Others, written only by my PhD students or research fellows, etc.
will not be included below,
even if I had some role in their
production, e.g. as supervisor.
Some of those items are catalogued in here with the paper titles: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/AREADME.html
PAPERS BY YEAR IN REVERSE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
In:
M Wooldridge and A Rao (Eds) Foundations of Rational Agency},
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999
Date: Installed 13 May 1997. Published 1999
Abstract:
This paper is about how to give human-like powers to complete agents. For this the most important design choice concerns the overall architecture. Questions regarding detailed mechanisms, forms of representations, inference capabilities, knowledge etc. are best addressed in the context of a global architecture in which different design decisions need to be linked. Such a design would assemble various kinds of functionality into a complete coherent working system, in which there are many concurrent, partly independent, partly mutually supportive, partly potentially incompatible processes, addressing a multitude of issues on different time scales, including asynchronous, concurrent, motive generators. Designing human like agents is part of the more general problem of understanding design space, niche space and their interrelations, for, in the abstract, there is no one optimal design, as biological diversity on earth shows.
[[This version includes diagrams not in the original version.]]
Invited talk for 6th Iberoamerican Conference on AI (IBERAMIA-98) Lisbon, October 1998.Date: 16 Jun 1998
In Progress in Artificial Intelligence, Springer, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, pp. 27--38, Editor Helder Coelho.
Abstract:
This paper attempts to characterise a unifying overview of the practice of software engineers, AI designers, developers of evolutionary forms of computation, designers of adaptive systems, etc. The topic overlaps with theoretical biology, developmental psychology and perhaps some aspects of social theory. Just as much of theoretical computer science follows the lead of engineering intuitions and tries to formalise them, there are also some important emerging high level cross disciplinary ideas about natural information processing architectures and evolutionary mechanisms and that can perhaps be unified and formalised in the future. There is some speculation about the evolution of human cognitive architectures and consciousness.
Invited contribution to symposium on Cognitive Agents: Modeling Human Cognition,Date: 16 Jun 1998
at IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics
San Diego, Oct 1998, pp 2652--7.
Abstract:
This paper discusses some of the requirements for the control architecture of an intelligent human-like agent with multiple independent dynamically changing motives in a dynamically changing only partly predictable world. The architecture proposed includes a combination of reactive, deliberative and meta-management mechanisms along with one or more global "alarm" systems. The engineering design requirements are discussed in relation our evolutionary history, evidence of brain function and recent theories of Damasio and others about the relationships between intelligence and emotions. (The paper was completed in haste for a deadline and I forgot to explain why Descartes was in the title. See Damasio 1994.)
In proceedings: AAAI-98 Workshop on Software Tools for Developing AgentsDate: 20 May 1998 (PDF added 21 Nov 2007)
(eds Brian Logan and Jeremy Baxter). July 1998, pp 1-10.
Abstract:
This paper identifies a collection of high level questions which need to be posed by designers of toolkits for developing intelligent agents (e.g. What kinds of scenarios are to be developed? What sorts of agent architectures are required? What are the scenarios to be used for? Are speed and ease of development more or less important than speed and robustness of the final system?). It then considers some of the toolkit design options relevant to these issues, including some concerned with multi-agent systems and some concerned with individual intelligent agents of high internal complexity, including human-like agents. A conflict is identified between requirements for exploring new types of agent designs and requirements for formal specification, verifiability and efficiency. The paper ends with some challenges for computer science theorists posed by complex systems of interacting agents.Filename: Sloman.toolworkshop.slides.pdf
Filename: Sloman.toolworkshop.slides.ps
Title: Slides for presentation on: What's an AI toolkit for?
This file contains the slides (two slides per A4 page) prepared for the presentation.
In Proceedings 2nd European Conference on Cognitive Modelling,Authors: Aaron Sloman and Brian Logan
Nottingham, April 1-4, 1998. Eds Frank Ritter and Richard M. Young, Nottingham University Press, pp 58--65.
Date: 11 Mar 1998
Abstract:
This paper discusses agent architectures which are describable in terms of the "higher level" mental concepts applicable to human beings, e.g. "believes", "desires", "intends" and "feels". We conjecture that such concepts are grounded in a type of information processing architecture, and not simply in observable behaviour nor in Newell's knowledge-level concepts, nor Dennett's "intentional stance." A strategy for conceptual exploration of architectures in design-space and niche-space is outlined, including an analysis of design trade-offs. The SIM_AGENT (SimAgent) toolkit, developed to support such exploration, including hybrid architectures, is described briefly.
Abstract:
A discussion of some of the commonalities between brains and computers as physical systems within which information processing machines can be implemented. Includes a distinction between machines which manipulate energy and forces, machines with manipulate matter and machines which process information. Concludes that we still have much to learn about computers and brains, and although it seems likely that brains are computers we don't yet know what sorts of computers they are.
Abstract:
A key assumption of all problem-solving approaches based on utility theory is that we can assign a utility or cost to each state. This in turn requires that all criteria of interest can be reduced to a common ratio scale. However, many realworld problems are difficult or impossible to formulate in terms of minimising a single criterion, and it is often more natural to express problem requirements in terms of a set of constraints which a solution should satisfy. In this paper, we present a decision support system for route planning in complex terrains based on a novel constraint-based search procedure, A with bounded costs (ABC), which searches for a solution which best satisfies a set of prioritised soft constraints, and illustrate the operation of the system in a simple route planning problem. Our approach provides a means of more clearly specifying problem-solving tasks and more precisely evaluating the resulting solutions as a basis for action.
Abstract:
At ATAL'95 a paper was presented reporting on the SIM AGENT toolkit [8]. SIM AGENT was developed to provide a flexible framework for the exploration of architectures for autonomous agents consisting of a variety of concurrent interacting modules operating in discrete time. The previous paper outlined two early experiments with the toolkit. In this paper, we describe the experiences of two groups actively using the toolkit and report some of what we have learnt about its strengths and weaknesses. We briefly describe how the toolkit has developed since 1995 and sketch some of the ways in which it might be improved.
Filename: Sloman.biota98.html
Filename: Sloman.biota.slides.ps
Filename: Sloman.biota.slides.pdf
Title: What sorts of brains can support what sorts of minds?
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: 19 Oct 1998
Abstract:
The HTML file is the abstract for an invited talk at the DIGITAL BIOTA 2 ConferenceThe .ps and .pdf files are postscript and PDf files containing slightly extended versions of the slides I presented at the conference.
NB: A revised version of this paper appeared in a book published by Springer. The revised version is listed in a later index file in this directory.Author: Aaron Sloman
Abstract:
Clearly we can solve problems by thinking about them. Sometimes we have the impression that in doing so we use words, at other times diagrams or images. Often we use both. What is going on when we use mental diagrams or images? This question is addressed in relation to the more general multi-pronged question: what are representations, what are they for, how many different types are they, in how many different ways can they be used, and what difference does it make whether they are in the mind or on paper? The question is related to deep problems about how vision and spatial manipulation work. It is suggested that we are far from understanding what's going on. In particular we need to explain how people understand spatial structure and motion, and I'll try to suggest that this is a problem with hidden depths, since our grasp of spatial structure is inherently a grasp of a complex range of possibilities and their implications. Two classes of examples discussed at length illustrate requirements for human visualisation capabilities. One is the problem of removing undergarments without removing outer garments. The other is thinking about infinite discrete mathematical structures.
Abstract:
There is now a huge amount of interest in consciousness among scientists as well as philosophers, yet there is so much confusion and ambiguity in the claims and counter-claims that it is hard to tell whether any progress is being made. This "position paper" suggests that we can make progress by temporarily putting to one side questions about what consciousness is or which animals or machines have it or how it evolved. Instead we should focus on questions about the sorts of architectures that are possible for behaving systems and ask what sorts of capabilities, states and processes, might be supported by different sorts of architectures. We can then ask which organisms and machines have which sorts of architectures. This combines the standpoint of philosopher, biologist and engineer.If we can find a general theory of the variety of possible architectures (a characterisation of "design space") and the variety of environments, tasks and roles to which such architectures are well suited (a characterisation of "niche space") we may be able to use such a theory as a basis for formulating new more precisely defined concepts with which to articulate less ambiguous questions about the space of possible minds.
For instance our initially ill-defined concept ("consciousness") might split into a collection of more precisely defined concepts which can be used to ask unambiguous questions with definite answers.
As a first step this paper explores a collection of conjectures regarding architectures and their evolution. In particular we explore architectures involving a combination of coexisting architectural levels including: (a) reactive mechanisms which evolved very early, (b) deliberative mechanisms which evolved later in response to pressures on information processing resources and (c) meta-management mechanisms that can explicitly inspect evaluate and modify some of the contents of various internal information structures.
It is conjectured that in response to the needs of these layers, perceptual and action subsystems also developed layers, and also that an "alarm" system which initially existed only within the reactive layer may have become increasingly sophisticated and extensive as its inputs and outputs were linked to the newer layers.
Processes involving the meta-management layer in the architecture could explain the origin of the notion of "qualia". Processes involving the "alarm" mechanism and mechanisms concerned with resource limits in the second and third layers gives us an explanation of three main forms of emotion, helping to account for some of the ambiguities which have bedevilled the study of emotion. Further theoretical and practical benefits may come from further work based on this design-based approach to consciousness.
A deeper longer term implication is the possibility of a new science investigating laws governing possible trajectories in design space and niche space, as these form parts of high order feedback loops in the biosphere.
Summary of poster presentation. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents '98), ACM Press, 1998, pp 471--472.Date: Feb 1998
Abstract:
Which agent architectures are capable of justifying descriptions in terms of the 'higher level' mental concepts applicable to human beings? We propose a new kind of architecture-based semantics for mentalistic descriptions in which mental concepts (e.g. 'believes', 'desires', 'intends', 'mood', 'emotion', etc.) are grounded in assumptions about information processing architectures, and not merely in concepts based solely on Dennett's 'intentional stance'. These ideas have led to the design of the SIM_AGENT toolkit which has been used to explore a variety of such architectures.
Abstract:
How can a virtual machine $X$ be implemented in a physical machine Y? We know the answer as far as compilers, editors, theorem-provers, operating systems are concerned, at least insofar as we know how to produce these implemented virtual machines, and no mysteries are involved. This paper is about extrapolating from that knowledge to the implementation of minds in brains. By linking the philosopher's concept of supervenience to the engineer's concept of implementation, we can illuminate both. In particular, by showing how virtual machines can be implemented in causally complete physical machines, and still have causal powers, we remove some philosophical problems about how mental processes can be real and can have real effects in the world even if the underlying physical implementation has no causal gaps. This requires a theory of ontological levels.This is an extract from a much longer, evolving, paper, in part about the relation between mind and brain, and in part about the more general question of how high level abstract kinds of structures, processes and mechanisms can depend for their existence on lower level, more concrete kinds.
Abstract:
This is an attempt to characterise a new unifying generalisation of the practice of software engineers, AI designers, developers of evolutionary forms of computation, etc. This topic overlaps with theoretical biology, developmental psychology and perhaps some aspects of social theory (yet to be developed!). Much of theoretical computer science follows the lead of engineering intuitions and tries to formalise them. Likewise there are important emerging high level cross disciplinary ideas about processes and architectures found in nature that can be unified and formalised, extending work done in Alife and evolutionary computation. This paper attempts to provide a conceptual framework for thinking about the tasks.Within this framework we can also find a new approach to the so-called hard problem of consciousness, based on virtual machine functionalism, and find a new defence for a version of the "Strong AI" thesis.
In Robert Trappl and Paolo Petta (eds), Creating Personalities for Synthetic Actors: Towards Autonomous Personality Agents, Springer (Lecture notes in AI), 1997 pp 166--208,Author: Aaron Sloman
(Originally presented at Workshop on Designing personalities for synthetic actors, Vienna, June 1995. Includes some edited transcripts of discussion following presentation.)
Date: Installed 24 Jan 1996. Published 1997.
Abstract;
This paper outlines a design-based methodology for the study of mind as a part of the broad discipline of Artificial Intelligence. Within that framework some architectural requirements for human-like minds are discussed, and some preliminary suggestions made regarding mechanisms underlying motivation, emotions, and personality. A brief description is given of the 'Nursemaid' or 'Minder' scenario being used at the University of Birmingham as a framework for research on these problems. It may be possible later to combine some of these ideas with work on synthetic agents inhabiting virtual reality environments.
(in The AI Magazine April, 1999, with reply by Rosalind Picard.)Author: Aaron Sloman
Abstract:
This review summarises the main themes of Picard's book, some of which are related to Damasio's ideas in Descartes' Error. In particular, I try to show that not all secondary emotions need manifest themselves via the primary emotion system, and therefore they will not all be detectable by measurements of physiological changes. I agree with much of the spirit of the book, but disagree on detail.
NOTE: Rosalind Picard's reply to this review is available online at http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m2483/1_20/54367782/p1/
Technical report CSRP-97-30, University of Birmingham School of Computer Science, 1997.Authors: Brian Logan and Aaron Sloman
Abstract:
For many autonomous agents, such as mobile robots, autonomous vehicles and Computer Generated Forces, route planning in complex terrain is a critical task, as many of the agent's higher-level goals can only be accomplished if the agent is in the right place at the right time. The route planning problem is often formulated as one of finding a minimum-cost route between two locations in a digitised map which represents a complex terrain of variable altitude, where the cost of a route is an indication of its quality. However route planners which attempt to optimise a single measure of plan quality are difficult to integrate into the architecture of an agent, and the composite cost functions on which they are based are difficult to devise or justify. In this paper, we present a new approach to route planning in complex terrains based on a novel constraint-based search procedure, A with bounded costs (ABC), which generalises the single criterion optimisation problem solved by conventional route planners and describe how a planner based on this approach has been integrated into the architecture of a simple agent. This approach provides a means of more clearly specifying agent tasks and more precisely evaluating the resulting plans as a basis for action.
Unsuccessful submission to ECAL97Author: Aaron Sloman
Under what conditions are "higher level" mental concepts which are applicable to human beings also applicable to artificial agents? Our conjecture is that our mental concepts (e.g. "belief", "desire", "intention", "experience", "mood", "emotion", etc.) are grounded in implicit assumptions about an underlying information processing architecture. At this level mechanisms operate on information structures with semantic content, but there is no presumption of rationality. Thus we don't need to assume Newell's knowledge-level, nor Dennett's "intentional stance." The actual architecture will clearly be richer than that naively presupposed by common sense. We outline a three tiered architecture: with reactive, deliberative and reflective layers, and corresponding layers in perceptual and action subsystems, and discuss some implications.
(Slides for a talk at DFKI Saarbruecken, 6th Feb 1997)Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: 6 Feb 1997
Abstract:
Everybody seems to be talking about agents, though it's not clear when the word "agent" adds anything beyond "system", "program", "tool", etc. My concern is to understand some of the main features of human agency: what they are, how they evolved, how they differ between individuals, how they are implemented, and how far they can be implemented in artificial systems. This is part of the general multi-disciplinary study of "design space", "niche space", their interrelations, and the trajectories possible within these spaces.I outline a conjecture that many aspects of human mental functioning, including emotional states, can be explained in terms of an architecture approximately decomposable into three layers, with different evolutionary origins, shared with different animals. The oldest and most widespread is a *reactive* layer. A more recent development, probably shared with fewer animals is a *deliberative* layer. The newest layer is concerned with *meta-management* and may be found only in a few species. The reactive layer involves highly parallel, dedicated and fast mechanisms, capable of fine-tuning but no major structural changes. The deliberative layer involves the ability to create, compare, evaluate, select and act on enw complex structures (e.g. plans, solutions to problems, linguistic constructs), a process that requires much stored knowledge and is inherently serial and resource limited, for several different reasons.
Perceptual and action subsystems had to evolve corresponding layered architectures in order to engage with all these to greatest effect. The third layer is linked to phenomena involving self consciousness and self control (and explains the existence of qualia, as the contents of attentive processes).
Different sorts of emotional states and processes correspond to different architectural layers, and some of them are likely to arise in sophisticated artificial agents of the future.
A short introduction is given to the SIM_AGENT toolkit developed in Birmingham for research and teaching activities involving the design of agents each of which has complex interacting internal mechanisms running concurrently, including symbolic and "sub-symbolic" mechanisms. Some of the material overlaps with the Synthetic Minds poster, below.
in Luigia Carlucci Aiello and Stuart C. Shapiro (eds), Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference (KR '96), Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1996, pp 627-638,Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: Nov 1996
Abstract
This is a philosophical 'position paper', starting from the observation that we have an intuitive grasp of a family of related concepts of "possibility", "causation" and "constraint" which we often use in thinking about complex mechanisms, and perhaps also in perceptual processes, which according to Gibson are primarily concerned with detecting positive and negative affordances, such as support, obstruction, graspability, etc. We are able to talk about, think about, and perceive possibilities, such as possible shapes, possible pressures, possible motions, and also risks, opportunities and dangers. We can also think about constraints linking such possibilities. If such abilities are useful to us (and perhaps other animals) they may be equally useful to intelligent artefacts. All this bears on a collection of different more technical topics, including modal logic, constraint analysis, qualitative reasoning, naive physics, the analysis of functionality, and the modelling design processes. The paper suggests that our ability to use knowledge about "de-re" modality is more primitive than the ability to use "de-dicto" modalities, in which modal operators are applied to sentences. The paper explores these ideas, links them to notions of "causation" and "machine", suggests that they are applicable to virtual or abstract machines as well as physical machines. The concept of "possibility-transducer" is introduced. Some conclusions are drawn regarding the nature of mind and consciousness.
Appeared (with commentaries) in Philosophy Psychiatry and Psychology, vol 3 no 2, 1996, pp 101--126.Authors: Ian Wright, Aaron Sloman, Luc BeaudoinThe commentaries, by
are available here http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy_psychiatry_and_psychology/toc/ppp3.2.html followed by a reply by the authors.
- Dan Lloyd,
- Cristiano Castelfranchi and Maria Miceli
- Margaret Boden
(This is a revised version of the paper presented to the Geneva Emotions Workshop, April 1995 entitled The Architectural Basis for Grief.)
Date: Oct 1995 (published 1996)
Abstract:
The design-based approach is a methodology for investigating mechanisms capable of generating mental phenomena, whether introspectively or externally observed, and whether they occur in humans, other animals or robots. The study of designs satisfying requirements for autonomous agency can provide new deep theoretical insights at the information processing level of description of mental mechanisms. Designs for working systems (whether on paper or implemented on computers) can systematically explicate old explanatory concepts and generate new concepts that allow new and richer interpretations of human phenomena. To illustrate this, some aspects of human grief are analysed in terms of a particular information processing architecture being explored in our research group.We do not claim that this architecture is part of the causal structure of the human mind; rather, it represents an early stage in the iterative search for a deeper and more general architecture, capable of explaining more phenomena. However even the current early design provides an interpretative ground for some familiar phenomena, including characteristic features of certain emotional episodes, particularly the phenomenon of perturbance (a partial or total loss of control of attention).
The paper attempts to expound and illustrate the design-based approach to cognitive science and philosophy, to demonstrate the potential effectiveness of the approach in generating interpretative possibilities, and to provide first steps towards an information processing account of 'perturbant', emotional episodes.
Many of the architectural ideas have been developed further in later papers and presentations, all available online, e.g.
- Online presentations (mainly pdf)
- The Architectural Basis of Affective States and Processes
Aaron Sloman, Ron Chrisley and Matthias Scheutz
In Who Needs Emotions?: The Brain Meets the Robot, Ed. M. Arbib and J-M. Fellous, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 2005
In Donald Peterson (ed) Forms of representation, Intellect Books, 1996Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: Installed 31 July 1994; Published 1996
Abstract:
This position paper presents the beginnings of a general theory of representations starting from the notion that an intelligent agent is essentially a control system with multiple control states, many of which contain information (both factual and non-factual), albeit not necessarily in a propositional form. The paper attempts to give a general characterisation of the notion of the syntax of an information store, in terms of types of variation the relevant mechanisms can cope with. Similarly concepts of semantics, pragmatics and inference are generalised to apply to information-bearing sub-states in control systems. A number of common but incorrect notions about representation are criticised (such as that pictures are in some way isomorphic with what they represent).This is one of several sequels to the paper presented at IJCAI in 1971
In: Machines and Thought: The Legacy of Alan Turing (vol I), eds P.J.R. Millican and A. Clark, 1996, OUP(The Clarendon Press) pp 179--219,Author: Aaron Sloman
Revised version of paper presented to Turing Colloquium, University of Sussex, 1990.
Date: Mon May 8 1995 (Published 1996)
Abstract:
What is the relation between intelligence and computation? Although the difficulty of defining 'intelligence' is widely recognized, many are unaware that it is hard to give a satisfactory definition of 'computational' if computation is supposed to provide a non-circular explanation for intelligent abilities. The only well-defined notion of 'computation' is what can be generated by a Turing machine or a formally equivalent mechanism. This is not adequate for the key role in explaining the nature of mental processes, because it is too general, as many computations involve nothing mental, nor even processes: they are simply abstract structures. We need to combine the notion of 'computation' with that of 'machine'. This may still be too restrictive, if some non-computational mechanisms prove to be useful for intelligence. We need a theory-based taxonomy of {\em architectures} and {\em mechanisms} and corresponding process types. Computational machines may turn out to be a sub-class of the machines available for implementing intelligent agents. The more general analysis starts with the notion of a system with independently variable, causally interacting sub-states that have different causal roles, including both 'belief-like' and 'desire-like' sub-states, and many others. There are many significantly different such architectures. For certain architectures (including simple computers), some sub-states have a semantic interpretation for the system. The relevant concept of semantics is defined partly in terms of a kind of Tarski-like structural correspondence (not to be confused with isomorphism). This always leaves some semantic indeterminacy, which can be reduced by causal loops involving the environment. But the causal links are complex, can share causal pathways, and always leave mental states to some extent semantically indeterminate.
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: 24 Jan 1996
Abstract:
This (semi-serious) paper aims to replace deep sounding unanswerable, time-wasting pseudo-questions which are often posed in the context of attacking some version of the strong AI thesis, with deep, discovery-driving, real questions about the nature and content of internal states of intelligent agents of various kinds. In particular the question 'What is it like to be an X?' is often thought to identify a type of phenomenon for which no physical conditions can be sufficient, and which cannot be replicated in computer-based agents. This paper tries to separate out (a) aspects of the question that are important and provide part of the objective characterisation of the states, or capabilities of an agent, and which help to define the ontology that is to be implemented in modelling such an agent, from (b) aspects that are incoherent. The paper supports a philosophical position that is anti-reductionist without being dualist or mystical.
(Slides for a talk at MIT Media Lab, Nov 1996. Now out of date.)Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: Nov 1996
Abstract:
Although much research on emotions is done on other animals (e.g. rats) there seem to be certain characteristically human emotional states which interest poets, novelists, and gossips, such as excited anticipation of an election victory, humiliation at being dismissed. Similar states are inevitable in intelligent robots. Obviously these states involve conceptual abilities not shared by most other mammals. Less obviously, they involve "perturbant" states in which there is partial loss of control of thought processes: you want to prepare that lecture but your mind is drawn back to the source of joy or pain. This presupposes the ability to be in control: you cannot lose what you've never had. The talk contrasts the design-based approach to the study of mind with other approaches. The former involves explorations of "design space", "niche space", and their interconnections. A design-based theory is presented which shows how emotional (perturbant) states are possible.
Invited talk at Cognitive Modeling Workshop, AAAI96, Portland Oregon, Aug 1996.Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: August 1996
In Intelligent Agents Vol II (ATAL-95), Eds. Mike Wooldridge, Joerg Mueller, Milind Tambe, Springer-Verlag 1996 pp 392--407.Author: Aaron Sloman and Riccardo PoliUpdated version of: Cognitive Science technical report: CSRP-95-3 School of Computer Science, the University of Birmingham.
Presented at ATAL-95, Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages, at IJCAI-95 Workshop, Montreal, August 1995
SIM_AGENT is a toolkit that arose out of a project concerned with designing an architecture for an autonomous agent with human-like capabilities. Analysis of requirements showed a need to combine a wide variety of richly interacting mechanisms, including independent asynchronous sources of motivation and the ability to reflect on which motives to adopt, when to achieve them, how to achieve them, and so on. These internal 'management' (and meta-management) processes involve a certain amount of parallelism, but resource limits imply the need for explicit control of attention. Such control problems can lead to emotional and other characteristically human affective states. In order to explore these ideas, we needed a toolkit to facilitate experiments with various architectures in various environments, including other agents. The paper outlines requirements and summarises the main design features of a Pop-11 toolkit supporting both rule-based and 'sub-symbolic' mechanisms. Some experiments including hybrid architectures and genetic algorithms are summarised.The toolkit is intended to support exploration of alternative agent architectures rather than to implement a particular agent architecture. It was used in the CogAff project and other projects.
This is a four page paper, introducing a panel (John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, and Aaron Sloman) at IJCAI95 in Montreal August 1995:Author: Aaron Sloman
"A philosophical encounter: An interactive presentation of some of the key philosophical problems in AI and AI problems in philosophy."
John McCarthy also contributed a short paper on interactions between Philosophy and AI, available via his WEB page:
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/
This paper, along with the following paper by John McCarthy, introduces some of the topics to be discussed at the IJCAI95 event `A philosophical encounter: An interactive presentation of some of the key philosophical problems in AI and AI problems in philosophy.' Philosophy needs AI in order to make progress with many difficult questions about the nature of mind, and AI needs philosophy in order to help clarify goals, methods, and concepts and to help with several specific technical problems. Whilst philosophical attacks on AI continue to be welcomed by a significant subset of the general public, AI defenders need to learn how to avoid philosophically naive rebuttals.
Invited talk for 5th Scandinavian Conference on AI, Trondheim, May 1995. in Proceedings SCAI95 published by IOS Press, Amsterdam.Author: Aaron Sloman
Most people who give definitions of AI offer narrow views based either on their own work area or the pronouncement of an AI guru about the scope of AI. Looking at the range of research activities to be found in AI conferences, books, journals and laboratories suggests something very broad and deep, going beyond engineering objectives and the study or replication of human capabilities. This is exploration of the space of possible designs for behaving systems (design space) and the relationships between designs and various collections of requirements and constraints (niche space). This exploration is inherently multi-disciplinary, and includes not only exploration of various architectures, mechanisms, formalisms, inference systems, and the like (aspects of natural and artificial designs), but also the attempt to characterise various kinds of behavioural capabilities and the environments in which they are required, or possible. The implications of such a study are profound: e.g. for engineering, for biology, for psychology, for philosophy, and for our view of how we fit into the scheme of things.
in: Janice Glasgow, Hari Narayanan, Chandrasekaran, (eds), pp. 7--32Author: Aaron Sloman
Diagrammatic Reasoning: Computational and Cognitive Perspectives, AAAI Press 1995
Date: Installed 17 October 1994; Published 1995
Abstract:
This paper offers a short and biased overview of the history of discussion and controversy about the role of different forms of representation in intelligent agents. It repeats and extends some of the criticisms of the `logicist' approach to AI that I first made in 1971, while also defending logic for its power and generality. It identifies some common confusions regarding the role of visual or diagrammatic reasoning including confusions based on the fact that different forms of representation may be used at different levels in an implementation hierarchy. This is contrasted with the way in the use of one form of representation (e.g. pictures) can be {\em controlled} using another (e.g. logic, or programs). Finally some questions are asked about the role of metrical information in biological visual systems.This is one of several sequels to the paper presented at IJCAI in 1971
In AISB Quarterly, Autumn 1995Authors: Darryl Davis, Aaron Sloman and Riccardo Poli,
Abstract:
This paper describes a toolkit that arose out of a project concerned with designing an architecture for an autonomous agent with human-like capabilities. Analysis of requirements showed a need to combine a wide variety of richly interacting mechanisms, including independent asynchronous sources of motivation and the ability to reflect on which motives to adopt, when to achieve them, how to achieve them, and so on. These internal `management' (and metamanagement) processes involve a certain amount of parallelism, but resource limits imply the need for explicit control of attention. Such control problems can lead to emotional and other characteristically human affective states. We needed a toolkit to facilitate exploration of alternative architectures in varied environments, including other agents. The paper outlines requirements and summarises the main design features of a toolkit written in Pop-11. Some preliminary work on developing a multi-agent scenario, using agents of differing sophistication is presented.NOTE: See also the current description of the toolkit, here: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/packages/simagent.html
"Poster" prepared for the Conference of the International Society for Research in Emotions, Cambridge July 1994 (Final version installed here July 30th 1994)Author: Aaron Sloman, Luc Beaudoin and Ian WrightRevised version in Proceedings ISRE94, edited by Nico Frijda, ISRE Publications.
Date: 29 July 1994 (PDF version added 25 Dec 2005)
Abstract:
This is a 5 page summary with three diagrams of the main objectives and some work in progress at the University of Birmingham Cognition and Affect project. involving: Professor Glyn Humphreys (School of Psychology), and Luc Beaudoin, Chris Paterson, Tim Read, Edmund Shing, Ian Wright, Ahmed El-Shafei, and (from October 1994) Chris Complin (research students). The project is concerned with "global" design requirements for coping simultaneously with coexisting but possibly unrelated goals, desires, preferences, intentions, and other kinds of motivators, all at different stages of processing. Our work builds on and extends seminal ideas of H.A.Simon (1967). We are exploring "broad and shallow" architectures combining varied capabilities most of which are not implemented in great depth. The poster summarises some ideas about management and meta-management processes, attention filtering, and the relevance to emotional states involved "perturbances", where there is partial loss of control of attention.
in Proc ECAI94, 11th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence Edited by A.G.Cohn, John Wiley, pp 578-582, 1994Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: 20 April 1994
Abstract:
This paper sketches a vision of AI as a unifying discipline that explores designs for a variety of behaving systems, for both scientific and engineering purposes. This unpacks the idea that AI is the general study of intelligence, whether natural or artificial. Some aspects of the methodology of such a discipline are outlined, and a project attempting to fill gaps in current work introduced. This is one of a series of papers outlining the ``design-based'' approach to the study of mind, based on the notion that a mind is essentially a sophisticated self-monitoring, self-modifying control system.The ``design-based'' study of architectures for intelligent agents is important not only for engineering purposes but also for bringing together hitherto fragmentary studies of mind in various disciplines, for providing a basis for an adequate set of descriptive concepts, and for making it possible to understand what goes wrong in various human activities and how to remedy the situation. But there are many difficulties to be overcome.
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: March 6th 1994
Abstract:
(This is a longer, earlier version of "Towards a general theory of representations", and includes some additional material.)
Since first presenting a paper criticising excessive reliance on logical representations in AI at the second IJCAI at Imperial College London in 1971, I have been trying to understand what representations are and why human beings seem to need so many different kinds, tailored to different purposes. This position paper presents the beginnings of a general answer starting from the notion that an intelligent agent is essentially a control system with multiple control states, many of which contain information (both factual and non-factual), albeit not necessarily in a propositional form. The paper attempts to give a general characterisation of the notion of the syntax of an information store, in terms of types of variation the relevant mechanisms can cope with. Different kinds of syntax can support different kinds of semantics, and serve different kinds of purposes. Similarly concepts of semantics, pragmatics and inference are generalised to apply to information-bearing sub-states in control systems. A number of common but incorrect notions about representation are criticised (such as that pictures are in some way isomorphic with what they represent), and a first attempt is made to characterise dimensions in which forms of representations can differ, including the explicit/implicit dimension.This is one of several sequels to the paper presented at IJCAI in 1971
Invited paper for conference at Royal Society in April 1994 on Artificial Intelligence and the Mind: New Breakthroughs or Dead Ends?Author: Aaron Sloman
in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Physical Sciences and Engineering Vol 349, 1689 pp 43-58 1994
Date: May 11 1994
Abstract:
Much research on intelligent systems has concentrated on low level mechanisms or sub-systems of restricted functionality. We need to understand how to put all the pieces together in an \ul{architecture} for a complete agent with its own mind, driven by its own desires. A mind is a self-modifying control system, with a hierarchy of levels of control, and a different hierarchy of levels of implementation. AI needs to explore alternative control architectures and their implications for human, animal, and artificial minds. Only within the framework of a theory of actual and possible architectures can we solve old problems about the concept of mind and causal roles of desires, beliefs, intentions, etc. The high level ``virtual machine'' architecture is more useful for this than detailed mechanisms. E.g. the difference between connectionist and symbolic implementations is of relatively minor importance. A good theory provides both explanations and a framework for systematically generating concepts of possible states and processes. Lacking this, philosophers cannot provide good analyses of concepts, psychologists and biologists cannot specify what they are trying to explain or explain it, and psychotherapists and educationalists are left groping with ill-understood problems. The paper sketches some requirements for such architectures, and analyses an idea shared between engineers and philosophers: the concept of ``semantic information''.This is one of several sequels to the paper on representations presented at IJCAI in 1971.
This is a text file which is part of the online documentation for the SIM_AGENT toolkit. Often referred to subsequently as: SimAgent.
See also http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/packages/simagent.html
(Link to the main SIM_AGENT overview page. Includes pointers to some movies demonstrating simple uses of the toolkit, and also later publications on the toolkit.)Also available: November 1994 Seminar Slides. (PDF)
(Partly out of date.)
These slides give an early partial descriptions of the sim_agent toolkit implemented in Poplog Pop-11 for exploring architectures for individual or interacting agents. See also the Atal95 paper.
in Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences, (eds) C. Hookway and D. Peterson, Cambridge University Press, pp 69-110 1993Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: 1993 (installed) Feb 15 1994
Abstract:
Many people who favour the design-based approach to the study of mind, including the author previously, have thought of the mind as a computational system, though they don't all agree regarding the forms of computation required for mentality. Because of ambiguities in the notion of 'computation' and also because it tends to be too closely linked to the concept of an algorithm, it is suggested in this paper that we should rather construe the mind (or an agent with a mind) as a control system involving many interacting control loops of various kinds, most of them implemented in high level virtual machines, and many of them hierarchically organised. (Some of the sub-processes are clearly computational in character, though not necessarily all.) A feature of the system is that the same sensors and motors are shared between many different functions, and sometimes they are shared concurrently, sometimes sequentially. A number of implications are drawn out, including the implication that there are many informational substates, some incorporating factual information, some control information, using diverse forms of representation. The notion of architecture, i.e. functional differentiation into interacting components, is explained, and the conjecture put forward that in order to account for the main characteristics of the human mind it is more important to get the architecture right than to get the mechanisms right (e.g. symbolic vs neural mechanisms). Architecture dominates mechanism
Commentary on: ``The Imagery Debate Revisitied: A Computational perspective,'' by Janice I. Glasgow, in: Computational Intelligence. Special issue on Computational Imagery, Vol. 9, No. 4, November 1993Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: Nov 1993
Abstract:
Whilst I agree largely with Janice Glasgow's position paper, there are a number of relevant subtle and important issues that she does not address, concerning the variety of forms and techniques of representation available to intelligent agents, and issues concerned with different levels of description of the same agent, where that agent includes different virtual machines at different levels of abstraction. I shall also suggest ways of improving on her array-based representation by using a general network representation, though I do not know whether efficient implementations are possible.This is one of several sequels to the paper presented at IJCAI in 1971
in Proceedings AISB93, published by IOS Press as a book:Date: April 1993
Prospects for Artificial Intelligence
Eds: A.Sloman, D.Hogg, G.Humphreys, D. Partridge, A. Ramsay, Pp: 1--10
Abstract:
Three approaches to the study of mind are distinguished: semantics-based, phenomena-based and design-based. Requirements for the design-based approach are outlined. It is argued that AI as the design-based approach to the study of mind has a long future, and pronouncements regarding its failure are premature, to say the least.
Authors: Luc P. Beaudoin and Aaron Sloman
in A.Sloman, D.Hogg, G.Humphreys, D. Partridge, A. Ramsay (eds) Prospects for Artificial Intelligence, IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp 229-238, 1993.
Presented at AISB 1993, University of Birmingham.
Abstract:
We outline a design based theory of motive processing and attention, including: multiple motivators operating asynchronously, with limited knowledge, processing abilities and time to respond. Attentional mechanisms address these limits using processes differing in complexity and resource requirements, in order to select which motivators to attend to, how to attend to them, how to achieve those adopted for action and when to do so. A prototype model is under development. Mechanisms include: motivator generators, attention filters, a dispatcher that allocates attention, and a manager. Mechanisms like these might explain the partial loss of control of attention characteristic of many emotional states.
Author: Aaron Sloman
In Ortony, A., Slack, J., and Stock, O. (Eds.),Date: Published 1992 (Presented 1989 at NATO workshop in Italy).
Communication from an Artificial Intelligence Perspective: Theoretical and Applied Issues.
Heidelberg, Germany: Springer, 1992, pp 229-260.Paper presented, Nov 1990, to NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "Computational theories of communication and their applications: Problems and Prospects".
Also available as Cognitive Science Research Paper, CSRP-91-05, The University of Birmingham.
Abstract:
As a step towards comprehensive computer models of communication, and effective human machine dialogue, some of the relationships between communication and affect are explored. An outline theory is presented of the architecture that makes various kinds of affective states possible, or even inevitable, in intelligent agents, along with some of the implications of this theory for various communicative processes. The model implies that human beings typically have many different, hierarchically organised, dispositions capable of interacting with new information to produce affective states, distract attention, interrupt ongoing actions, and so on. High "insistence" of motives is defined in relation to a tendency to penetrate an attention filter mechanism, which seems to account for the partial loss of control involved in emotions. One conclusion is that emulating human communicative abilities will not be achieved easily. Another is that it will be even more difficult to design and build computing systems that reliably achieve interesting communicative goals.
Author: Aaron Sloman
Lengthy review/discussion of Roger Penrose (The Emperor's New
Mind) in the journal Artificial Intelligence
Vol 56 Nos 2-3 August 1992, pages 355-396
NOTE ADDED 21 Nov 2009:Date: 1992
A much shorter review by Aaron Sloman was published in The Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society 24 (1992) 87-96
Available here.(PDF)
Abstract:
"The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose has received a great deal of both praise and criticism. This review discusses philosophical aspects of the book that form an attack on the ``strong'' AI thesis. Eight different versions of this thesis are distinguished, and sources of ambiguity diagnosed, including different requirements for relationships between program and behaviour. Excessively strong versions attacked by Penrose (and Searle) are not worth defending or attacking, whereas weaker versions remain problematic. Penrose (like Searle) regards the notion of an *algorithm* as central to AI, whereas it is argued here that for the purpose of explaining mental capabilities the *architecture* of an intelligent system is more important than the concept of an algorithm, using the premise that what makes something intelligent is not *what* it does but *how it does it.* What needs to be explained is also unclear: Penrose thinks we all know what consciousness is and claims that the ability to judge Goedel's formula to be true depends on it. He also suggests that quantum phenomena underly consciousness. This is rebutted by arguing that our existing concept of ``consciousness'' is too vague and muddled to be of use in science. This and related concepts will gradually be replaced by a more powerful theory-based taxonomy of types of mental states and processes. The central argument offered by Penrose against the strong AI thesis depends on a tempting but unjustified interpretation of Goedel's incompleteness theorem. Some critics are shown to have missed the point of his argument. A stronger criticism is mounted, and the relevance of mathematical Platonism analysed. Architectural requirements for intelligence are discussed and differences between serial and parallel implementations analysed.
Authors:
Aaron Sloman and Glyn Humphreys
Appendix to research grant proposal for the Attention and Affect project. (Paid for computer and computer officer support, and some workshops, for three years, funded by UK Joint Research Council initiative in Cognitive Science and HCI, 1992-1995.)
WARNING: for some reason the page order of the file is reversed. (Fixed 15 Feb 2002).
Date: January 1992
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: Dec 1992
Seminar notes for the Attention and Affect Project, summarising its long term objectives
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: Dec 1992
Seminar notes for the Attention and Affect Project
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: May 1992
Professorial Inaugural Lecture, Birmingham, May 1992 In the form of lecture slides for an excessively long lecture. Much of this is replicated in other papers published since.
Author: Aaron Sloman
AISB Quarterly No 72, pp 8-14, 1990
Date: Installed circa 1994, Published 1990
Abstract:
A discussion on why talking about consciousness is premature Appeared in AISB Quarterly No 72, pp 8-14, 1990Opening paragraphs:
{1} The noun "consciousness" as used by most academics (philosophers, psychologists, biologists...) does not refer to anything in particular.So you can't sensibly ask how it evolved, or which organisms do and which don't have it.
Some people imagine they can identify consciousness as "What I've got now". Thinking you can identify what you are talking about by focusing your attention on it is as futile as a Newtonian attempting to identify an enduring portion of space by focusing his attention on it.
You can identify a portion of space by its relationships to other things, but whether this is or isn't the same bit of space as one identified earlier will depend on WHICH other things you choose: the relationships change over time, but don't all change in unison. Similarly, you can identify a mental state or process by its relationship to other things (e.g. the environment, other mental states or processes, behavioural capabilities, etc), but then whether the same state can or cannot occur in other organisms or machines will depend on WHICH relationships you have chosen -- and there is no uniquely "correct" set of relationships.
NOTE:
A more recent tutorial presentation on this topic is available here.
In Journal of Experimental and Theoretical AI, 1,4, 289-337 1989
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: 1989, installed here April 18th 1994
Reformatted, with images included 22 Oct 2006
Abstract:
This paper contrasts the standard (in AI) "modular" theory of the nature of vision with a more general theory of vision as involving multiple functions and multiple relationships with other sub-systems of an intelligent system. The modular theory (e.g. as expounded by Marr) treats vision as entirely, and permanently, concerned with the production of a limited range of descriptions of visible surfaces, for a central database; while the "labyrinthine" design allows any output that a visual system can be trained to associate reliably with features of an optic array and allows forms of learning that set up new communication channels. The labyrinthine theory turns out to have much in common with J.J.Gibson's theory of affordances, while not eschewing information processing as he did. It also seems to fit better than the modular theory with neurophysiological evidence of rich interconnectivity within and between sub-systems in the brain. Some of the trade-offs between different designs are discussed in order to provide a unifying framework for future empirical investigations and engineering design studies. However, the paper is more about requirements than detailed designs.NOTE:
A precursor to this paper was published in 1982 Image interpretation: The way ahead?
Title: Must Intelligent Systems Be Scruffy?
Presented at Evolving Knowledge Conference. Reading University Sept 1989
Published in Evolving Knowledge in Natural Science and Artificial Intelligence, Eds J.E.Tiles, G.T.McKee, G.C.Dean, London: Pitman, 1990
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: Presented 1989, Published 1990, Installed here 22 Feb 2002.
Plain text (troff) version here:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/scruffy.ai.text
Abstract:
o Introduction: Neats vs Scruffies
o The scope of AI
o Bow to the inevitable: why scruffiness is unavoidable
o Non-explosive domains
o The physical (biological, social) world is even harder to deal with
o Limits of consistency in intelligent systems
o Scruffy semantics
o So various kinds of scruffiness are inevitable
o What should AI do about this?
o Conclusion
Originally in POP-11 Comes of Age: The Advancement of an AI Programming Language, (Ed) J.A.D.W. Anderson, Ellis Horwood, pp 30-54, 1989.Author: Aaron Sloman
Abstract:
This paper gives an overview of the origins and development of the
programming language Pop-11, one of the Pop family of languages
including Pop1, Pop2, Pop10, Wpop, Alphapop. Pop-11 is the msot
sophisticated version, comparable in scope and power to Common Lisp,
though different in many significant details, including its syntax. For
more on Pop-11 and Poplog, the system of which it is the core language,
see:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/freepoplog.html
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/poplog.info.html
This paper first appeared in a collection published in 1989 to celebrate the 21st birthday of the Pop family of languages.
Where published:
Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) 1988, 11 (3): p529-530.Commentary on:
Dennett, D.C. Precis of The Intentional Stance.
BBS 1988 11 (3): 495-505.
Abstract:
This is a short commentary on some aspects of D.C.Dennett's book 'The Intentional Stance'. The paper criticises the "intentional stance" as not providing real insight into the nature of intelligence because it ignores the question HOW behaviour is produced. The paper argues that only by taking the "design stance" can we understand the difference between intelligent and unintelligent ways of doing the same thing.
Date: 1988 (or earlier)
Originally posted to comp.ai.philosophy circa 1988. A similar version appeared in AISB Quarterly, Winter 1992/3, Issue 82, pp. 31-2.A plain text version is available online at http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/freewill.disposed.of
(An improved elaborated paraphrase can be found in Chapter 2 of Stan Franklin Artificial Minds (MIT Press, 1995). Paper back version available.)
Abstract:
Much philosophical discussion concerning freedom of the will is based on an assumption that there is a well-defined distinction between systems whose choices are free and those whose choices are not. This assumption is refuted by showing that when requirements for behaving systems are considered there are very many design options which correspond to a wide variety of distinctions more or less closely associated with our naive ideas of individual freedom. Thus, instead of one major distinction there are many different distinctions; different combinations of design choices will produce different sorts of agents, and the naive distinction is not capable of classifying them. In this framework, the pre-theoretical concept of freedom of the will needs to be abandoned and replaced with a host of different technical concepts corresponding to the capabilities enabled by different designs.It is argued that biological evolution "discovered" many of the design options and produced more and more complex combinations of increasingly sophisticated designs giving animals more and more freedom (though all the interesting varieties depend on the operation of deterministic mechanisms).
See also section 10.13 of Chapter 10 of The Computer Revolution in Philosophy: Philosophy, science and models of mind (1978) .
Added (2006): Four Concepts of Freewill: Two of them incoherent
This argues that people who discuss problems of free will often talk past each other because they do not clearly perceive that there is not one universally accepted notion of "free will". Rather there are at least four, only two of which are of real value.
In Cognition and Emotion 1,3, pp.217-234 1987,
reprinted in M.A. Boden (ed) The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, "Oxford Readings in Philosophy" Series Oxford University Press, pp 231-247 1990.
(Also available as Cognitive Science Research Paper No 62, Sussex University.)
Abstract: (From the introduction)
Ordinary language makes rich and subtle distinctions between different sorts of mental states and processes such as mood, emotion, attitude, motive, character, personality, and so on. Our words and concepts have been honed for centuries against the intricacies of real life under pressure of real needs and therefore give deep hints about the human mind.
Yet actual usage is inconsistent, and our ability to articulate the distinctions we grasp and use intuitively is as limited as our ability to recite rules of English syntax. Words like "motive" and "emotion" are used in ambiguous and inconsistent ways. The same person will tell you that love is an emotion, that she loves her children deeply, and that she is not in an emotional state. Many inconsistencies can be explained away if we rephrase the claims using carefully defined terms. As scientists we need to extend colloquial language with theoretically grounded terminology that can be used to mark distinctions and describe possibilities not normally discerned by the populace. For instance, we'll see that love is an attitude, not an emotion, though deep love can easily trigger emotional states. In the jargon of philosophers (Ryle 1949), attitudes are dispositions, emotions are episodes, though with dispositional elements.
For a full account of these episodes and dispositions we require a theory about how mental states are generated and controlled and how they lead to action -- a theory about the mechanisms of mind. The theory should explain how internal representations are built up, stored, compared, and used to make inferences, formulate plans or control actions. Outlines of a theory are given below. Design constraints for intelligent animals or machines are sketched, then design solutions are related to the structure of human motivation and to computational mechanisms underlying familiar emotional states.
Emotions are analysed as states in which powerful motives respond to relevant beliefs by triggering mechanisms required by resource-limited intelligent systems. New thoughts and motives get through various filters and tend to disturb other ongoing activities. The effects may interfere with or modify the operation of other mental and physical processes, sometimes fruitfully sometimes not. These are states of being "moved". Physiological changes need not be involved. Emotions contrast subtly with related states and processes such as feeling, impulse, mood, attitude, temperament; but there is no space for a full discussion here.
Title: Did Searle attack strong strong or weak strong AI?
Originally inAuthor: Aaron Sloman
A.G. Cohn and J.R. Thomas (eds) Artificial Intelligence and Its Applications, John Wiley and Sons 1986.
(Proceedings AISB Conference, Warwick University, 1985)
Date: 1986
(Installed here 13 Jan 2001 (Originally presented 1985)
(Added Postscript and PDF versions 23 Oct 2005)
Abstract:
John Searle's attack on the Strong AI thesis, and the published replies, are all based on a failure to distinguish two interpretations of that thesis, a strong one, which claims that the mere occurrence of certain process patterns will suffice for the occurrence of mental states, and a weak one which requires that the processes be produced in the right sort of way. Searle attacks strong strong AI, while most of his opponents defend weak strong AI. This paper explores some of Searle's concepts and shows that there are interestingly different versions of the 'Strong AI' thesis, connected with different kinds of reliability of mechanisms and programs.Keywords: Searle, strong AI, minds and machines, intentionality, meaning, reference, computation.
In Proceedings 7th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Brighton, July 1986. Re-printed inAuthor: Aaron Sloman
J.B.H. du Boulay, D.Hogg, L.Steels (eds) Advances in Artificial Intelligence - II North Holland, 369-381, 1987.
Date: 1986
Abstract:
This enlarges on earlier work attempting to show in a general way how it might be possible for a machine to use symbols with `non-derivative' semantics. It elaborates on the author's earlier suggestion that computers understand symbols referring to their own internal `virtual' worlds. A machine that grasps predicate calculus notation can use a set of axioms to give a partial, implicitly defined, semantics to non-logical symbols. Links to other symbols defined by direct causal connections within the machine reduce ambiguity. Axiom systems for which the machine's internal states do not form a model give a basis for reference to an external world without using external sensors and motors.
In Proceedings 9th International Joint Conference on AI, pp 995-1001, Los Angeles, August 1985.Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: 1985
Abstract:
The 'Strong AI' claim that suitably programmed computers can manipulate symbols that THEY understand is defended, and conditions for understanding discussed. Even computers without AI programs exhibit a significant subset of characteristics of human understanding. To argue about whether machines can REALLY understand is to argue about mere definitional matters. But there is a residual ethical question.
In Research and Development in Expert Systems, ed. M Bramer, pp 163-183, Cambridge University Press 1985.Author: A.Sloman
(Proceedings Expert Systems 85 conference. Also Cognitive Science Research paper No 52, Sussex University.)
Date: 1985 (Reformatted December 2005)
Abstract:
Against advocates of particular formalisms for representing ALL kinds of knowledge, this paper argues that different formalisms are useful for different purposes. Different formalisms imply different inference methods. The history of human science and culture illustrates the point that very often progress in some field depends on the creation of a specific new formalism, with the right epistemological and heuristic power. The same has to be said about formalisms for use in artificial intelligent systems. We need criteria for evaluating formalisms in the light of the uses to which they are to be put. The same subject matter may be best represented using different formalisms for different purposes, e.g. simulation vs explanation. If different notations and inference methods are good for different purposes, this has implications for the design of expert systems.This is one of several sequels to the paper presented at IJCAI in 1971
In Real time multiple-motive expert systems, Proceedings Expert Systems 1985,Author: Aaron Sloman
Ed. M. Merry, Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 213--224.A sequel to Sloman and Croucher 1981 (Why robots will have emotions)
Date: 1985 (Installed here May 2004).
Abstract:
Sooner or later attempts will be made to design systems capable of dealing with a steady flow of sensor data and messages, where actions have to be selected on the basis of multiple, not necessarily consistent, motives, and where new information may require substantial re-evaluation of plans and strategies, including suspension of current actions. Where the world is not always friendly, and events move quickly, decisions will often have to be made which are time-critical. The requirements for this sort of system are not clear, but it is clear that they will require global architectures very different from present expert systems or even most AI programs. This paper attempts to analyse some of the requirements, especially the role of macroscopic parallelism and the implications of interrupts. It is assumed that the problems of designing various components of such a system will be solved, e.g. visual perception, memory, inference, planning, language understanding, plan execution, etc. This paper is about some of the problems of putting them together, especially perception, decision-making, planning and plan-execution systems.
Originally published in The Mind and the Machine: philosophical aspects of Artificial Intelligence,Date Installed: 13 Jan 2007 (Originally published 1984)
ed. Stephen Torrance, Ellis Horwood, 1984, pp 35-42.
Abstract: (Extract from text)
Describing this structure is an interdisciplinary task I commend to philosophers. My aim for now is not to do it -- that's a long term project -- but to describe the task. This requires combined efforts from several disciplines including, besides philosophy: psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, ethology and social anthropology.Clearly there is not just one sort of mind. Besides obvious individual differences between adults there are differences between adults, children of various ages and infants. There are cross-cultural differences. There are also differences between humans, chimpanzees, dogs, mice and other animals. And there are differences between all those and machines. Machines too are not all alike, even when made on the same production line, for identical computers can have very different characteristics if fed different programs. Besides all these existing animals and artefacts, we can also talk about theoretically possible systems.
Originally in New Horizons in Educational Computing (Ed) M. Yazdani,Author: Aaron Sloman
Ellis Horwood, 1984. pp 220-235
Abstract:
The paper argues that instead of choosing very simple and restricted programming languages and environments for beginners, we can offer them many advantages if we use powerful, sophisticated languages, libraries, and development environments. Several reasons are given. The Pop-11 subset of the Poplog system is offered as an example.NOTE:
The ideas are developed further in the description of teaching resources in Poplog
And in my presentation at the award of an Honorary DSc at the University of Sussex in 2006
Physical and Biological Processing of ImagesAuthor: Aaron Sloman
(Proceedings of an international symposium organised by The Rank Prize Funds, London, Sept 1982.)
Editors: O.J.Braddick and A.C. Sleigh.
Pages 380--401, Springer-Verlag, 1983
Date Installed: 25 Oct 2006 (Originally written 1982)
Abstract:
Some unsolved problems about vision are discussed in relation to the goal of understanding the space of possible mechanisms with the power of human vision. The following issues are addressed: What are the functions of vision? What needs to be represented? How should it be represented? What is a good global architecture for a human like visual system? How should the visual sub-system relate to the rest of an intelligent system? It is argued that there is much we do not understand about the representation of visible structures, the functions of a visual system and its relation to the rest of the human mind. Some tentative positive suggestions are made, but more questions are posed than answers.NOTE:
This paper is available in two formats as explained above. The OCR version probably has some errors that I have not corrected. But it is much smaller and easier to read than the scanned in images.
I had forgotten about this paper for many years, until I stumbled across a reference to it. This paper is a precursor to On designing a visual system: Towards a Gibsonian computational model of vision. (Published in 1989). The 1982 paper presents many of the ideas I later developed in the context of a more embracing theory of the architecture of human-like minds, in which there are concurrently active 'layers' of different kinds performing different tasks, some evolutionarily very old some newer, all sharing the same sensors and effectors (see also 'The mind as a control system'). I believe this is potentially a far more powerful and general theory than the currently much discussed 'dual-stream' or 'dual-pathway' theories of vision based on differences between dorsal and ventral visual pathways. But evaluating the ideas I have been developing requires a much broader multi-disciplinary perspective, which makes them hard for most people to take in.
Where published:
New Ideas in Psychology
vol. 1, no = 1 pp. 41--50. Online here
Abstract: (Introduction to article)
Having discussed these issues with the author over many years, I was not surprised to find myself agreeing with nearly everything in the paper, and admiring the clarity and elegance of its presentation. All I can offer by way of commentary, therefore, is a collection of minor quibbles, some reformulations to help readers for whom the computational approach is very new, and a few extensions of the discussion.Extracts
WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?I'll start with a few explanatory comments on the nature of A.I., to supplement the section of the paper "A.I. as the Study of Representation". Cognitive Science has three main classes of goals (a) theoretical (the study of possible minds, possible forms of representation and computation), (b) empirical (the study of actual minds and mental abilities of humans and other animals), (c) practical (the attempt to help individuals and society by alleviating problems (i.e. learning problems, mental disorders) and designing new useful intelligent machines).
Activities pursuing these three goals are most fruitful when the goals are interlinked, providing opportunities for feedback between theoretical, empirical and applied work. Artificial Intelligence is a subdiscipline of Cognitive Science which straddles the theoretical approach (studying general properties of possible computational systems) and applications (designing new systems to help in education, industry, commerce, medicine, entertainment). Its empirical content is mostly based not on specialised research, but on common knowledge of many of the things people can do - such as using and understanding language, seeing things, making plans, solving problems, playing games. This knowledge of what people can do sets design goals for both the theoretical and the applied work. In particular, an important aspect of A.I. research is task analysis: given that people can perform a certain task, what are the computational resources required, and what are the trade-offs between different representations and processing strategies? This sort of analysis is relevant to the study of other animals insofar as many human abilities are shared with other animals.
Filename: sloman-ijcai83-meaning.pdf
Title: Introduction to Panel Discussion:
Under What Conditions Can A Machine Attribute Meanings To Symbols?
Authors:Aaron Sloman, et al.,
Date Installed: 23 Mar 2011 (Published 1983)
Where published:
@Inproceedings {sloman:83b, author = "Aaron Sloman and Drew V. McDermott and William A. Woods and Brian Cantwell Smith and Patrick J. Hayes", title = "Panel discussion: Under What Conditions Can a Machine Attribute Meanings to Symbols?", booktitle = "Proceedings IJCAI'83", pages = {44-48}, year = {1983}, url ={http://ijcai.org/Past%20Proceedings/IJCAI-83-VOL-1/CONTENT/content.htm},}
1982
- Filename: Sloman.emot.gram.pdf
Title: Towards a Grammar of Emotions,
in New Universities Quarterly, 36,3, pp 230-238, 1982.
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: Installed here 6 Dec 1998 (Originally Published in 1982)Abstract:
By analysing what we mean by 'A longs for B', and similar descriptions of emotional states we see that they involve rich cognitive structures and processes, i.e. computations. Anything which could long for its mother, would have to have some sort of representation of its mother, would have to believe that she is not in the vicinity, would have to be able to represent the possibility of being close to her, would have to desire that possibility, and would have to be to some extent pre-occupied or obsessed with that desire. The paper includes a fairly detailed discussion of what it means to say 'X is angry with Y', and relationships between anger, exasperation, annoyance, dismay, etc., including exploring some of the dynamics of emotions such as anger. Emotions are contrasted with attitudes and moods.
- Not yet online
Title: Computational Epistemology
in Genetic epistemology and cognitive science Structures and cognitive processes:
Proceedings of the 2nd and 3rd Advanced Courses in Genetic Epistemology,
organised by the Fondation Archives Jean Piaget in 1980 and 1981. - Geneva: Fondation Archives Jean Piaget, 1982. - P. 49-93.
http://ael.archivespiaget.ch/document.php?numrec=1222103Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: (Originally Published in 1982)
Abstract:
See this? To be added.
1981
- Filename: skills-cogsci-81.pdf (PDF)
Filename: skills-cogsci-81.txt (Plain Text)
Title: Skills Learning and Parallelism
In Proceedings Cognitive Science Conference, Berkeley, 1981.
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date Installed: 15 Jan 2008 (Written April 1981)Abstract: (Extract from the text)
The distinction between compiled and interpreted programs plays an important role in computer science and may be essential for understanding intelligent systems. For instance programs in a high-level language tend to have a much clearer structure than the machine code compiled equivalent, and are therefore more easily synthesised, debugged and modified. Interpreted languages make it unnecessary to have both representations. Further, if the interpreter is itself an interpreted program it can be modified during the course of execution, for instance to enhance the semantics of the language it is interpreting, and different interpreters may be used with the same program, for different purposes: e.g. an interpreter running the program in 'careful mode' would make use of comments ignored by an interpreter running the program at maximum speed (Sussman 1975). (The possibility of changing interpreters vitiates many of the arguments in Fodor (1975) which assume that all programs are compiled into a low level machine code, whose interpreter never changes).People who learn about the compiled/interpreted distinction frequently re-invent the idea that the development of skills in human beings may be a process in which programs are first synthesised in an interpreted language, then later translated into a compiled form. The latter is thought to explain many features of skilled performance, for instance, the speed, the difficulty of monitoring individual steps, the difficulty of interrupting, starting or resuming execution at arbitrary desired locations, the difficulty of modifying a skill, the fact that performance is often unconscious after the skill has been developed, and so on. On this model, the old jokes about centipedes being unable to walk, or birds to fly, if they think about how they do it, might be related to the impossibility of using the original interpreter after a program has been compiled into a lower level language.
Despite the attractions of this theory I suspect that a different model is required in some cases.
- Filename: sloman-croucher-warm-heart.pdf
Title: You don't need a soft skin to have a warm heart: Towards a computational analysis of motives and emotions.
Authors: Aaron Sloman and Monica Croucher
Originally a Cognitive Science Research Paper at Sussex University:Date Installed: 17 Jun 2005 (Written circa 1980-81)
Sloman, Aaron and Monica Croucher, "You don't need a soft skin to have a warm heart: towards a computational analysis of motives and emotions," CSRP 004, 1981.Abstract:
The paper introduces an interdisciplinary methodology for the study of minds of animals humans and machines, and, by examining some of the pre-requisites for intelligent decision-making, attempts to provide a framework for integrating some of the fragmentary studies to be found in Artificial Intelligence.The space of possible architectures for intelligent systems is very large. This essay takes steps towards a survey of the space, by examining some environmental and functional constraints, and discussing mechanisms capable of fulfilling them. In particular, we examine a subspace close to the human mind, by illustrating the variety of motives to be expected in a human-like system, and types of processes they can produce in meeting some of the constraints.
This provides a framework for analysing emotions as computational states and processes, and helps to undermine the view that emotions require a special mechanism distinct from cognitive mechanisms. The occurrence of emotions is to be expected in any intelligent robot or organism able to cope with multiple motives in a complex and unpredictable environment.
Analysis of familiar emotion concepts (e.g. anger, embarrassment, elation, disgust, pity, etc.) shows that they involve interactions between motives (e.g. wants, dislikes, ambitions, preferences, ideals, etc.) and beliefs (e.g. beliefs about the fulfilment or violation of a motive), which cause processes produced by other motives (e.g. reasoning, planning, execution) to be disturbed, disrupted or modified in various ways (some of them fruitful). This tendency to disturb or modify other activities seems to be characteristic of all emotions. In order fully to understand the nature of emotions, therefore, we need to understand motives and the types of processes they can produce.
This in turn requires us to understand the global computational architecture of a mind. There are several levels of discussion: description of methodology, the beginning of a survey of possible mental architectures, speculations about the architecture of the human mind, analysis of some emotions as products of the architecture, and some implications for philosophy, education and psychotherapy.
- Filename: Aaron.Sloman_why_robot_emotions.pdf
Title: Why robots will have emotions
Authors: Aaron Sloman and Monica Croucher
Date: August 1981 (Installed in this directory 10 Nov 1994)Originally appeared in Proceedings IJCAI 1981, VancouverAbstract:
Also available from Sussex University as Cognitive Science Research paper No 176Emotions involve complex processes produced by interactions between motives, beliefs, percepts, etc. E.g. real or imagined fulfilment or violation of a motive, or triggering of a 'motive-generator', can disturb processes produced by other motives. To understand emotions, therefore, we need to understand motives and the types of processes they can produce. This leads to a study of the global architecture of a mind. Some constraints on the evolution of minds are discussed. Types of motives and the processes they generate are sketched.(Note we now use slightly different terminology from that used in this paper. In particular, what the paper labelled as "intensity" we now call "insistence", i.e. the capacity to divert attention from other things.)
NB
This paper is often misquoted as arguing that robots (or at least intelligent robots) should have emotions. On the contrary, the paper argues that certain sorts of high level disturbances (i.e. emotional states) will be capable of arising out of interactions between mechanisms that exist for other reasons. Similarly 'thrashing' is capable of occurring in multi-processing operating systems that support swapping and paging, but that does not mean that operating systems should produce thrashing.A more recent analysis of the confused but fashionable arguments (e.g. based on Damasio's writings) claiming that emotions are needed for intelligence can be found in this semi-popular presentation.
One of the arguments is analogous to arguing that a car requires a functioning horn for its starter motor to work, because damaging the battery can disable the horn and disable the starter motor.
- Filename: sloman-clowestribute.html
Filename: sloman-clowestribute.pdfTitle: Experiencing Computation: A tribute to Max Clowes
(Originally appeared in Computing in Schools 1981)
Author: Aaron SlomanDate installed:
11 Feb 2001 (Originally published 1981)Abstract:
Max Clowes (pronounced as if spelt Clues, or Klews) was one of the pioneers of AI vision research in the UK. He inspired and helped to develop Artificial Intelligence and computational Cognitive Science at he University of Sussex. In 1981 he tragically died, shortly after leaving the University in order to work on computing in Schools. This paper was originally published in 1981. The version here has had some footnotes added referring to subsequent developments.
1980
1979
- Filename: sloman.primacy.inner.language.pdf
Filename: sloman.primacy.inner.language.txt (Plain text)Title: The primacy of non-communicative language
Author: Aaron SlomanIn The Analysis of Meaning, Proceedings 5,Date: Originally published 1979. Added here 2 Dec 2000
(Invited talk for ASLIB Informatics Conference, Oxford, March 1979,)
ASLIB and British Computer Society, London, 1979.
Eds M. MacCafferty and K. Gray, pages 1--15.Abstract:
How is it possible for symbols to be used to refer to or describe things? I shall approach this question indirectly by criticising a collection of widely held views of which the central one is that meaning is essentially concerned with communication. A consequence of this view is that anything which could be reasonably described as a language is essentially concerned with communication. I shall try to show that widely known facts, for instance facts about the behaviour of animals, and facts about human language learning and use, suggest that this belief, and closely related assumptions (see A1 to A3, in the paper) are false. Support for an alternative framework of assumptions is beginning to emerge from work in Artificial Intelligence, work concerned not only with language but also with perception, learning, problem-solving and other mental processes. The subject has not yet matured sufficiently for the new paradigm to be clearly articulated. The aim of this paper is to help to formulate a new framework of assumptions, synthesising ideas from Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy of Science and Mathematics.
1978
- Filename: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/crp/
Also at ASSC eprints web siteTitle: THE COMPUTER REVOLUTION IN PHILOSOPHY:
Philosophy, science and models of mind.Originally published by Harvester Press and Humanities Press in 1978, but long since out of print. Now available online free of charge.Author: Aaron Sloman
Date installed: 29 Sep 2001Abstract:
See the contents list
Note added 4 Oct 2007
I have discovered that a review of 'The Computer Revolution in Philosophy' by Douglas Hofstadter is available online here.
BULLETIN (New Series) OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY
Volume 2, Number 2, March 1980
Copyright 1980 American Mathematical Society
The computer revolution in philosophy: Philosophy, science and models of mind
by Aaron Sloman, Harvester Studies in Cognitive Science Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N. J., 1978, xvi + 304 pp., cloth, $22.50.
Reviewed by Douglas R. Hofstadter
(The review rightly criticises some of the unnecessarily aggressive tone and throw-away remarks, but also gives the most thorough assessment of the main ideas of the book that I have seen.
Like many in AI he regards the philosophy of science in the first part of the book, e.g. Chapter 2, as relatively uninteresting, whereas I think understanding those issues is central to understanding how human minds work as they learn more about the world and themselves.)
- Filename: bbs-chimps-1978.pdf
Filename: bbs-chimps-1978.html
Title: What About Their Internal Languages?
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date Installed: 13 Dec 2007 (Originally published 1978)Abstract:
Commentary on three articles published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences Journal 1978, 1 (4)1. Premack, D., Woodruff, G. Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? BBS 1978 1 (4): 515.Despite the virtues of the target articles, I find something sadly lacking: an awareness of deep problems and a search for deep explanations.
2. Griffin, D.R. Prospects for a cognitive ethology. BBS 1978 1 (4): 527.
3. Savage-Rumbaugh, E.S., Rumbaugh, D.R., Boysen, S. Linguistically-mediated tool use and exchange by chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes). BBS 1978 1 (4): 539.Are the authors of these papers merely concerned to collect facts? Clearly not: they are also deeply concerned to learn the extent of man's uniqueness in the animal world, to refute behaviourism, and to replace anecdote with experimental rigour. But what do they have to say to someone who doesn't care whether humans are unique, who believes that behaviourism is either an irrefutable collection of tautologies or a dead horse, and who already is deeply impressed by the abilities of cats, dogs, chimps, and other animals, but who constantly wonders: HOW DO THEY DO IT?
My answer is that the papers do not have much to say about that: for that, investigation of designs for working systems is required, rather than endless collection of empirical facts, interesting as those may be.
1977
1976
1975
- Filename: sloman-afterthoughts.pdf
(Via LaTeX: derived from a scanned version)
Filename: sloman-tinlap-1975.pdf (original formatting: also here)
Title: Afterthoughts on Analogical Representations (1975)Originally Published in in Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing (TINLAP-1), Eds. R. Schank & B. Nash-Webber, pp. 431--439, MIT,Author: Aaron Sloman
Now available online http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/T/T75/
Reprinted in Readings in knowledge representation, Eds. R.J. Brachman & H.J. Levesque, Morgan Kaufmann, 1985.
Date installed: 28 Mar 2005Abstract:
In 1971 I wrote a paper attempting to relate some old philosophical issues about representation and reasoning to problems in Artificial Intelligence. A major theme of the paper was the importance of distinguishing ``analogical'' from ``Fregean'' representations. I still think the distinction is important, though perhaps not as important for current problems in A.I. as I used to think. In this paper I'll try to explain why.
1974
- Filename: sloman-bogey.html (HTML)
Filename: sloman-bogey.pdf (incomplete PDF from OCR)
Filename: sloman-bogey-print.pdf
(A more complete, PDF version, derived from the html version.)
Title: Physicalism and the Bogey of Determinism
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date: Published 1974, installed here 29 Dec 2005Abstract:
Presented at an interdisciplinary conference on Philosophy of Psychology at the University of Kent in 1971. Published in the proceedings, asA. Sloman, 'Physicalism and the Bogey of Determinism'
(along with Reply by G. Mandler and W. Kessen, and additional comments by Alan R. White, Philippa Foot and others, and replies to criticisms)
in Philosophy of Psychology, Ed S.C.Brown, London: Macmillan, 1974, pages 293--304. (Published by Barnes & Noble in USA.)
Commentary and discussion followed on pages 305--348.This paper rehearses some relatively old arguments about how any coherent notion of free will is not only compatible with but depends on determinism.
However the mind-brain identity theory is attacked on the grounds that what makes a physical event an intended action A is that the agent interprets the physical phenomena as doing A. The paper should have referred to the monograph Intention (1957) by Elizabeth Anscombe (summarised here by Jeff Speaks), which discusses in detail the fact that the same physical event can have multiple (true) descriptions, using different ontologies.
My point is partly analogous to Dennett's appeal to the 'intentional stance', though that involves an external observer attributing rationality along with beliefs and desires to the agent. I am adopting the design stance not the intentional stance, for I do not assume rationality in agents with semantic competence (e.g. insects), and I attempt to explain how an agent has to be designed in order to perform intentional actions; the design must allow the agent to interpret physical events (including events in its brain) in a way that is not just perceiving their physical properties. That presupposes semantic competence which is to be explained in terms of how the machine or organism works, i.e. using the design stance, not by simply postulating rationality and assuming beliefs and desires on the basis of external evidence.Some of ideas that were in the paper and in my responses to commentators were also presented in The Computer Revolution in Philosophy, including a version of this diagram (originally pages 344-345, in the discussion section below), discussed in more detail in Chapter 6 of the book, and later elaborated as an architectural theory assuming concurrent reactive, deliberative and metamanagement processes, e.g. as explained in this 1999 paper Architecture-Based Conceptions of Mind, and later papers.
The html paper preserves original page divisions.
(I may later add further notes and comments to this HTML version.)
Note added 3 May 2006
An online review of the whole book is available here. by Marius Schneider, O. F. M., The Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C., apparently written in 1975.
- Filename: sloman-aisb-74.pdf (Scanned from original: about 2.4MB)
Title: On learning about numbers: Some problems and speculationsIn Proceedings AISB Conference 1974, University of Sussex, pp. 173--185,Author: Aaron SlomanA slightly revised version (with clearer diagrams) was published as Chapter 8 of the 1978 book: The Computer Revolution in Philosophy
Date: Published/Presented 1974, installed here 3 Jan 2010.
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is methodological and tutorial. It uses elementary number competence to show how reflection on the fine structure of familiar human abilities generates requirements exposing the inadequacy of initially plausible explanations. We have to learn how to organise our common sense knowledge and make it explicit, and we don't need experimental data as much as we need to extend our model-building know-how.
1973
1972
1971
- Filename: sloman-new-bodies.pdf (PDF)
Filename: sloman-new-bodies.html (HTML)
Title: New Bodies for Sick Persons: Personal Identity Without Physical Continuity
Author: Aaron SlomanFirst published in In Analysis vol 32 NO 2, December 1971, pages 52 --55Date Installed: 9 Jan 2007 (Originally Published 1971)Abstract: (Extracts from paper)
In his recent Aristotelian society paper ('Personal identity, personal relationships, and criteria' in Proceedings the Aristotelian Society, 1970-71, pp. 165--186), J. M. Shorter argues that the connexion between physical identity and personal identity is much less tight than some philosophers have supposed, and, in order to drive a wedge between the two sorts of identity, he discusses logically possible situations in which there would be strong moral and practical reasons for treating physically discontinuous individuals as the same person. I am sure his main points are correct: the concept of a person serves a certain sort of purpose and in changed circumstances it might be able to serve that purpose only if very different, or partially different, criteria for identity were employed. Moreover, in really bizarre, but "logically" possible, situations there may be no way of altering the identity-criteria, nor any other feature of the concept of person, so as to enable the concept to have the same moral, legal, political and other functions as before: the concept may simply disintegrate, so that the question 'Is X really the same person as Y or not ?', has no answer at all. For instance, this might be the case if bodily discontinuities and reduplications occurred very frequently. To suppose that the "essence" of the concept of a person, or some set of general logical principles, ensures that questions of identity always have answers in all possible circumstances, is quite unjustified.In order to close a loophole in Shorter's argument I describe a possible situation in which both physical continuity and bodily identity are clearly separated from personal identity. Moreover, the example does not, as Shorter's apparently does, assume the falsity of current physical theory.
It will be a long time before engineers make a machine which will not merely copy a tape recording of a symphony, but also correct poor intonation, wrong notes, or unmusical phrasing. An entirely new dimension of understanding of what is being copied is required for this. Similarly, it may take a further thousand years, or more, before the transcriptor is modified so that when a human body is copied the cancerous or other diseased cells are left out and replaced with normal healthy cells, if, by then, the survival rate for bodies made by this modified machine were much greater than for bodies from which tumours had been removed surgically, or treated with drugs, then I should have little hesitation, after being diagnosed as having incurable cancer, in agreeing to have my old body replaced by a new healthy one, and the old one destroyed before recovering from the anaesthetic. This would be no suicide, nor murder.
- Filename: sloman-ijcai-71.pdf (PDF Scanned from IJCAI Proceedings)
(with full list of references -- added June 2006)
Filename: sloman-analogical-1971 (HTML references incomplete)
Filename: sloman-analogical-1971.pdf (PDF references incomplete)Title: Interactions between Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence: The role of intuition and non-logical reasoning in intelligence,
Author: Aaron SlomanOriginally published in:
Proceedings IJCAI 1971Date added: 12 May 2004
(Proceedings also available here) , then reprinted in
Artificial Intelligence, vol 2, 1971, then in J.M. Nicholas, ed. Images, Perception, and Knowledge, Dordrecht-Holland: Reidel. 1977This was later revised as Chapter 7 of The Computer Revolution in Philosophy (1978)
Abstract:
This paper echoes, from a philosophical standpoint, the claim of McCarthy and Hayes that Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence have important relations. Philosophical problems about the use of 'intuition' in reasoning are related, via a concept of analogical representation, to problems in the simulation of perception, problem-solving and the generation of useful sets of possibilities in considering how to act. The requirements for intelligent decision-making proposed by McCarthy and Hayes in Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence (1969) are criticised as too narrow, because they allowed for the use of only one formalism, namely logic. Instead general requirements are suggested showing the usefulness of other forms of representation.There were several sequels to this paper including the Afterthoughts paper written in 1975, some further developments regarding ontologies and criteria for adequacy in a 1984-5 paper and several other papers mentioned in the section on diagrammatic/visual reasoning here.
Related recent work includes these presentations:
- Filename: sloman-tarski-liar.pdf (PDF)
Filename: sloman-tarski-liar.html (HTML)Title: Tarski, Frege and the Liar Paradox
Originally in Philosophy, Vol XLVI, pages 133-147, 1971Author: Aaron Sloman
Date installed: 16 Oct 2003Abstract:
The paper attempts to resolve a variety of logical and semantic paradoxes on the basis of Frege's ideas about compositional semantics: i.e. complex expressions have a reference that depends on the references of the component parts and the mode of composition, which determines a function from the lowest level components to the value for the whole expression. The paper attempts to show that it is inevitable within this framework that some syntactically well formed expressions will fail to have any reference, even though they may have a well defined sense. This can be compared with the ways in which syntactically well-formed programs in programming languages may fail to terminate or in some other way fail semantically and produce run-time errors.The paper suggests that this view of paradoxes, including the paradox of the Liar, is superior to Tarski's analysis which required postulating a hierarchy of meta-languages. We do not need such a hierarchy to explain what is going on or to deal with the fact that such paradoxes exist. Moreover, the hierarchy would not necessarily be useful for an intelligent agent, compared with languages that contain their own meta-language, like the one I am now using.
1970
- Filename: sloman-ought-and-better.html
Filename: ought-better.pdf
Filename: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/ought-and-better-jpegs (scanned version)
Title: 'Ought' and 'Better'
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date Installed: 19 Sep 2005Abstract:
Originally published as Aaron Sloman, 'Ought and Better' Mind, vol LXXIX, No 315, July 1970, pp 385--394)This is a sequel to the 1969 paper on "How to derive 'Better' from 'Is'" also online at this web site. It presupposes the analysis of 'better' in the earlier paper, and argues that statements using the word 'ought' say something about which of a collection of alternatives is better than the others, in contrast with statements using 'must' or referring to 'obligations', or what is 'obligatory'. The underlying commonality between superficially different statements like 'You should take an umbrella with you' and 'The sun should come out soon' is explained, along with some other philosophical puzzles, e.g. concerning why 'ought' does not imply 'can', contrary to what some philosophers have claimed.
Curiously, the 'Ought' and 'Better' paper is mentioned at http://semantics-online.org/blog/2005/08/ in the section on David Lodge's novel "Thinks...", which includes a reference to this paper 'What to Do If You Want to Go to Harlem: Anankastic Conditionals and Related Matters' by Kai von Fintel and Sabine Iatridou (MIT), which includes a discussion of the paper on 'Ought' and 'Better'.
1969
- Filename: sloman-transformations.pdf
Title: Transformations of Illocutionary Acts (1969)
Author: Aaron SlomanFirst published in Analysis Vol 30 No 2, December 1969 pages 56-59Date Installed: 10 Jan 2007Abstract: (extracts from paper)
This paper discusses varieties of negation and other logical operators when applied to speech acts, in response to an argument by John Searle.In his book Speech Acts (Cambridge University Press, 1969), Searle discusses what he calls 'the speech act fallacy' (pp. 136,ff), namely the fallacy of inferring from the fact that
(1) in simple indicative sentences, the word W is used to perform some speech-act A (e.g. 'good' is used to commend, 'true' is used to endorse or concede, etc.)the conclusion that(2) a complete philosophical explication of the concept W is given when we say 'W is used to perform A'.He argues that as far as the words 'good', 'true', 'know' and 'probably' are concerned, the conclusion is false because the speech-act analysis fails to explain how the words can occur with the same meaning in various grammatically different contexts, such as interrogatives ('Is it good?'), conditionals('If it is good it will last long'), imperatives ('Make it good'), negations, disjunctions, etc.The paper argues that even if conclusion (2) is false, Searle's argument against it is inadequate because he does not consider all the possible ways in which a speech-act might account for non-indicative occurrences.
In particular, there are other things we can do with speech acts besides performing them and predicating their performance, e.g. besides promising and expressing the proposition that one is promising. E.g. you can indicate that you are considering performing act F but are not yet prepared to perform it, as in 'I don't promise to come'. So the analysis proposed can be summarised thus:
If F and G are speech acts, and p and q propositional contents or other suitable objects, then:
o Utterances of the structure 'If F(p) then G(q)' express provisional commitment to performing G on q, pending the performance of F on pIt is not claimed that 'not', 'if', etc., always are actually used in accordance with the above analyses, merely that this is a possible type of analysis which (a) allows a word which in simple indicative sentences expresses a speech act to contribute in a uniform way to the meanings of other types of sentences and (b) allows signs like 'not', 'if', the question construction, and the imperative construction, to have uniform effects on signs for speech acts. This type of analysis differs from the two considered and rejected by Searle. Further, if one puts either assertion or commendation or endorsement in place of the speech acts F and G in the above schemata, then the results seem to correspond moderately well with some (though not all) actual uses of the words and constructions in question. With other speech acts, the result does not seem to correspond to anything in ordinary usage: for instance, there is nothing in ordinary English which corresponds to applying the imperative construction to the speech act of questioning, or even commanding, even though if this were done in accordance with the above schematic rules the result would in theory be intelligible.
o Utterances of the form 'F(p) or G(q) 'would express a commitment to performing (eventually) one or other or both of the two acts though neither is performed as yet.
o The question mark, in utterances of the form 'F(p)?' instead of expressing some new and completely unrelated kind of speech act, would merely express indecision concerning whether to perform F on p together with an attempt to get advice or help in resolving the indecision.
o The imperative form 'Bring it about that . .' followed by a suitable grammatical transformation of F(p) would express the act of trying to get (not cause) the hearer to bring about that particular state of affairs in which the speaker would perform the act F on p (which is not the same as simply bringing it about that the speaker performs the act).
- Filename: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/sloman.better.html
Filename: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/sloman-better.pdf
Title: How to derive "better" from "is",
Author: Aaron SlomanOriginally Published as: A. Sloman How to derive "better" from "is" American Philosophical Quarterly,
Vol 6, Number 1, Jan 1969, pp 43--52.
Date Installed: 23 Oct 2002Abstract:
ONE type of naturalistic analysis of words like "good," "ought," and "better" defines them in terms of criteria for applicability which vary from one context to another (as in "good men," "good typewriter," "good method of proof"), so that their meanings vary with context. Dissatisfaction with this "crude" naturalism leads some philosophers to suggest that the words have a context-independent non-descriptive meaning defined in terms of such things as expressing emotions, commanding, persuading, or guiding actions.There are well-known objections to both approaches, and the aim of this paper is to suggest an alternative which has apparently never previously been considered, for the very good reason that at first sight it looks so unpromising, namely the alternative of defining the problematic words as logical constants.
This should not be confused with the programme of treating them as undefined symbols in a formal system, which is not new. In this essay an attempt will be made to define a logical constant "Better" which has surprisingly many of the features of the ordinary word "better" in a large number of contexts. It can then be shown that other important uses of "better" may be thought of as derived from this use of the word as a logical constant.
The new symbol is a logical constant in that its definition (i.e., the specification of formation rules and truth-conditions for statements using it) makes use only of such concepts as "entailment," "satisfying a condition," "relation," "set of properties," which would generally be regarded as purely logical concepts. In particular, the definition makes no reference to wants, desires, purposes, interests, prescriptions, choice, non-descriptive uses of language, and the other paraphernalia of non-naturalistic (and some naturalistic) analyses of evaluative words.
(However, some of those 'paraphernalia' can be included in arguments/subjects to which the complex relational predicate 'better' is applied.)
1968
- Filename: sloman-explain-necessity.pdf (132 KBytes, via latex from OCR -- PDF)
Filename: sloman-ExplainNecessity.pdf (11.4 MB Scanned PDF from original)
Title: Explaining Logical Necessity
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date Installed: 4 Dec 2007 (Published originally in 1968); Updated 19 Dec 2009in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1968/9, Volume, 69, pp 33--50.Abstract: (From the introductory section)
Summary:
I: Some facts about logical necessity stated.
II: Not all necessity is logical.
III: The need for an explanation.
IV: Formalists attempt unsuccessfully to reduce logic to syntax.
V: The no-sense theory of Wittgenstein's Tractatus merely reformulates
the problem.
VI: Crude conventionalism is circular.
VII: Extreme conventionalism is more sophisticated.
VIII: It yields some important insights.
IX: But it ignores the variety of kinds of proof.
X: Proofs show why things must be so, but different proofs show different things. Hence there can be no general explanation of necessity.I An adequate theory of meaning and truth must account for the following facts, whose explanation is the topic, though not the aim, of the paper.
(i) Different signs (e.g., in different languages) may express the same proposition.
(ii) The syntactic and semantic rules in virtue of which sentences are able to express contingent propositions also permit the expression of necessary propositions and generate necessary relations between contingent propositions. E.g. although 'It snows in Sydney or it does not snow in Sydney' can be verified empirically (since showing one disjunct to be true would be an empirical verification, just as a proposition of the form 'p and not-p' can be falsified empirically), the empirical enquiry can be short-circuited by showing what the result must be.
(iii) At least some such restrictions on truth-values, or combinations of truth-values (e.g., when two or more contingent propositions are logically equivalent, or inconsistent, or when one follows from others), result from purely formal, or logical, or topic-neutral features of the construction of the relevant propositions, features which have nothing to do with precisely which concepts occur, or which objects are referred to. Hence we call some propositions logically true, or logically false, and say some inferences are valid in virtue of their logical form, which prevents simultaneous truth of premisses and falsity of conclusion.
(iv) The truth-value-restricting logical forms are systematically inter-related so that the whole infinite class of such forms can be recursively generated from a relatively small subset, as illustrated in axiomatisations of logic.
Subsequent discussion will show these statements to be over-simple. Nevertheless, they will serve to draw attention to the range of facts whose need of explanation is the starting point of this paper. They have deliberately been formulated to allow that there may be cases of non-logical necessity.
1967
1966
1965
- Available in two formats:
Filename: sloman-rogators.pdf (Scanned original, about 13MB PDF)
Filename: sloman-rogators.html (Digitised and annotated HTML version, about 55KB)
Title: Functions and Rogators (1965)
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date Installed: 23 Dec 2007
This paper was originally presented at a meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic held in St. Anne's College, Oxford, England from 15-19 July 1963 as a NATO Advanced Study Institute with a Symposium on Recursive Functions sponsored by the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science.A summary of the meeting by E. J. Lemmon, M. A. E. Dummett, and J. N. Crossley with abstracts of papers presented, including this one, was published in The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 28, No. 3. (Sep., 1963), pp. 262-272. accessible online here.
The full paper was published in the conference proceedings:
Aaron Sloman 'Functions and Rogators', inAbstract:
Formal Systems and Recursive Functions:
Proceedings of the Eighth Logic Colloquium Oxford, July 1963
Eds J N Crossley and M A E Dummett
North-Holland Publishing Co (1965), pp. 156--175This paper extends Frege's concept of a function to "rogators", which are like functions in that they take arguments and produce results, but are unlike functions in that their results can depend on the state of the world, in addition to which arguments they are applied to.
It was scanned in and digitised in December 2007.
(This paper was described by David Wiggins as 'neglected but valuable' in his 'Sameness and Substance Renewed' (2001).
(Published in E. J. Lemmon, M. A. E. Dummett, and J. N. Crossley) (1963)Frege, and others, have made extensive use of the notion of a function, for example in analysing the role of quantification, the notion of a function being defined, usually, in the manner familiar to mathematicians, and illustrated with mathematical examples. On this view functions satisfy extensional criteria for identity. It is not usually noticed that in non-mathematical contexts the things which are thought of as analogous to functions are, in certain respects, unlike the functions of mathematics. These differences provide a reason for saying that there are entities, analogous to functions, but which do not satisfy extensional criteria for identity. For example, if we take the supposed function 'x is red' and consider its value (truth or falsity) for some such argument as the lamp post nearest my front door, then we see that what the value is depends not only on which object is taken as argument, and the 'function', but also on contingent facts about the object, in particular, what colour it happens to have. Even if the lamp post is red (and the value is truth), the same lamp post might have been green, if it had been painted differently. So it looks as if we need something like a function, but not extensional, of which we can say that it might have had a value different from that which it does have. We cannot say this of a function considered simply as a set of ordered pairs, for if the same argument had had a different value it would not have been the same function. These non-extensional entities are described as 'rogators', and the paper is concerned to explain what the function-rogator distinction is, how it differs from certain other distinctions, and to illustrate its importance in logic, from the philosophical point of view.
- Filename: sloman-necessary.pdf (PDF)
Title: 'NECESSARY', 'A PRIORI' AND 'ANALYTIC'
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date Installed: 9 Jan 2007 (Published 1965)First published in Analysis vol 26, No 1, pp 12-16 1965.Abstract (actually the opening paragraph of the paper):It is frequently taken for granted, both by people discussing logical distinctions and by people using them, that the terms 'necessary', 'a priori', and 'analytic' are equivalent, that they mark not three distinctions, but one. Occasionally an attempt is made to establish that two or more of these terms are equivalent. However, it seems me far from obvious that they are or can be shown to be equivalent, that they cannot be given definitions which enable them to mark important and different distinctions. Whether these different distinctions happen to coincide or not is, as I shall show, a further question, requiring detailed investigation. In this paper, an attempt will be made to show in a brief and schematic way that there is an open problem here and that it is extremely misleading to talk as if there were only one distinction.
1964
- Filename: rules-premisses.html (HTML)
Filename: rules-premisses.pdf (PDF)
Title: Rules of inference, or suppressed premisses? (1964)
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date Installed: 31 Dec 2006First published in Mind Volume LXXIII, Number 289 Pp. 84-96, 1964.Abstract (actually the opening paragraph of the paper):
In ordinary discourse we often use or accept as valid, arguments of the form "P, so Q", or "P, therefore Q", or "Q, because P" where the validity of the inference from P to Q is not merely logical: the statement of the form "If P then Q" is not a logical truth, even if it is true. Inductive inferences and inferences made in the course of moral arguments provide illustrations of this. Philosophers, concerned about the justification for such reasoning, have recently debated whether the validity of these inferences depends on special rules of inference which are not merely logical rules, or on suppressed premisses which, when added to the explicit premisses, yield an argument in which the inference is logically, that is deductively, valid. In a contribution to MIND ("Rules of Inference in Moral Reasoning", July 1961), Nelson Pike describes such a debate concerning the nature of moral reasoning. Hare claims that certain moral arguments involve suppressed deductive premisses, whereas Toulmin analyses them in terms of special rules of inference, peculiar to the discourse of morality. Pike concludes that the main points so far made on either side of the dispute are "quite ineffective" (p. 391), and suggests that the problem itself is to blame, since the reasoning of the "ordinary moralist" is too rough and ready for fine logical distinctions to apply (pp. 398-399). In this paper an attempt will be made to take his discussion still further and explain in more detail why arguments in favour of either rules of inference or suppressed premisses must be ineffective. It appears that the root of the trouble has nothing to do with moral reasoning specifically, but arises out of a general temptation to apply to meaningful discourse a distinction which makes sense only in connection with purely formal calculi.
- Filename: colour-incompatibilities.pdf
Title: Colour Incompatibilities and Analyticity
Author: Aaron SlomanDate Installed: 6 Jan 2010; Published 1964
Where published:
Analysis, Vol. 24, Supplement 2. (Jan., 1964), pp. 104-119.Abstract: (Opening paragraph)
The debate about the possibility of synthetic necessary truths is an old and familiar one. The question may be discussed either in a general way, or with reference to specific examples. This essay is concerned with the specific controversy concerning the incompatibility of colours, or colour concepts, or colour words. The essay is mainly negative: I shall neither assume, nor try to prove, that colours are incompatible, or that their incompatibility is either analytic or synthetic, but only that certain more or Less familiar arguments intended to show that incompatibility relations between colours are analytic fail to do so. It will follow from this that attempts to generalise these arguments to show that no necessary truths can be synthetic will be unsuccessful, unless they bring in quite new sorts of considerations. The essay does, however, have a positive purpose, namely the partial clarification of some of the concepts employed by philosophers who discuss this sort of question, concepts such as 'analytic' and 'true in virtue of linguistic rules'. Such clarification is desirable since it is often not at all clear what such philosophers think that they have established, since the usage of these terms by philosophers is often so loose and divergent that disagreements may be based on partial misunderstanding. The trouble has a three-fold source : the meaning of 'analytic' is unclear, the meaning of 'necessary' is unclear, and it is not always clear what these terms are supposed to be applied to. (E.g. are they sentences, statements, propositions, truths, knowledge, ways of knowing, or what?) Not all of these confusions can be eliminated here, but an attempt will be made to clear some of them away by giving a definition of 'analytic' which avoids some of the confused and confusing features of Kant's exposition without altering the spirit of his definition.
1963
- Title: Abstract of Functions and Rogators (1965)
Author: Aaron Sloman
Date Installed: 23 Dec 2007
A summary of the 1963 Logic Colloquium was published by E. J. Lemmon, M. A. E. Dummett, and J. N. Crossley with abstracts of papers presented, including my 'Functions and Rogators', was published in The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 28, No. 3. (Sep., 1963), pp. 262-272. accessible online here.
1962
- Filename: sloman-1962 (html overview and PDF chapters)
Title: Oxford DPhil Thesis (1962): Knowing and Understanding
Relations between meaning and truth, meaning and necessary truth, meaning and synthetic necessary truth
Author: Aaron SlomanThis thesis was scanned in and made generally available by Oxford University Research Archive in the form of PDF versions of the chapters, in 2007. The text is only in image form and is viewable and printable, but not searchable.Date Installed: 2 May 2007The chapters have been copied here for ease of access, along with more detailed information about the contents.
The PDF files can also be obtained via this 'permanent ID' http://ora.ouls.ox.ac.uk:8081/10030/928
(which is often extremely slow to respond.)Abstract:
The avowed aim of the thesis is to show that there are some synthetic necessary truths, or that synthetic apriori knowledge is possible. This is really a pretext for an investigation into the general connection between meaning and truth, or between understanding and knowing, which, as pointed out in the preface, is really the first stage in a more general enquiry concerning meaning. (Not all kinds of meaning are concerned with truth.) After the preliminaries (chapter one), in which the problem is stated and some methodological remarks made, the investigation proceeds in two stages. First there is a detailed inquiry into the manner in which the meanings or functions of words occurring in a statement help to determine the conditions in which that statement would be true (or false). This prepares the way for the second stage, which is an inquiry concerning the connection between meaning and necessary truth (between understanding and knowing apriori). The first stage occupies Part Two of the thesis, the second stage Part Three. In all this, only a restricted class of statements is discussed, namely those which contain nothing but logical words and descriptive words, such as "Not all round tables are scarlet" and "Every three-sided figure is three-angled". (The reasons for not discussing proper names and other singular definite referring expressions are given in Appendix I.)Some of the ideas developed here were expanded in
- Functions and Rogators (1965)
- Explaining Logical Necessity (1968)
- Interactions between Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence: The role of intuition and non-logical reasoning in intelligence, (1971)
- Various online presentations here.
Maintained by
Aaron Sloman.
Email
A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk
