key concepts and theories in the philosophy of artificial intelligence. The authors assess the difference between “natural” and “artificial” intelligence and discuss the assumptions under which it would make sense to describe AI as “intelligent” or “conscious”. The chapter critically reflects on mechanistic and functionalistic approaches to artificial intelligence and...
Embodied agency and the blindspot of medical scienceModern science is driven by a "life-as-machine metaphysics", according to which the world is given and objectively there, to be quantified and divided up into more basic, material elements (Frank et al., 2024, p. 92).In this view, human lived experience plays no or next to no explanatory role (ibid., 7-8).This is the blindspot of modern...
I focus on an early article by Francisco Varela, 'Not One, Not Two' (1976), to argue that his non-dualistic epistemology entails a paradigm shift towards a fundamentally co-embodied, and thus social, view of self. Varela argued that the mind–body duality could be resolved by understanding the mind as embodied. Both Varela and Evan Thompson have later elaborated on this and suggested an...
Daniel Weiskopf has recently raised an apparently powerful objection against the so-called “extended mind thesis” with regard to beliefs. His argument is that since alleged cases of “extended beliefs” lack a characteristic feature of beliefs properly so called (newly acquired beliefs are usually integrated with already existing beliefs rapidly, automatically and unconsciously), they do not...