Made-Up Minds: A Constructivist Approach to Artificial Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence) [Hardcover]

Gary L. Drescher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 1991 | Series: Artificial Intelligence Series

Made-Up Minds addresses fundamental questions of learning and concept invention by means of an innovative computer program that is based on the cognitive-developmental theory of psychologist Jean Piaget. Drescher uses Piaget's theory as a source of inspiration for the design of an artificial cognitive system called the schema mechanism, and then uses the system to elaborate and test Piaget's theory. The approach is original enough that readers need not have extensive knowledge of artificial intelligence, and a chapter summarizing Piaget assists readers who lack a background in developmental psychology. The schema mechanism learns from its experiences, expressing discoveries in its existing representational vocabulary, and extending that vocabulary with new concepts. A novel empirical learning technique, marginal attribution, can find results of an action that are obscure because each occurs rarely in general, although reliably under certain conditions. Drescher shows that several early milestones in the Piagetian infant's invention of the concept of persistent object can be replicated by the schema mechanism.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this remarkable book, Gary Drescher shows in sharp detail how certain ideas about the early stages of human sensory-motor learning can be developed into a powerful and mathematically economical system that actually functions in computer simulation. While many of these issues were raised and developed in qualitative form by Jean Piaget, the specific mechanisms proposed by Drescher are distinctly new, and I predict that this work will soon be regarded as a landmark in the foundations of theories of learning" Marvin Minsky , MIT

About the Author

Kazys Varnelis is Director of the Network Architecture Lab, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, and Member, Founding Faculty, at the School of Architecture, University of Limerick.

Gary L. Drescher is an independent scholar and was recently Visiting Fellow at the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from MIT in 1989 and is the author of Made-Up Minds: A Constructivist Approach to Artificial Intelligence (MIT Press, 1991).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 236 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (July 15, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262041200
• ISBN-13: 978-0262041201
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #551,848 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A significant advance in Artificial Intelligence, May 13, 2001

By 

Henry (Newton, Morocco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Made-Up Minds: A Constructivist Approach to Artificial Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence) (Hardcover)

This book describes a theory of how a computer program might be implemented to learn and use new concepts that have not been programmed into it. It uses the theories and observations of Jean Piaget, theories of learning in infants and children, as a basis on which to formulate a new vocabulary which allows us to talk in concrete terms about formerly vague and confusing concepts which are central to the understanding and engineering of intelligence.

The central proposition of the theory is the "schema mechanism", which describes an elegant and technically and philosophically satisfying mechanism for how a learning system can incorporate new and previously incomprehensible fragments of knowledge, to build new and robust descriptions of objects and the effects of actions upon them. These new "schemas" can be incorporated into yet more complex descriptions of the environment, providing a robust and self-consistent system that can bootstrap itself to higher and higher levels of competence and intelligence, without need for any external intervention from the programmer except in the form of "teaching" the system as you would a real human infant.

I believe this book represents the largest advance in artificial intelligence theory since Alan Turing described the first universal computer, and is comparable in importance to the inventions of Algebra and Calculus as notational systems and technologies which allowed progress in the fields of science and engineering.