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From: spf@moss.ATT.COM
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Goal of AI: where are we going? (Where should we go...)
Message-ID: <14874@clyde.ATT.COM>
Date: Mon, 5-Oct-87 11:04:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: clyde.14874
Posted: Mon Oct  5 11:04:54 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Oct-87 04:16:21 EDT
References: <178@usl> <46400008@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <493@vax1.UUCP>
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Reply-To: spf@moss.UUCP (Steve Frysinger)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany NJ
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In article <493@vax1.UUCP> czhj@vax1.UUCP (Ted Inoue) writes:
}Some of you may remember my postings from last year where I expounded on the
}virtues of cognitive psychology.  After investigating research in this field
}in more detail, I came up very disillusioned.  Here is a field of study in 
}which the soul purpose is to scientifically discover the nature of thought.
}Even with some very bright people working on these problems, I found that the
}research left me cold.  Paper after paper describe isolated phenomena, then go
}on to present some absurdly narrow minded theory of how such phenomena could
}occur.

Perhaps you're right; there is not doubt that the system in question
is highly complex and interconnected.

However, the same claim can be made about the domain of physics.  And
(in the west at least) research and progress in physics has been built
upon small pieces of the problem, complete with small theories (which
usually seemed incredibily naive when disproved).  Now another
approach to physics is possible (see Kapra's "Tao of Physics"). It
would probably not be observational (which I require of any science)
but introspective instead.  Me?  I like both.  When I do science, I
build up from measurable components, creating and discarding petty
theories along the way.  When I do zen, it's another matter entirely
(no pun intended).

The principal difficulty in cognitive science is that it is in its
infancy.  I think that psychology is today where physics was in
Newton's time.  And a LOT of "narrow minded" theories came and went in
Newton's time.  Including Newton's theories.

Steve Frysinger