McCarthy gives reasons why we shall need to describe intelligent robots in mentalistic terms, and why such a robot will need some degree of self consciousness, and he has made suggestions regarding the notation that we and the robot might use to describe its states. This talk extends that work by focusing on the underlying “high level ” architectures required to justify ascriptions of mentality. Which concepts are applicable to a system will depend on the architecture of that system. An architecture provides a basis for a family of interrelated concepts namely the concepts that describe the states and processes able to occur in the architecture. EXAMPLE: SELF-CONTROL AND

McCarthy gives reasons why we shall need to describe intelligent robots in mentalistic terms, and why such a robot will need some degree of self consciousness, and he has made suggestions regarding the notation that we and the robot might use to describe its states. This talk extends that work by focusing on the underlying “high level ” architectures required to justify ascriptions of mentality. Which concepts are applicable to a system will depend on the architecture of that system. An architecture provides a basis for a family of interrelated concepts namely the concepts that describe the states and processes able to occur in the architecture. EXAMPLE: SELF-CONTROL AND

Clearly we can solve problems by thinking about them. Sometimes we have the impression that in doing so we use words, at other times diagrams or images. Often we use both. What is going on when we use mental diagrams or images? This question is addressed in relation to the more general multi-pronged question: what are representations, what are they for, how many different types are they, in how many different ways can they be used, and what difference does it make whether they are in the mind or on paper? The question is related to deep problems about how vision and spatial manipulation work. It is suggested that we are far from understanding what’s going on. In particular we need to explain how people understand spatial structure and motion, and I’ll try to suggest that this is a problem

This is an idiosyncratic personal overview of some themes relevant to AI, not an objective survey. Like everything I write, it will go on being updated on my web site after publication. This version has a surfeit of self-references for readers who want more detail, not in printed version. The PDF presentation is at