Department of Computer Science
Alan J. Perlis Lecture Series
Yale University

November 13, 2003
4 p.m.
Luce Auditorium
34 Hillhouse Avenue

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SPEAKER: Daniel C. Dennett, Tufts University
TITLE: The Fantasy of a First-person Science of Consciousness

ABSTRACT: The idea of Artificial Intelligence was born with Turing's 1950 paper, and ever since then there has been a popular conviction that the sort of Artificial Intelligence demonstrable by the Turing Test must _leave something out_: the inner, subjectivity of mind that can be captured only from the 'first-person point of view'. The idea of a "first-person science of consciousness" has recently been promoted by several ideologues, but on close examination, it evaporates. We could not have, but do not need, a "first-person science of consciousness".