By
M.H. Bickhard, Lehigh University, Department of Psychology, Bethlehem, PA, USA
L. Terveen, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Human-Computer Interface Research, Murray Hill, NJ, USA
Description
The book focuses on a conceptual flaw in contemporary artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Many people have discovered diverse
manifestations and facets of this flaw, but the central conceptual impasse is at best only partially perceived. Its consequences, nevertheless,
visit themselves as
distortions and failures of multiple research projects - and make impossible the ultimate aspirations of the fields.
The
impasse concerns a presupposition concerning the nature of representation - that all representation has the nature of encodings: encodingism.
Encodings certainly exist, but
encoding
ism is at root logically incoherent; any
programmatic research predicted on
it is doomed too distortion and ultimate failure.
The impasse and its consequences - and steps away from that impasse - are explored
in a large number of projects and approaches. These include SOAR, CYC, PDP, situated cognition, subsumption architecture robotics, and
the frame problems - a general survey of the current research in AI and Cognitive Science emerges.
Interactivism, an alternative model
of representation, is proposed and examined.
Included in series
Advances in Psychology
