Art and Android Epistemology

While researching a bit on android epistemology for a wikipedia post, I came upon a reference to The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow” (NYT Review):

Jennifer Marcus, an agoraphobic 22-year-old genius with obsessive-compulsive disorder who was raised in Southern California but born in China. Since she can’t bring herself to step outside her door, let alone work through the bureaucratic red tape of an adoption agency, she decides to build a robot out of obsolete missiles, name it “Jenny Chow,” and send it on a journey to find her mother.

Interestingly, the playwright of Rolin Jones happened upon the seminal book in AE (aptly names Android Epistemology) while doing research for his play and found inspiration in it:

He dusted off an eclectic tome called Android Epistemology, which had never been taken out by a student. “The pages were still stuck together,” he recalls. “I was amazed that somebody had written 250 pages on the theoretical epistemology of thinking, breathing robots.”

I’ll have to forward this reference to Clark, he would probably find it amusing.

It’s a pity that the book languished on some shelf, instead of being read by students of philosophy, and machine learning; I believe that this more applications-oriented approach to epistemology is the future of the subject, rather than the scholasticism of traditional epistemology.

Anyway, here is the text of my entry on android epistemology:

Android Epistemology
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Android epistemology is an approach to epistemology considering the space of possible machines and their capacities for knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, desires and for action in accord with their mental states. Thus, android epistemology incorporates artificial intelligence, computational cognitive psychology, computability theory and other related disciplines.

[edit] References

* Craig, Ian D. 1996. A Review of Android Epistemology Robotika
* Ford, K., Glymour, C. and Hayes, P. [eds.] 1995. Android Epistemology, Cambridge: MIT Press.
* Ford, K., Glymour, C. and Hayes, P. [eds.] 2006. Thinking about Android Epistemology, AAAI Press
* Glymour, Clark “Android Epistemology for Babies: Reflections on Words, Thoughts and Theories,” Synthese, Vol. 122 (2000), 53-68.
* Glymour, Clark, Hayes, P., and Ford, K. “The Pre-History of Android Epistemology,” in Ford, K., Glymour, C. and Hayes, P. [eds.] 1995. Android Epistemology, Cambridge: MIT Press.

[edit] See also

* Artificial Intelligence
* Computational epistemology
* Formal epistemology
* Machine learning
* Philosophy of Mind

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