Ascribing Mental Qualities to Machines

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John McCarthy
Martin Ringle (a cura di)
Philosophical Perspectives in Artificial Intelligence, pp. 161–195
Harvester Studies in Cognitive Science
Harvester Press, Brighton
1979

Ascribing mental qualities like beliefs, intentions and wants to a machine is sometimes correct if done conservatively and is sometimes necessary to express what is known about its state. We propose some new definitional tools for this: definitions relative to an approximate theory and second order structural definitions.