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Cat spiders: unHumean imaginings in the age of artificial intelligence?

Edward, Terence Rajivan
PhilArchive · Papers
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philosophy
The Enlightenment philosopher David Hume’s doctrine of the imagination entails that the imagination is limited in its creativity: it can only combine (or sometimes divide) ideas derived from sensory impressions, for example combine the ideas of blue and cat to imagine a blue cat. Sketches on my Instagram feed present me with much stranger things, produced by means of machines implementing artificial intelligence, such as cat spiders, as I call them. A cat spider has the body of a spider but the head of a cat. Are these a problem for Hume? They seem consistent with the doctrine of imagination presented, but they are a challenge to his conception of the mind as proceeding by customary associations.
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