The AI debate

I want to tease out very briefly some of the issues implicit in John Horgan's discussion of artificial intelligence. In one sense, of course AI is possible. We are machines; dualism is false. What is more, it does not matter that we are flesh and blood machines. Some of us have prosthetic limbs. Some of us have implants inside our ears, or our heads in some cases, to improve our hearing. It would be arbitrary to argue that though items made of inorganic material can be essential contributors to our ability to move around the world and to be in sensory contact with it, items made of inorganic material could not be essential to our ability to think. It is a small step to the conclusion that we might have been made entirely of inorganic material and yet be able to think and reason much as we now can. Indeed, it seems to me that insisting that being made of biological stuff is essential to being a think is a form of 'compositionism' that is to be rejected along with the other kinds of chauvinism. But then AI is possible in the sense that machines - possibly indeterministic ones - made of inorganic stuff might be able to think and reason much as we can.