Tracing the Origins of Artificial Intelligence: A Kantian Response to McCarthy’s Call for Philosophical Help

Abstract

Computer scientist John McCarthy has been tremendously influential in our understanding of what Artificial Intelligence really is. I shall argue that, from a Kantian point of view, the underlying theoretical framework of McCarthy’sposition – which I summarize as the claim that AI as a technical entity is an imitation of the computational ability of human intelligence for problem solving in the empirical physical world – can be understood as transcendental realism. McCarthy dispels the distinction between phenomena and things-in-themselves by fundamentally blocking the reflective ability of intelligence, that is, the abilityto intuit oneself as a synthetic act. The reflective ability of intelligence, i.e. the self-consciousness contained in the “cogito, ergo sum”, is the barometer, as it were, for distinguishing transcendental idealism from transcendental realism; at the same time, it is the watershed that separates Kant from McCarthy. In a philosophical paper, McCarthy called for the help of philosophers to define AI; Kant, I shall argue, can offer such help.