|
Few developments in the intellectual life
of the past quarter-century have provoked more controversy
than the attempt to engineer humanlike intelligence by artificial
means. Born of computer science, this effort has sparked
a continuing debate among the psychologists, neuroscientists,
philosophers, and linguists who have pioneered -- and criticized
-- Artificial Intelligence. Are there general principles,
as some computer scientists had originally hoped, that would
fully describe the activity of both animal and machine minds,
just as aero-dynamics accounts for the flight of birds and
airplanes? Twenty leading researchers address this and other
vexing questions in the fields that make up cognitive science.
The book includes interviews with Patricia
Smith Churchland ("Take It Apart and See How It Runs"),
Paul M. Churchland ("Neural Networks and Commonsense"),
Aaron V. Cicourel ("Cognition and Cultural Belief"),
Daniel C. Dennett ("In Defense of Al"), Hubert
L. Dreyfus ("Cognitivism Abandoned"), Jerry A.
Fodor ("The Folly of Simulation"), John Haugeland
(" Farewell to GOFAI?"), George Lakoff ("Embodied
Minds and Meanings"), James L. McClelland ("Toward
a Pragmatic Connectedness"), Allen Newell ("The
Serial Imperative"), Stephen E. Palmer ("Gestalt
Psychology Redux"), Hilary Putnam ("Against the
New Associationism"), David E. Rumelhart ("From
Searching to Seeing"), John R. Searle ("Ontology
is the Question"), Terrence J. Sejnowski ("The
Hardware Really Matters"), Herbert A. Simon ("Technology
Is Not The Problem"), Joseph Weizenbaum ("The
Myth of the Last Metaphor"), Robert Wilensky ("Why
Play the Philosophy Game"), Terry A. Winograd ("Computers
and Social Values"), and Lofti A. Zadeh ("The
Albatross of Classical Logic"). Speaking Minds can
complement more traditional textbooks but can also stand
alone as an introduction to the field.
Peter Baumgartner is Associate Professor
of Further Education at the University of Klagenfurt and
the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Further
Education. Sabine Payr is a linguist and freelance researcher
who lives in Klagenfurt.
|
