2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

T HE GREAT BEYOND
proach practiced by Claude Lévi-Strauss. It can be shown that, in both cases, what is at
stake is the identification, description (and possibly replication) of the most basic structures
and processes proper to the human being. Moreover, the structure in terms of which they
come to understand and explain their chosen field is derived from the domain of game:
whether problem-solving or worshipping, man is basically seen as participating in a closed,
discrete, combinatorial system of oppositions, of moves and countermoves. The human
subject, whether a master able of getting around in the world by a careful planning of moves
and countermoves or a pawn thrown, malgré lui, in a sempiternal conflict of Kings and
Queens, is always understood from the point of view of play.
The fact that one school chooses the "social" field of activity whether the other one
opts for the more individualistic area of cognition is by itself an interesting topic to be dis-
cussed. But the function of the chosen field within the research projects (e.g. the reason ori-
enting in favor of the actual choice) is actually the same: in both cases what is chosen is
somehow at the core of humanity (of "being human", that is): cognitive processes and prob-
lem solving abilities on the one hand, collective institutions and religious beliefs on the oth-
er. The core issue is readily acknowledged to be philosophical: the mind, the subject,
consciousness, constitute the ultimate topic of interest, not the efficiency of search algo-
rithms or the myths of the Bororo Indians. It is because philosophy has failed to provide an
understanding of the mind, of the human subject, of consciousness and so on, that new sci-
entific disciplines have to be founded to take up the challenge. Philosophy’s dominion is
over, they seem to say, and the time has come for a new approach to the basic issue it had
been struggling with and eventually succumbed to.
What is at stake is very similar to what we have hinted above with reference to Ni-
etzsche and Heidegger: nothing less than the end of philosophy. In fact, the underlying ar-
gument that both AI and Structuralism share might be paraphrased as follows: "If our
method proved so fruitful on mythology, and if the production of myths is the quintessential
human activity setting men apart from other beings, then the method must be applicable to
other, more peripheral, fields of human activity.” This paraphrase can be translated into Ar-
tificial Intelligence’s terms by substituting “thinking” for “mythology” and “production of
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