title: Semantics in an intelligent control system
creator: Sloman, A.
subject: Cognitive Psychology
subject: Computational Neuroscience
subject: Artificial Intelligence
subject: Robotics
subject: Developmental Psychology
subject: Pragmatics
subject: Semantics
subject: Syntax
subject: Epistemology
subject: Philosophy of Language
subject: Logic
subject: Metaphysics
subject: Philosophy of Mind
subject: Philosophy of Science
description: 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''.
date: 1994
type: Journal (Paginated)
type: PeerReviewed
format: application/postscript
identifier: http://cogprints.org/721/2/Aaron.Sloman_semantics.ps
identifier:   Sloman, A.  (1994) Semantics in an intelligent control system.  [Journal (Paginated)]     
relation: http://cogprints.org/721/