2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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P HILOSOPHY, NON-PHILOSOPHY, AND SCIENCE
ophy of mind, etc. 39 Instead, Aaron Sloman, whom we take here as representative of a large
class of instances, provides the classical form of this argument: “computer programs pro-
vide the only currently available language for formulating rigorous and testable theories
about such processes [as perceiving, thinking, remembering, etc.] So I conclude that in or-
der to make real advances […] philosophers, like psychologists and linguists, will need to
learn about the developments in the design of computing systems, programming languages
and artificial intelligence models.” 40
Shoam’s and Sloman’s claims make particularly clear, however, that the relationship
between AI and philosophy, is presently quite conflictual, because it is either AI that must
take over from philosophy a set of problems or intuitions and develop them differently, or
it is philosophy that has to radically change its methodology, and in fact turn into AI, in or-
der to achieve real progress. AI is allowed to turn its gaze toward philosophy, only if it
maintains its theoretical distance, unless that distance is vanished by the elimination (or su-
blation?) of philosophy itself in a time to come. In order to understand the sources of the
present conflict between AI and philosophy, therefore, it is important to turn the gaze from
the utopian future to the reality of the present. In other words, it is necessary to consider
these claims in a broader framework and try to determine what can be concluded about AI’s
identity from its conflictual relationship with philosophy.
We must preliminarily acknowledge two related issues, though, to guide the discus-
sion. The first one is methodological and concerns the epistemological status of these
claims: they represent AI’s self-perception and, as such, consist of wishes and self-judg-
ments. It follows that they cannot be taken as true nor dismissed as inescapably biased.
Rather, they represent important clues in any assessment of the relationship between AI and
39. See Yoav Shoam, “Agent-oriented programming,” Artificial Intelligence 60, 1 (1993) 51-92.; John
McCarthy, “What has AI in Common with Philosophy?”, Proceedings of IJCAI ‘95 (Los Altos, CA:
Morgan Kaufman,1995), now available at: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/,Güzeldere and I have
advocated a similar position in Güven Güzeldere and Stefano Franchi, “Mindless Mechanisms, Mindful
Constructions,” Stefano Franchi and Güven Güzeldere, eds., Constructions of the Mind, Special issue
of the Stanford Humanities Review, 4, 2, 1995, ix-xxxi.
40. Aaron Sloman, The Computer Revolution in Philosophy: Philosophy, Science and Models of Mind,
(Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1978) 83; see also Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993),