This course introduces students to the broad area of artificial intelligence and its intersections with various domains including cognitive science, symbolic logic and reasoning, philosophy of mind, science fiction literature, and data science. Students will develop and prototype AI algorithms ranging from computer vision, natural language processing, reinforcement learning/control theory, and signal/data processing, as well as learning broader sociocultural issues surrounding AI including its history, theories of machine and human intelligence, and ethics. The class will primarily use Python as its main programming language for development.
Topics
Mind
Reading
Descartes, René. Meditations on first philosophy. Broadview Press, 2013.
Smullyan, Raymond M. (2002). An Unfortunate Dualist. In David J. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings.
Ryle, Gilbert (2000). The ghost in the machine. In Steven M. Cahn (ed.), Exploring Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press USA.
Machines
Reading
Putnam, Hilary. “The nature of mental states.” The Language and Thought Series. Harvard University Press, 1980. 223-231.
Searle, John R. “Minds, brains, and programs.” Behavioral and brain sciences 3.3 (1980): 417-424
Languageand Logic
Reading
Selections from Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical investigations. Wittgenstein. Macmillan, 1968.
Selections from Frege, Gottlob. Gottlob Frege: Foundations of Arithmetic:(Longman Library of Primary Sources in Philosophy). Routledge, 2020.
Machine Perception and Neural Networks
Reading
Nagel, Thomas. “What is it like to be a bat?.” The language and thought series. Harvard University Press, 1980. 159-168.
Chapter on Connectionism in Clark, Andy. Mindware: An introduction to the philosophy of cognitive science. Oxford University Press, 2000.
Selections from Gibson, James J. The ecological approach to visual perception: classic edition. Psychology press, 2014.
AI inSociety
Reading
Andy, Clark, and Chalmers David. “The extended mind.” Analysis 58.1 (1998): 7-19.
