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Editorial

Talking to Ourselves?

by Rick Lewis

What common thread links robots, ape language experiments and Kasparov getting beaten at chess by Deep Blue? Maybe it is that each can tell us something about ourselves. This issue kicks off with an article describing attempts to teach sign-language to chimpanzees. The author concludes that the results of these experiments should make us change our ideas about the nature of language. Edward Ingram uses an amusing fantasy about a world inhabited by robots to make interesting points about the nature of perception in humans. Roger Caldwell discusses Dan Dennett’s view that we are conscious robots: again, a consideration of robots casting more light on the nature of humans, this time on the nature of consciousness.

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