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Robots, zombies and us : understanding consciousness / Robert Kirk.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Kirk, Robert, 1933- author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Consciousness.
- Functionalism (Psychology).
- Zombies--Miscellanea.
- Zombies.
- Robots--Miscellanea.
- Robots.
- Other minds (Theory of knowledge).
- Miscellanea.
- Physical Description:
- ix, 192 pages ; 23 cm
- Place of Publication:
- London, UK ; New York, NY, USA : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Plc, 2017.
- Summary:
- 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.
- Contents:
- 1 Introduction 1
- 2 Behaviour is not enough 9
- 3 Machines 19
- 4 Intelligent robots? 27
- 5 Is something non-physical involved? 47
- 6 Zombies 63
- 7 What's wrong with the zombie idea? 75
- 8 The basic package 93
- 9 What's needed on top of the basic package 117
- 10 Functionalism 125
- 11 Functionalism is compulsory 139
- 12 Is there an explanatory gap? 151
- 13 Brains in vats and buckets 167.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN:
- 9781474286589
- 1474286585
- 9781474286596
- 1474286593
- OCLC:
- 949819829
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