ABSTRACT
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) approach is seeking to establish and legitimate a view of intelligence and the nature of mind which challenges the received commonsense view of mind and intelligence as something rather special and certainly well beyond the reach of scientific analysis. The AI scientist impatiently protests that the philosopher's objections to the intelligibility of the Mechanist Metaphor should apply to all scientific analogies; for, as many have pointed out, the very essence of scientific metaphor is its illogicality. This chapter begins by querying whether philosophers must bow to the scientistic judgement inspired by Exodus 20:5, but have now reached the point where we can consider whether it is not cognitive scientists who should take heed of the proverb. The danger to the philosophy of mind posed by the gathering forces of cognitive science rests on an all-too-familiar tactic which, for all its claimed novelty, has nonetheless enabled the former to prepare its defences.
