🚀 go-pugleaf

               University of New South Wales

         School of Computer Science and Engineering

             Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

                       Seminar Series

TITLE:         Situated Cognition:
               Minds in Machines or Friendly Photocopiers?

WHO:           Peter Slezak
               Centre for Cognitive Science
               University Of New South Wales

WHEN:          1-2pm, Friday, July 3, 1992

ABSTRACT:      The propaganda for situated cognition is cer-
               tainly  radical:   Bill  Clancey rhapsodizes:
               "We  have  the  stuff  here  of   Copernicus,
               Darwin,  and  Frued"  and  "this  alternative
               models shakes most of AI and  cognitive  sci-
               ence  for  the  past  25 years to its founda-
               tions". In an AI journal, only slightly  less
               rapturous,   Agre   recommends  the  situated
               approach as providing a perspective which  is
               "truly  very different from anything that has
               heretofore motivated computational  research"
               and  one  which  he  expects  will  "exert an
               increasing influence of work in AI".  Others,
               too, suggest that the situated approach chal-
               lenges the entire symbolic, information  pro-
               cessing  framework  on which AI and cognitive
               science rests.

               What does it all mean? Has Dreyfus  won?  Has
               the  ambition  to make minds in machines been
               abandoned in favour of making a better  toas-
               ter  or perhaps automatic teller machine? Has
               "strong AI"  settled  for  the  user-friendly
               photocopier? Why has Winograd gone for Dasein
               and "being-in-the-world"? Or is it a case  of
               "being-out-of-your-mind"? Is SHRDLU really an
               acronym  after  all?   ("Should   Have   Read
               Dreyfus Less Unbelievingly")

               Despite much obscurity and confusion  in  the
               field  of  situated cognition, I believe that
               there is, after all, an important theoretical
               insight  which  deserves  to be distinguished
               and clarified.


WHERE:         Rm 212, Samuel Building,  University  of  New
               South Wales. Enter off Botany Street, stop at
               gate and  ask  grey  men  for  day  pass  and
               instructions.  Park  in  the main car park on
               your left.  The Samuels building is the  gray
               building   directly  behind  the  gates  with
               strange shield-like objects over the windows.

INQUIRIES:     timm@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au (Tim Menzies)

--------------------------------------------------------------

                       PLEASE NOTE:

If you have a seminar that you would like to present at this
forum, contact Tim.