Tim@cis.upenn.edu (Tim Finin) (10/02/86)
WHAT IS THE SHAPE OF THE COGNITIVE ARCHITECTURE?
Allen Newell
Computer Science Department
Carnegie Mellon University
12:00 noon, October 17
Alumni Hall, Towne Building
University of Pennsylvania
The architecture plays a critical role in computational systems, defining
the separation between structure and content, and hence the capability of
being programmed. All architectures have much in common. However, important
characteristics depend on which mechanisms occur in the architecture (rather
than in software) and what shape they take. There has been much research
recently on architectures throughout computer and cognitive science. Within
computer science the main drivers have been new hardware technologies (VLSI)
and the felt need for parallelism. Within cognitive science the main drivers
have been the hope of comprehensive psychological models (ACT*), the urge to
ground the architecture in neurophysiological mechanisms (the
connectionists) and the proposal of modularity as a general architectural
principle (from linguistics). The talk will be on human cognitive
architecture, but considerations will be brought to bear from everywhere.