SUNY Buffalo Cog Sci--Eric Dietrich

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1 total messages Started by William J. Rapaport Mon, 10 Apr 1989 19:24

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Author: William J. Rapaport
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1989 19:24

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                         UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO
                      STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

   GRADUATE RESEARCH INITIATIVE IN COGNITIVE AND LINGUISTIC SCIENCES

                                PRESENTS

                             ERIC DIETRICH

          Program in Philosophy and Computer & Systems Science
                        Department of Philosophy
                            SUNY Binghamton

FODOR'S PERVERSE FRAME PROBLEM AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR SCIENTIFIC A.I.

Over the last several years, Jerry Fodor has developed a theory of  mind
which  has  the unintuitive consequence that one part of the human brain
routinely solves an intractable (or undecidable) problem.  This  problem
is  Fodor's  version of the frame problem, which was first discovered in
1969 by McCarthy and Hayes, and is currently the subject of  controversy
and debate.  I will briefly discuss Fodor's theory of mind--the modular-
ity thesis--and his version of the frame problem.  Then I will show that
Fodor's  frame  problem  is  not  solvable by any physical computer with
realistic resources.  Though Fodor apparently embraces this  conclusion,
I  do  not.  Instead, the modularity thesis should be rejected.  The gap
left by the modularity thesis, however, poses at least one serious prob-
lem  for  AI.   I  will suggest one way of handling this problem and its
implications for a scientific AI.

                         Monday, April 17, 1989
                               4:00 P.M.
                     684 Baldy Hall, Amherst Campus

            There will be an evening discussion at 8:00 P.M.
      at David Mark's house, 380 S. Ellicott Creek Road, Amherst.

Contact Bill Rapaport, Dept.  of  Computer  Science,  716-636-3193,  for
further information.

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