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From: ladkin@kestrel.ARPA (Peter Ladkin)
Newsgroups: net.ai,net.philosophy
Subject: Homunculi (Was: Gibson's theory of perception)
Message-ID: <10550@kestrel.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 25-Jul-86 15:32:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: kestrel.10550
Posted: Fri Jul 25 15:32:04 1986
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Organization: Kestrel Institute, Palo Alto, CA
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(Ellis)
>     Homunculism is by no means dead. Dennett in "Brainstorms" speaks
>     of mental processes in terms of progressively stupider homunculae.

Not only that, but it should even be respectable by now. 
Haugeland's book indicates that modularisation of a formal
game-playing system can allow a system to exhibit
behaviour that looks intelligent (as in chess-playing
systems) from components that by themselves do basic,
easily comprehensible (rule-based) tasks.
(This is only the latest, more careful version of a
very old argument).

If one doesn't believe in the full possibility of artificial
intelligence, could one at least believe in artificial
homunculi?

Peter Ladkin
ladkin@kestrel.arpa