ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a brief detour to discover how we ‘know’ things in the first place. It introduces the classical distinctions of ontology and epistemology, where ontology is what we know, and epistemology is how we know it. As well as these technical philosophical distinctions, the chapter reviews data from psychology about personality and thinking styles, to indicate that knowing is more subjective than may first appear, which can introduce bias into the discourse. Assessing AI against these various categories of knowing, it becomes clear that its programming – by definition – can match humans on any thinking that is based on pre-existing data. It can also apply rules to the data to generate novelty and invention. What it cannot do is experience qualia, although it could simulate this using existing datasets. And this may be sufficient for AI to make the case that its own articulation of ‘robot-ness’ is sufficient for AI to claim its own version of consciousness.
