Author : Robert Kirk
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1474286607
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (742 download)
Book Synopsis Robots, Zombies and Us by : Robert Kirk
Download or read book Robots, Zombies and Us written by Robert Kirk and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Could robots be genuinely intelligent? Could they be conscious? Could there be zombies? Prompted by these questions Robert Kirk introduces the main problems of consciousness and sets out a new approach to solving them. He starts by discussing behaviourism, Turing's test of intelligence and Searle's famous Chinese Room argument, and goes on to examine dualism – the idea that consciousness requires something beyond the physical – together with its opposite, physicalism. Probing the idea of zombies, he concludes they are logically impossible. Having presented the central problems, he sketches his solution: a version of functionalism, according to which consciousness consists in the performance of functions. While there is wide agreement among philosophers about what the main problems of consciousness are, there is little agreement on how to go about solving them. With this powerful case for his version of functionalism, Kirk offers an engaging introduction to both the problems and a possible solution.