Making machines in our image : the rhetoric of Artificial Intelligence /
With the emergence of Artificial Intelligence, metaphysical accounts of mind are increasingly replaced by computational psychology based on the presupposition that humans are machines in spite of differences in 'hardware.' The alliance of computational psychology with the neurosciences und...
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| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
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[Place of publication not identified] :
[publisher not identified] ;
2001.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=726089321&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=2945&RQT=309&VName=PQD |
| Summary: | With the emergence of Artificial Intelligence, metaphysical accounts of mind are increasingly replaced by computational psychology based on the presupposition that humans are machines in spite of differences in 'hardware.' The alliance of computational psychology with the neurosciences undergirded by a strong materialism facilitated the stage for the acceptance of Artificial Intelligence as a model of mind. Artificial Intelligence (henceforth referred to as AI) claims to offer a resolution to the question 'what is mind?' by asserting that an efficacious method of studying minds lies in the act of building them. Most discourse of philosophy of mind on AI centers on a nonconstructivist view of language. A rhetoric of mind, on the other hand, tells us about the creative nature of our linguistic frames; it tells us about the role metaphors play in generating conceptual vocabularies and theoretical frameworks; it tells us about the interrelationships between concepts and how these concepts are co-opted into frameworks and how these frameworks become pivotal in our understanding of mind, and finally human nature. Having said so, the basic thesis of this discussion is that the discourse of mind implicit in AI is also rhetorically constructed as seen through: a) the emergent rhetorical situation of scientific materialism and b) the role of generative metaphors in creating concepts and theoretical models of cognition. How these metaphors developed and play out in the discourse of mind will be the key focus of this study. |
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| Item Description: | Vita. "Major Subject: Speech Communication". |
| Physical Description: | ix, 321 leaves ; 28 cm. Issued also on microfiche from University Microfilm Inc. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 305-320). |