rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) (04/11/89)
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.