The chapters in this book have evolved from talks originally presented at The First International Workshop on Human and Machine Cognition. Although the workshop took place in1989, the papers that appear here are more recent, completed some time after the workshop. They reflect both the spontaneous exchanges in that halcyon setting and the extensive review process.
The chapters in this book have evolved from talks originally presented at The First International Workshop on Human and Machine Cognition. Although the workshop took place in1989, the papers that appear here are more recent, completed some time after the workshop. They reflect both the spontaneous exchanges in that halcyon setting and the extensive review process.
The chapters in this book have evolved from talks originally presented at The First International Workshop on Human and Machine Cognition. Although the workshop took place in1989, the papers that appear here are more recent, completed some time after the workshop. They reflect both the spontaneous exchanges in that halcyon setting and the extensive review process.
Each of the chapters in this volume devotes considerable attention to defining and elaborating the notion of the frame problem-one of the hard problems of artificial intelligence. Not only do the chapters clarify the problems at hand, they shed light on the different approaches taken by those in artificial intelligence and by certain philosophers who have been concerned with related problems in their field. The book should therefore not be read merely as a discussion of the frame problem narrowly conceived, but also as a general analysis of what could be a major challenge to the design of computer systems exhibiting general intelligence.
The Malay Dilemma Revisited is a critical and balanced analysis of Malaysia's preferential race policy and its impact on the nation's delicate race dynamics and economy. Unlike America's affirmative action, Malaysia's version is far more aggressive and pervasive and has been remarkably successful in creating a sizable and stable Bumiputra (indigenous group) middle class. The price tag is significant: distortion of freemarket dynamics and consequent inefficiency. Perversely, the policy impairs rather than strengthens Bumiputras' ability to compete. In contrast to quotas and other set-aside programs that are the hallmark of the current policy, the writer presents an alternative strategy aimed primarily at enhancing Bumiputra competitiveness. The proposed approach would not negatively impact the economy nor interfere with the freemarket. Equally important, it would not arouse resentment from other Malaysians. The first objective would be to modernize the nation's archaic educational system to emphasize English, mathematics, the sciences, and technical training. Secondly, the influences of religious and royal institutions must be curtailed, and the rates of urbanization and population growth reduced. The primary objective is in enhancing competitiveness, not on meeting arbitrarily picked numerical goals and targets.
A new collection of wide-ranging essays from one of cognitive science's most distingushed figures. Minds are complex artifacts, partly biological and partly social; only a unified, multidisciplinary approach will yield a realistic theory of how they came into existence and how they work. One of the foremost workers in this multidisciplinary field is Daniel Dennett. This book brings together his essays on the philosphy of mind, artificial intelligence, and cognitive ethology that appeared in inaccessible journals from 1984 to 1996. Highlights include "Can Machines Think?," "The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies," "Artificial Life as Philosophy," and "Animal Consciousness: What Matters and Why." Collected in a single volume, the essays are now available to a wider audience.
This edited volume presents a comprehensive history of modern logic from the Middle Ages through the end of the twentieth century. In addition to a history of symbolic logic, the contributors also examine developments in the philosophy of logic and philosophical logic in modern times. The book begins with chapters on late medieval developments and logic and philosophy of logic from Humanism to Kant. The following chapters focus on the emergence of symbolic logic with special emphasis on the relations between logic and mathematics, on the one hand, and on logic and philosophy, on the other. This discussion is completed by a chapter on the themes of judgment and inference from 1837-1936. The volume contains a section on the development of mathematical logic from 1900-1935, followed by a section on main trends in mathematical logic after the 1930s. The volume goes on to discuss modal logic from Kant till the late twentieth century, and logic and semantics in the twentieth century; the philosophy of alternative logics; the philosophical aspects of inductive logic; the relations between logic and linguistics in the twentieth century; the relationship between logic and artificial intelligence; and ends with a presentation of the main schools of Indian logic. The Development of Modern Logic includes many prominent philosophers from around the world who work in the philosophy and history of mathematics and logic, who not only survey developments in a given period or area but also seek to make new contributions to contemporary research in the field. It is the first volume to discuss the field with this breadth of coverage and depth, and will appeal to scholars and students of logic and its philosophy.
The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science is an indispensable reference source and guide to the major themes, debates, problems and topics in philosophy of science. It contains sixty-two specially commissioned entries by a leading team of international contributors. Organized into four parts it covers: historical and philosophical context debates concepts the individual sciences. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science addresses all of the essential topics that students of philosophy of science need to know - from empiricism, explanation and experiment to causation, observation, prediction and more - and contains many helpful features including chapters on individual sciences (such as biology, chemistry, physics and psychology), further reading and cross-referencing at the end of each chapter. Expanded and revised throughout, this second edition includes new chapters on Conventionalism, Social Epistemology, Computer Simulation, Thought Experiments, Pseudoscience, Species and Taxonomy, and Cosmology.
An evolutionary and cognitive account of the science behind why we crack up—“one of the most complex and sophisticated humor theories ever presented” (Evolutionary Psychology). Some things are funny—jokes, puns, sitcoms, Charlie Chaplin, The Far Side, Malvolio with his yellow garters crossed—but why? Why does humor exist in the first place? Why do we spend so much of our time passing on amusing anecdotes, making wisecracks, watching The Simpsons? In Inside Jokes, Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams offer an evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Humor, they propose, evolved out of a computational problem that arose when our long-ago ancestors were furnished with open-ended thinking. Mother Nature—aka natural selection—cannot just order the brain to find and fix all our time-pressured misleaps and near-misses. She has to bribe the brain with pleasure. So we find them funny. This wired-in source of pleasure has been tickled relentlessly by humorists over the centuries, and we have become addicted to the endogenous mind candy that is humor.
Incremental Conceptualization for Language Production discusses the simultaneous actions involved in thinking and speaking, as well as the piecemeal way in which individuals construct an internal representation of the external world and use this internal representation for speaking. Author Markus Guhe presents the first computational model that captures these observations in a cognitively adequate fashion. The volume is an innovative look at the mind’s process of producing semantic representations that can be transformed into language. The first section of the book illustrates four stages of conceptualization: construction of a conceptual representation; selection of content to be verbalized; linearization of the selected content; and generation of preverbal messages. Guhe then analyzes incremental processing — processing that takes place in a piecemeal fashion — and offers a blueprint of incremental models while discussing the dimensions along which the processing principles and the blueprint varies. Finally, incremental processing and conceptualization merge to form the incremental conceptualiser model (inC). The effective use of inC is demonstrated through simulations carried out with the implementation of the model. Intended for researchers in cognitive science, particularly cognitive modeling of language, this volume will also interest researchers in artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, and linguistics and psychology.
