Descartes, the modal intuitions and the Classical AI

Abstract

Descartes denies that any machine can be intelligent, since machines are predictable, inflexible and limited. Advocates of AI argue the contrary. Even so, both Descartes and classical AI envisage the possibility that thought and intelligence need not be instantiated by physical properties. Such a possibility is entertained by Descartes through a modal intuition according to which mind can exist without body, an idea which seems to have been endorsed by classical AI when it reduces mind to a Turing Machine whose physical realization is irrelevant. Even though both arguments presuppose different theories and consequences, Functionalism turns out to be compatible with a form of Dualism, which discards the Materialism that originally inspired classical Artificial Intelligence.