Emma@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Emma Pease) (01/15/87)
The Semantics of Clocks Brian Smith January 22 Clocks participate in their subject matter. Temporal by nature, they also represent time. And yet, like other representational systems, clocks have been hard to build, and can be wrong. For these and other reasons clocks are a good foil with which to explore issues in AI and cognitive science about computation, mind, and the relation between semantics and mechanism. An analysis will be presented of clock face content and the function of clockworks, and of various notions of chronological correctness. The results are intended to illustrate a more general challenge to the formality of inference, to widen our conception of computation, and to clarify the conditions governing representational systems in general. Please note that this Thursday's Seminar will be in the Ventura Trailer Classroom, not in Redwood G-19. Future Thursday Seminars will also meet in the Ventura Trailer Classroom until a better room can be found.