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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Hayes vs. Searle
Summary: putting your philosophy where your computer is
Message-ID: <13870@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 12 Jun 90 00:20:35 GMT
References: <16875@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2629@skye.ed.ac.uk> <13772@venera.isi.edu> <2703@skye.ed.ac.uk>
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Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
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In article <2703@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <13772@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
>writes:
>
>>John Pollock has observed that the computer is now a sufficiently powerful
>>tool that one can no longer do epistemology from the comfort of one's
>>armchair.  Any theory of epistemology today must be held up to the test
>>of validation through a computer model (or so says Pollock). 
>
>Has anyone actually made a model of an epistemological theory?
>I'd like to know more about this.
>
The jury is still out.  John Pollock just published a book entitled HOW TO
BUILD A PERSON.  In his own words this book is a "prolegomenon" to the
construction of such a model.  He provides what may best be described
as a system architecture and has even implemented the easiest pieces.
The book ends with a "road map" discussion his subsequent steps.  I just
submitted a review of this book to ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE in which I observe
that he has a rough road ahead.  Nevertheless, I have to admire him for trying.

=========================================================================

USPS:	Stephen Smoliar
	USC Information Sciences Institute
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Internet:  smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu

"So, philosophers of science have been fascinated with the fact that elephants
and mice would fall at the same rate if dropped from the Tower of Pisa, but not
much interested in how elephants and mice got to be such different sizes in the
first place."
					R. C. Lewontin