PHILOSOPHY 365: PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTING

A1 First Term MWF 11:00-11:50 W. Cooper
This course will develop the idea that there are at least three kinds of computing: symbol-manipulating, connectionist, and quantum computing. Jack Copeland's Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction offers an accessible but rigorous introduction to the first two kinds of computation, and John Searle's The Rediscovery of the Mind mounts an articulate attack on the prospects for artificial intelligence through symbol-manipulating computation (what Searle calls "Strong AI"). As for the third kind of computation, it will be introduced in the quantum physicist David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality, which argues that the foundations for computation that Alan Turing laid down in the 1930's are an approximation to something more fundamental, a universal computer (not merely a "universal Turing machine") that renders virtual realities by drawing on the computational resources of parallel worlds.