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From: sean@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Sean McLinden)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Minsky's Record
Message-ID: <2090@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>
Date: 25 Jan 89 19:08:28 GMT
References: <1576@tank.uchicago.edu>
Reply-To: sean@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Sean McLinden)
Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
Lines: 14

To reduce the significance of Minsky's contribution to our understandind
of automated intelligence and cognition to the number of citations which
have appeared in the recent literature sounds like something that a tenure
committee might do, but not a historian of artificial intelligence. How
many people in this group who have never read anything of Minsky's have,
nonetheless, been influenced by his ideas? I daresay nearly all. To
criticize "The Society of Mind" and his opinion on the basis of a lack of
supportive evidence might be entirely appropriate but to impeach him on the
basis of a publication record seems to be a bit narrow minded. Minsky's
contributions as a catalyst are, probably, immeasurable.

Sean McLinden
Decision Systems Laboratory
University of Pittsburgh