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Conclusion

In 2012 Agazzi, responding during an interview, said: “I have always conceived philosophy as an effort to find answers to the fundamental problems of human existence, situated in its historical and cultural context” (Agazzi and Alai 2012c).

This principle also applies to the research in the philosophy of logic and math­ematics. Therefore, I would like conclude this paper following this line and put­ting Godel’s argument in an evocative way. Quoting Paul Benacerraf (1967: 30), I would say: “If I am a Turing machine, then I am barred by my very nature from obeying Socrates’ profound philosophic injunction: KNOW THYSELF”. This conclusion does not have any great relevance to the science. Nothing prevents one from building computational models, which would simulate ever-increasing parts of our intelligent behaviour. One day, we could even build a Turing machine, which will simulate in every way human intelligent behaviour, but we will not know this with absolute certainty! I believe, then, that the significance of this con­clusion is more anthropological, than scientific: it simply reasserts the fundamen­tal incompleteness of human self-knowledge.

This conclusion should be, I think, very interesting for Agazzi who has devoted much of his work on Artificial Intelligence to the analysis of the problem of intentionality.[129]

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Source: Alai M., Buzzoni M., Tarozzi G. (eds.). Science Between Truth and Ethical Responsibility: Evandro Agazzi in the Contemporary Scientific and Philosophical Debate. Springer,2015. — 337 pp.. 2015

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