gall@yunexus.UUCP (Norman R. Gall) (03/23/89)
Is this group active? If not, might we start a discussion on connectionism?
Regards, | York University |
Norm Gall | Dept. of Philosophy | gall@nexus.yorku.ca
| Toronto, ON, Canada | gall@vm1.yorku.camorrison@grads.cs.ubc.ca (Rick Morrison) (03/25/89)
Good question. Seems to me that general technical discussion might as well
be carried on in the comp.{ai,neural-nets,etc} groups. Although, to tell
the truth, the signal-to-noise ratio in comp.ai is so high now that I've
all but abandoned it. (Is this what happens when the Humanities get
networked? :-)).
Anyway, it _would_ be interesting to get some idea of the readership
(well, subscribership) of this group. I think it would be beneficial
to all if we had some idea of who is doing AI in Canada and where they
are located. I'm willing to collect the data and post it, if you can
take the time to fill in the following form. I'll summarize in a week
or so.
I think that the numbers are small enough to make this quite
feasible. Even if the response is enormous, I think this is probably
as worth spending net resources on as, say, the latest sources to
'hack'. I'm particularly interested in non-university feedback since
most CS departments in the country are doing something in AI.
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Please use the above form to facilitate formatting. Now, just hit "R"
and you're off....gall@yunexus.UUCP (Norman R. Gall) (03/26/89)
I'll let that comment about the Humanities slide, and ask if philosophical discussion of the so-called "AI conception of mind" would be fair game in this group. There is a bit of research in this area in Canada (I'm doing some of it) and this might be a good place to air some concerns.
andrew@dgbt.uucp (Andrew Patrick) (03/29/89)
In article <1398@yunexus.UUCP> gall@yunexus.UUCP (Norman R. Gall) writes: >I'll let that comment about the Humanities slide, and ask if >philosophical discussion of the so-called "AI conception of mind" >would be fair game in this group. OK, I'll bite. What is the "AI conception of mind", and how does it differ from other conceptions of mind? Also, what's being done in Canada on the topic? --- Andrew Patrick, Ph.D. Communications Research Centre (613) 990-4675 Dept. of Communications, Canada ...utzoo!bnr-vpa!bnr-rsc!dgbt!andrew UUCP or INTERNET: andrew@dgbt.crc.dnd.ca BITNET: andrew@doccrc
gall@yunexus.UUCP (Norman R. Gall) (03/31/89)
In article <1043@dgbt.uucp> andrew@dgbt.crc.dnd.ca (Andrew Patrick) writes: > >OK, I'll bite. What is the "AI conception of mind", and how does it >differ from other conceptions of mind? > >Also, what's being done in Canada on the topic? > Well, the "AI conception of mind" seems to be essentially emergentist materialism (some might want not to go this far and go the Churchlandian route and say 'reductionist materialism', but there is little difference when it comes to AI). Minsky said it best--"Minds are simply what brains do." The idea here is simply that functions of the brain map onto mental abilities and vice versa (more or less). This conception goes a long way to the cognitive approaches to AI, and informs most AI research. Most work in this area in Canada is being done at Western and at Honeywell Canada (now Honeywell-Bull, I think). Pylyshyn is the 'big boy' in Canadian cognitive science. I'd like to hear from others working in the technical side of the field. - nrg