Natural and artificial intelligence

In this essay we will not attempt to decide whether artificial intelligence is the same as natural intelligence. Instead we will examine some of the issues and terms that must be clarified before that question can be resolved. We will discuss how the question about the relationship between natural and artificial intelli gence can be formulated. One of the first things that must be clarified is the ambiguous word artificial. This adjective can be used in two senses, and it is important to determine which one applies in the term artificial intelligence. The word artificial is used in one sense when it is applied, say, to flowers, and in another sense when it is applied to light. In both cases something is called artificial because it is fabricated. But in the first usage artificial means that the thing seems to be, but really is not, what it looks like. The artificial is the merely apparent; it just shows how something else looks. Artificial flowers are only paper, not flowers at all; anyone who takes them to be flowers is mistaken. But artificial light is light and it does illuminate. It is fabricated as a substitute for natural light, but once fabricated it is what it seems to be. In this sense the artificial is not the merely apparent, not simply an imitation of something else. The appearance of the thing reveals what it is, not how something else looks. The movement of an automobile is another example of something that is artificial in the second sense of the word. An automobile