ABSTRACT
This chapter is written in part as a guide to the way in which the scientific contributors see the issues and where their own technical language may need some explaining. It also acts as an introduction for scientific readers to explain why a philosophical analysis of the problems cannot be avoided. Nevertheless, while it is necessary to bear in mind the difficulties in drawing a hard and fast line, the distinction between hardware and software is important. For it is only via software that a machine can come to display rule-guided behavior and rationality. Implicit in McFarland’s use of optimality principles is that there is pressure for something, for example the efficiency of energy utilization, to be optimized, and natural selection provides that pressure. Finally, there is the background of scientific use of the concept of causation. Readers will find that even the scientists here do not operate with exactly the same meaning of ‘cause’.
