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Essay 1
Please read all of John Haugeland's "What is Mind Design?" It is the first chapter of a book he edited entitled Mind Design, second edition. (Click on the link, scroll to the content, and click on the first chapter or scroll to it.) It is available through ereserve. Haugeland writes about good old-fashioned AI (or GOFAI) as well as new-fangled AI (or NFAI). Write an essay that provides a characterization of both of these terms. When discussing NFAI, you do not need to discuss all instances of it. It will be enough to simply discuss connectionism. Be sure to explain the concepts of formal system, automatic formal system, and interpreted (automatic) formal system. What is the relationship between GOFAI and automatic formal systems? (Are they the same? Different? Explain.) Do all the preceding in approximately 1200 words (or four pages). This is an expository essay. I am not looking for evaluation at this point. (There will be plenty of room for that in future assignments.) Provide an explanation of the concepts you have been asked to explain. Get to the point. Do not waist words. Stay focused. The paper should have one inch margins all the way around. A title page is optional. Since I mark blind, please do not place your name anywhere on the paper. Be sure to place your student number somewhere on the front page. Place the initial of your last name next to your student number. I am not looking for you to use outside sources. However, if you do use an outside source, you need to reference it. Any referencing format that makes use of specific page numbers is acceptable. In other words, footnotes, endnotes, or parenthetical citations are all fine; just pick a style, and use it consistently and correctly. Refer to page numbers where appropriate. I wish you good luck and an enjoyable philosophical experience. Due date: September 26, 2016. What is the point of this assignment? Aside from getting you to buckle down early on and take the course seriously, this assignment will prepare you for much of what is to come in the course. In this course, we will be examining both GOFAI and NFAI approaches to modeling cognition or intelligence. Eventually, we will get into much more detail than Haugeland does in his short introduction, but that introduction is a useful preparation for issues that will be raised down the road. Also, the assignment requires that you not only explain individual concepts, but that you explain how they relate to one another. Getting a feel for how to do this integrating or synthetic writing (and thinking) will be important since all the essay writing you do in this course will require, at least as one component of an essay, that you do this kind of work. In short, the assignment prepares you for what is to come both in terms of the content of the course and in terms of the way I will be expecting you to engage that content.
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