Minds and Computers: An Introduction to AI

His opening six chapters include material which will be very familiar to any student of the philosophy of mind: dualism, behaviourism, materialism, functionalism. But his main concern is to outline and defend the possibility of a computational theory of mind. Three chapters outline in a formal, rigorous way a variety of concepts necessary for understanding what computation is, and the remainder of the book aims to show how this formal machinery might be invoked in an explanation of what the mind is and how it works. Carter’s cautious conclusion is that on the one hand there is no objection in principle to the programme of strong artificial intelligence -- i.e., that there can be systems which display (and so have) mentality simply in virtue of instantiating certain computer programs -- but that on the other hand, our best available programs are ‘woefully inadequate’ to that task.

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