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.