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PDF (Ved-Editor+Html2pdf) Free, Revised (slightly extended), Version of 1978 Book (goo.gl/AJLDih) HTML and PDF Afterthoughts (2015 onwards): Minor updates: 2018, Feb 2019, Jun 2019 PDF version with contents list in side-panel (if supported by viewer). PDF page numbers may change after further editing -- so don’t use them for reference! (5 Sep 2017: increased font size) JUMP TO TABLE OF CONTENTS 1978 Book Cover I was not consulted about the cover. The book is mainly concerned with the biological, psychological and philosophical significance of virtual machinery. I did not know that the publishers had decided to associate it with paper tape devices until it was published. 1 1978 First Page Copyright: Aaron Sloman, 1978 (When the book went out of print all rights reverted to the author.) 2015: I hereby permit anyone to copy any or all of the contents of this book. The online version of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. If you use, or comment on, any of this please include a URL if possible, so that readers can see the original (or the latest version). For more freely available online books see http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ JUMP TO TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 Original front-matter -- 1978 HARVESTER STUDIES IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE General Editor: Margaret A. Boden Harvester Studies in Cognitive Science is a new series which will explore the nature of knowledge by way of a distinctive theoretical approach one that takes account of the complex structures and interacting processes that make thought and action possible. Intelligence can be studied from the point of view of psychology, philosophy, linguistics, pedagogy and artificial intelligence, and all these different emphases will be represented within the series. Other titles in this series: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND NATURAL MAN: Margaret A. Boden INFERENTIAL SEMANTICS: Frederick Parker-Rhodes Other titles in preparation: THE FORMAL MECHANICS OF MIND: Stephen N. Thomas THE COGNITIVE PARADIGM: Marc De Mey ANALOGICAL THINKING: MYTHS AND MECHANISMS: Robin Anderson EDUCATION AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Tim O’Shea Published later: GÖDEL ESCHER BACH: Douglas Hofstadter BRAINSTORMS: Daniel Dennett The book was first published in Great Britain in 1978 by THE HARVESTER PRESS LIMITED Publisher: John Spiers 2 Stanford Terrace, Hassocks, Sussex (Also published in the USA by Humanities Press, 1978) Copyright: Aaron Sloman, 1978 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Sloman, Aaron The computer revolution in philosophy. (Harvester studies in cognitive science). 1. Intellect. 2. Artificial intelligence 1. Title 128’.2 BF431 ISBN 0-85527-389-5 ISBN 0-85527-542-1 Pbk. Printed in England by Redwood Burn Limited, Trowbridge & Esher JUMP TO TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 REVISED ONLINE EDITION -- (2015/2019) THE COMPUTER REVOLUTION IN PHILOSOPHY: Philosophy, science and models of mind. Out of print 1978 book revised, and now accessible free of charge (html/pdf) here: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/62-80.html#crp Since 1991, the author Aaron Sloman has been at The School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK (Now: Honorary professor of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science.) CONTENTS (Last updated: 1 Jan 2018) 19 Aug 2016: Added OCR index pages 288-304 July 2015: Files merged to form a single document. Navigation links and external links now work in both PDF and Web versions. 1978 Book Cover and front-matter(Above) 1978 Book Cover (Above) Titlepage of the book (Above) Slightly edited version of the 1978 book’s front-matter. Contents page (This list) [Everything else is below this list.] New Material In Online Edition History of the online version of the book (2001 to 2019) Reviews of the 1978 edition, and its Relevance [moved to separate document] Philosophical relevance Relevance to AI and Cognitive Science More recent work by the author NOTE on educational predictions made in 1978 Some external links to (older, out of date, versions of) this book CRP-Afterthoughts: Notes on the development of these ideas after 1978 http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/crp/crp-afterthoughts.html (This is an external link to a separate document.) 4 Original 1978 book contents with format changes and other modifications Page numbers below refer to the 1978 printed edition, not preserved in this version. Detailed 1978 contents List (below)(originally pages v-ix) (New) List of Figures (Chapters 6 to 9) (Added 2015) Preface to 1978 Edition (pp. x-xiii) Acknowledgments (pp. xiv-xvi) Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview (pp. 1-21) (Minor formatting changes 15 Jan 2002) Chapter 1 Endnotes Chapter 2: What are the aims of science? (pp 22-62) (Minor formatting changes 15 Jan 2002. Notes added Nov 2001, 2008, 2016) Chapter 2 Endnotes; Notes on Chapter 2 added after 2001 Chapter 3: Science and Philosophy (pp. 63-83) (Minor formatting changes 15 Jan 2002) Chapter 4: What is conceptual analysis? (pp. 84-102) (Minor formatting changes 15 Jan 2002) Chapter 4 Endnotes Chapter 5: Are computers really relevant? (pp. 103-111) (Notes added at end, 20 Jan 2002) Chapter 6: Sketch of an intelligent mechanism. (pp. 112-143) (Minor changes Jan 2002. Further changes and notes in May 2004, Jan 2007, ... Chapter 6 Endnotes Chapter 7: Intuition and analogical reasoning. (pp. 144-176) Chapter 7 Endnotes Chapter 8: On learning about numbers: problems and speculations. (pp. 177-216) Chapter 8 Endnotes; Later Endnotes Notes added 17 Feb 2016: What needs to be explained Note added 17 Apr 2017 about avoiding a rule for generating number names. Computers in Schools: Added in 2001 Note on Computing at School (CAS) added 24 Jul 2015: NOTE Oct 2001 & Feb 2016: Probabilistic (associative) vs structural learning Note on Hauser: Wild Minds added Jan 2002, extended Feb 2016 Note 2009, expanded Feb 2016: Heike Wiese: Note 2015: Mathematics and Biology: The Meta-Morphogenesis (M-M) project. Retrospective notes and comments added 2001, 2002, ...2009, ...2016 Chapter 9: Perception as a computational process. (pp. 217-241) Chapter 9 Endnotes; 2001: Notes on recent developments Chapter 10: More on A.I. and philosophical problems. (pp. 242-271) Chapter 10 Endnotes Epilogue (on cruelty to robots, etc.). (pp. 272-273) Note on "Singularity" (Revised: 9 Jul 2017) 2002: Asimov’s laws of robotics as unethical (Separate document) Epilogue Endnotes; NOTE Added 2015: SMBC on Intelligent AI Postscript:Do we need a hierarchy of metalanguages? (pp. 285-287) Metalanguages and paradoxes: Note 2018/01/01: Allowing run time errors Postscript End Notes Bibliography (pp. 274-284) Scanned Index pages 288-304 based on poor-quality OCR scanning plus editing. Use with caution. Original index pages using image files available separately as HTML or PDF. 5 New Material In Online Edition (Requires further re-organisation.) Please see the "creative commons" licence. History of the online version of the book (2001 to 2015): This book, published in 1978 by Harvester Press (UK) and Humanities Press (USA), has been out of print for many years. In 2001 Manuela Viezzer, photocopied the book to A4 sheets while a PhD student here. Note: She is now an artist: https://manuela-viezzer.squarespace.com/ http://www.saatchiart.com/manuela.viezzer Sammy Snow, a departmental administrator, scanned in the photocopy and produced the original OCR version (in RTF, later converted to HTML). I am enormously grateful to Manuela and Sammy. The scanned copy unfortunately had many pencilled comments and corrections so the files were very messy, but were eventually made readable. It proved necessary to redo all the figures. Various colleagues have reported portions of the text that needed correction after scanning and conversion to html. It is likely that errors still remain. Please report any to [email protected]. For a while, Ceinwen Cushway kindly made printed copies of the new version available at a charge to cover printing and postage. The online PDF version now makes this unnecessary. The online version of CRP became available in September 2001, as separate html chapters. This online edition now includes many corrections, and recently added notes and comments, e.g. the notes at the end of Chapter 9 (on vision), and many others, all marked as additions. There are also several unmarked changes to improve clarity or accuracy. Downloadable PDF versions PDF versions of individual chapters were first produced by reading html files into OpenOffice, editing, then exporting to PDF. Since about 2012 the PDF files have been created directly from html, using the superb html2ps package and ps2pdf (on linux). From some time in 2015, the separate chapters An older PDF version (now out of date) is also available from the EPRINTS archive of ASSC (The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness). See CRP at ASSC eprints web site In 2003, Michael Malien converted the html files (now out of date) to CHM format, still available in this zip file: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/crp-chm.zip Nils Valentin informed me that a tool for extracting html files from a chm file is obtainable here A Russian Student, Sergei Kaunov, created a Kindle e-book version, in 2011. (Also out of date now.) http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Computer-Revolution-Philosophy-ebook/dp/B006JT8FSK He kindly commented: "It is a rare kind of scientific or philosophical book which become more valuable with time". 6 In December 2014 I installed a copy of the 1981 Review of the book by Steven Stich, and wrote a reply to the criticisms he (and others) had made of the claim in Chapter 2 that explanations of possibilities are a core part of science even if they are not falsifiable. More information about that review, and my response to the criticisms can be found in a separate document, along with a link to Douglas Hofstadter’s review, which also criticised that chapter.
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