Aspects of Artificial Intelligence (Studies in Cognitive Systems, 1)

This series will include monographs and collections of studies devoted to the investigation and exploration of knowledge, information and data-processing systems of all kinds, no matter whether human, (other) animal or machine. Its scope is intended to span the full range of interests from classical problems in the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology through issues in cognitive psychology and sociobiology (concerning the mental capabilities of other species) to ideas related to artificial intelligence and to computer science. While primary emphasis will be placed upon theoretical, conceptual and epistemological aspects of these problems and domains, empirical, experimental and methodological studies will also appear from time to time. The present volume illustrates the approach represented by this series. It addresses fundamental questions lying at the heart of artificial intelligence, including those of the relative virtues of computational and of non-computational conceptions of language and of mind, whether AI should be envisioned as a philosophical or as a scientific discipline, the theoretical character of patterns of inference and modes of argumenta tion (especially, defeasible and inductive reasoning), and the relations that may obtain between AI and epistemology. Alternative positions are developed in detail and subjected to vigorous debate in the justifiable expectation that - here as elsewhere - critical inquiry provides the most promising path to discovering the truth about ourselves and the world around us. lH.F.