From artificial intelligence research to philosophy
Based on a sample size of three (Pearl, Yudkowsky & Drescher), it appears that AI researchers can do quite well when they turn significant attention to philosophy. Are there other examples of this? I’m thinking of people who are primarily AI researchers, but have also done long, serious work in philosophy.
F. Y. Edgeworth, Bertrand Russell, and Kurt Goedel come to mind. They were mathematicians, which is pretty similar. Daniel Dennett is well-acquainted with AI. Paul and Patricia Churchland are familiar with neuroscience; but I don’t know how good their philosophy is. R. Penrose is good at math and physics, but not at philosophy. Wittgenstein produced some of his best insights from studying linguistics. J. Fodor is very well-educated in linguistics, and has a mixed record in philosophy (well, stuff that might be more cognitive science) of good and bad ideas. J. Searle is also well-educated in linguistics, and bad (possibly deliberately) at philosophy. Valentino Braitenberg, a roboticist, seems philosophically competent, or at least able to talk about what is likely and important in the long term.
Douglas Hofstadter started out as an AI researcher, although he now describes his work as cognitive science. Whether he’s “primarily” an AI researcher, and whether his philosophy is “serious”, he does seem to get a bit of respect around these areas.
Clark Glymour.
This guy looks promising. I’m totally checking him out.
Opening paragraph of one of his 2008 papers:
I like this guy already. :)
This may be unfair of me, but I can’t help but think Ben Goertzel is a counterexample.
Why—have you read his philosophy book?
No; I read years of his SL4 postings and the occasional link. Is there any reason to think his book any better?
OTOH I thoroughly enjoyed his fiction.
What are the criteria for success here?
Full blown Singularity would do, I think. Anything else is dubious.
When you wrote that Judea Pearl turned significant attention to philosophy were you thinking of his work on causality or something else?
Causality, yes.
What makes you call that philosophy?
Tradition. Causality is a classic concept of philosophy, and not unique to any particular science. Many sciences just treat it as an assumption. Pearl’s account of causality continues from the counterfactual accounts developed by Lewis and Stalnaker, both philosophers. But I don’t really care to argue about the boundary of ‘philosophy’. You could place causality under physics, maybe, or statistics.
Marcus Hutter of AIXI fame discusses the problem of induction in philosophy here (LW discussion thread).
John McCarthy has published several papers about philosophy topics (but related to AI). His Ascribing Mental Qualities to Machines always struck me as a shining example of “why we should leave philosophy to the computer scientists”.
Well at AI or philosophy or what? As judged by AI researchers, philosophers,or whom?