Consciousness, intentionality and intelligence: some foundational issues for artificial intelligence

摘要

Three fundamental questions concerning minds are presented. These are about consciousness, intentionality and intelligence. After we present the fundamental framework that has shaped both the philosophy of mind and the Artificial Intelligence research in the last forty years or so regarding the last two questions, we turn to consciousness, whose study still seems evasive to both communities. After briefly illustrating why and how phenomenal consciousness is puzzling, a theoretical diagnosis of the problem is proposed and a framework is presented, within which further research would yield a solution. The diagnosis is that the puzzle stems from a peculiar dual epistemic access to phenomenal aspects (qualia) of our conscious experiences. An account of concept formation is presented such that both the phenomenal concepts (like the concepts RFD and SWEET) and the introspective concepts (like the concepts EXPERIENCING RED and TASTING SWEET) are acquired from a first- person perspective as opposed to the third-person one (the standard concept formation strategy about objective features).