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Computers And The Nature Of Man: A Historian's Perspective On Controversies About Artificial Intelligence, Judith V. Grabiner

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

The purpose of the present paper is to provide a historical perspective on recent controversies, from Turing's time on, about artificial intelligence, and to make clear that these are in fact controversies about the nature of man. First, I shall briefly review three recent controversies about artificial intelligence, controversies over whether computers can think and over whether people are no more than information-processing machines. These three controversies were each initiated by philosophers who, irrespective of what the programs of their time actually did, viewed with alarm the argument that if a machine can think, a thinking being is just a …