Mechanical Minds in History and Philosophy

(4 Credits)

The idea that mental processes are mechanical is pervasive in contemporary thinking about what minds are and how they work, serving as a guiding principle behind artificial intelligence research. How did this notion arise and what assumptions underlie it? What past debates are embedded in present conceptions of the mechanical mind? This course tracks the emergence of analogies between minds and machines in early modern philosophy and science, and explores artificial intelligence’s philosophical lineage. To this end, we will examine the work of Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, G. W. Leibniz, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and Alan Turing, among others, together with historical investigations of the machines that inspired their thinking.