Hume and Descartes on A.I AND Knowledge of Mind.....?

Question

Any thoughts on Hume and Descartes and their opinions on whether A.I could ever be created and or be concious?
I've written about 2500 words just need some more fresh ideas.
Does anyone have any ideas also on what either of them would think about knoweledge of other minds?

Thankyou in advance for your help. Even if you know anything about descartes and hume that would be helpful,

Regards,
Becky

Answer 1

For Descartes, reality is bifurcated into two substances, so AI would need to incorporate Mind with Matter. Interestingly, the body just is a machine that follows the laws of physics, but the mind is immaterial, outside time and space; it is a challenge to account how it could ever cause the machine to do anything.

Hume, however, was a naturalist about the mind. While he still has a dualistic ontology, where there are objects and objects of thought, nevertheless, his question for the large part is "How is it that I get beliefs of this kind?" For they aren't founded on Reason alone. Our daily inductions aren't justified nor possible without passion. All of Kant is already in Hume, and Kant lays the ground for cognitive science -- how we map the way in which intelligent beings are able to have perceptions.

But Hume wouldn't call any of these empirical investigations 'knowledge' - he demonstrates how we never have knowledge by assuming the uniformity of nature, which is an unjustified axiom -- it can only prove itself. We do BELIEVE there are other people, indeed, we must believe it, but strictly it's logically possible that we are all racked by an evil genius, or the like. And so it's a matter of fact that 'other minds exist,' a proposition without proof, but assented to by custom without worry, outside philosophy.

Descartes would just appeal to clear and distinct ideas, the existence of God (which is both guaranteed by and the guarantor of clear and distinct ideas -.-), whose nature is not to deceive, therefore skepticism is false.

Answer 2

I think in his extreme doubt and his desire to clear away everything we think we know, Descartes takes himself to a point where A.I. is not only possible but if he was aware of the concept might even have applied it to his cogito, before getting God to help him out of his intellectual nihilism created by his malign Genie ( basically this eveil demon has the ability to cause everything not to exist and if taken to its logical hyperbole a fact that due to religious beliefs at the time Descartes could not could have caused Descartes thoughts to actually be just thoughts with a semblance of belonging to a body.) I think the mental/corporeal distinction Descartes draws would defintely allow for the concept of A.I.

As for Hume his ideas on epistomology are very similar to basic computer programming anyway at the very least Logic gates would be accepted annd conceptually from there its merely extrapolation until you get to A.I.

With Descartes work being so constricted by the Church at the time I don't think the conceptual paradigm of Descartes time would allow for a non organic intelligence but if you could logically take his arguments further with modern technological arguments they are not toally contradictory. However Hume i think would allow the possiblity if not welcome it knowldge after all to Hume is basically inputed data from the empirical world.

Hope this helps

Answer 3

hey becky, thanx for ur advance thanx, mind is just like a new born baby who keeps moving hands, legs, eyes and whatever possible, up and down - thats our mind.

if any1 controls on his/her mind, the life will be very stable and it wd be full of red roses.

meditation is very imp to keep mind wandering from all over the world.