The culture of the artificial

The expression 'nature of the artificial' can be understood in (at least) two distinct, yet possibly related, senses as denoting (i) the essence (or whatness) of the artificial, and (ii) that which stands as a given 'other' to the artificial. Recently, Negrotti [1] has developed a sophisticated mimetic theory of the artificial grounded in three notions - observation, exemplar, and essential performance - that attempts to articulate the former. In this paper, it will be argued that, notwithstanding the merits of this scheme, principal of which are the self-evident simplicity of its conceptual foundations and its possible overall correctness, it suffers from a number of drawbacks. These can be shown to follow from what are, in fact, highly problematic metaphysical assumptions about the nature (as essence) of nature (as 'other' to the artificial). For example, Negrotti is committed to the following three metaphysical theses (among others): (1) there are two ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2000
• Where: AIS
• Authors: Massimo Negrotti
• Keywords: AIS 2000, Artificial Intelligence, Possible Overall Correctness, Problematic Metaphysical Assumptions, Sophisticated Mimetic Theory