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From: mps@CS.DUKE.EDU (Michael P. Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Re: animal behavior and AI
Message-ID: <8711132330.AA13517@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Date: Fri, 13-Nov-87 18:30:58 EST
Article-I.D.: duke.8711132330.AA13517
Posted: Fri Nov 13 18:30:58 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Nov-87 03:43:40 EST
References: <8711110303.AA28544@ADS.ARPA>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: duke!mps (Michael P. Smith)
Organization: Duke University, Durham NC
Lines: 26
Keywords: animal intelligence, planning, Dennett, Hofstadter, Wooldridge
Approved: ailist@kl.sri.com
Summary: references on sphexishness

In article <8711110303.AA28544@ADS.ARPA> dan@ADS.ARPA (Dan Shapiro) writes:
> ...  My goal is to develop a realistic view of what
>planning means to simple animals (at the level of ants for example)
>and use that information to motivate planning architectures within AI.
>Within this context, my focal point is to look at *errors* in animal
>behavior, as when ants build circular bridges out of their own bodies,
>and the ones on top simply run themselves to death. 

Hofstadter calls such revealing lapses of animal cunning "sphexishness"
after a famous example from Wooldridge.  Chapter 2 of Dennett provides
more philosophical analysis of the phenomenon.

Dennett, Daniel C.  _Elbow Room_, MIT 1984.

Hofstadter, Douglas.  "On the Seeming Paradox of Mechanizing
Creativity," _Scientific American_ (September 1982), reprinted as
chapter 23 of _Metamagical Themas_, Basic Books, 1985.

Wooldridge, Dean.  _The Machinery of the Brain_, McGraw Hill, 1963.

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Michael P. Smith	mps@cs.duke.edu / {seismo,decvax}!mcnc!duke!mps

"V. That which a lover takes against the will of his beloved has no relish."
	Andreas Capellanus' "Rules of Love" from _The Art of Courtly Love_
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