UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM presents "Mechanical Bodies, Mythical Minds" Dr. Mark Bishop (Department of Computing, Goldsmiths College, University of London) 15 October 2008 (Wednesday) Lecture Theatre ** D450 ** Hatfield, College Lane Campus 3 - 4 pm Coffee/tea and biscuits will be available. [Catering Permitting] Everyone is Welcome to Attend [Space Permitting] Abstract: The most cursory examination of the history of Artificial Intelligence, AI, highlights numerous egregious claims of its researchers, especially in relation to a populist form of computationalism. In particular, a 'strong' form of this doctrine holds that any suitably programmed computer instantiates genuine conscious mental states purely in virtue of it carrying out a specific series of computations. The argument to be presented in this talk is a simple development of that originally presented in Hilary Putnam's 1988 monograph, "Representation & Reality", which if correct has important implications for Turing Machine Functionalism and the prospect of 'conscious' machines. In this presentation, instead of seeking to develop Putnam's claim that, "everything implements every Finite State Automata, (FSA)", I will try to establish the weaker result that, "everything implements the specific FSA [Q], when executing program (p) on a particular input set (x)". Then, equating Q (p,x) to any putative AI program, I will show that conceding the Strong AI thesis for Q (crediting it with mental states and consciousness) opens the door to a vicious form of panpsychism whereby all open systems, (e.g. grass, rocks, even televisions), must instantiate conscious experience and hence that disembodied minds lurk everywhere... -------------------------------------------------- Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/colloq