Brainchildren by Daniel C. Dennett

Author:Daniel C. Dennett [Dennett, Daniel C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-05T05:00:00+00:00

The Logical Geography

13

of Computational

Approaches: A View from

the East Pole1

In 1983–84, Douglas Hofstadter was a visiting professor in the AI Lab at MIT. He gave an amazing seminar, which I regularly attended (along with many students and almost no faculty from any department, aside from Marvin Minsky). He discussed his own work but also the work of others largely ignored or unknown in those precincts: Jerry Feldman, Dana Ballard, Paul Smolensky, Don Norman, Dave Rumelhart, Jay McClelland, Geoff Hinton, Pentti Kanerva, and others. I had discussed connectionism with Feldman at Roches-ter a few years earlier, so it wasn’t all new to me, but Doug’s seminar expanded my horizons, and showed me how the pieces might fit together. Clearly something promising was brewing. A few months later, I was invited to give a talk at a conference at MIT on ‘‘computational approaches to cognitive science’’ and at first I declined, suggesting that Doug Hofstadter was clearly the person the organizers should get to give this lecture. They refused to consider my suggestion—that’s how insular and dogmatic MIT was at the time: Hofstadter was no cognitive scientist (or philosopher) by their lights. So I relented, but decided to poke some fun at their brittle ideological barriers, exploiting Jerry Fodor’s amusing explanation of why MIT was ‘‘the East Pole,’’ and dubbing the local orthodoxy ‘‘High Church Computationalism.’’ I savor the memory of Ned Block asking me, after my talk, where on earth I’d learned this amazing stuff—it was all news to him. ‘‘Mostly in Doug Hofstadter’s seminar, right here in your university,’’ I replied. Harry and Betty Stanton attended the conference, and asked me about these new developments. Soon they were conferring with Rumelhart and McClelland about putting together Originally appeared in Brand, M., and Harnish, M., eds., The Representation of Knowledge and Belief (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1986), p p . 59–79.

1. This paper was prepared for the Conference on Philosophy and Cognitive Science at MIT, May 17–20, 1984, sponsored by the Sloan Foundation. Written under a deadline for the purpose of providing a glimpse of the state of the art in mid-1984, it will no doubt have a short shelf life. So read it now, or if now is later than 1986, read it as a quaint reflection on how some people thought back in 1984.

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