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From: jmc@DEC-Lite.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Bandwidth of the Brain
Message-ID: <JMC.91Jan14150908@DEC-Lite.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 14 Jan 91 23:09:08 GMT
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In-Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu's message of 14 Jan 91 21:04:28 GMT

I think that writing about AI or philosophy or cognitive science
 in terms of metaphor is a big mistake.  It allows people to write
without clear meaning.  The debates about which metaphors are
applicable are almost meaningless.  There are several approaches
to AI, some based on neurophysiology, some on imitation neurophysiology,
some on psychological experimentation, some on formalizing the
facts about the common sense world in mathematical logical languages
(my own course).  There is no argument that any one of them
can't possibly work.  Therefore, AI research is a race among the
various approaches.  The arguments about metaphor are a game for
non-participants in the actual work.

Buy my book.