M.S./ PH.D PROGRAM IN CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES
A collaborative Program of the Bhaktivedanta Institute and
Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani
CONS
ZG551: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS
Professors:
Course Descriptions
The aim of this course is to acquaint the student with the broad conceptual and practical aspects of the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Starting with the broad inter-disciplinary theoretical foundations of cognitive science (of which AI is a sub field) the course will then switch over to discuss ongoing work in various areas of research in AI such as knowledge representation, automated reasoning, pattern recognition and natural language processing. The concluding portion of the course will discuss foundational issues with regard to possibilities and limits of computation and the need for new paradigms for implementing machine intelligence.
To encourage students to contemplate the foundational issues at the core of artificial intelligence research
Textbooks
Evaluation Components
1. Comprehensive Examination : 40%
2. Three tests during the semester : 60%
Lecture
Modules
Part 1: Broad Introduction to Cognitive Science - Methodological issues, Perspectives from Neuroscience, psychology and philosophy (12 lectures)
1. What is Cognitive Science? (Johnson-Laird, Chapter 1,2)
2. Consciousness in Cognitive Science (Johnson-Laird, Chap. 19,20)
3. Historical Issues (Watson, Chap. 1
4. Methodological Issues (Baars, Chap. 1)
5. Limitations of Conscious Processing (Baars, Chap. 3)
6. The Adaptation Cycle (Baars, Chap. 5)
7. Hierarchical Organization of the Nervous System (James, Chap. 3)
8. Consciousness and the Brain (Baars, Chap. 3)
9. Neural Networks (Johnson-Laird, Chap. 10)
10. The “Fringe” of Consciousness (James, Chap. 9)
11. Functional Analysis of the Fringe (Mangan, Chap 5)
Part 2: Artificial Intelligence in
Practice (18 Lectures)
1. Introduction (Overview, Turing’s test, internal representation)
2. Search strategies and production systems
3. Predicate Calculus in AI: Logic and Deduction
4. Knowledge representation: Types of Reasoning, Puzzles
5. Abduction, Uncertainty and Expert Systems
6. Formalisms for Natural Language Processing
7. Learning: Grammatical Inference
8. Plan Generation, Reactive Plans, Agent Control
9. Neural Networks
1. Brain Smith’s Symbol System Hypothesis; syntax versus semantics
2. Theoretical Issues in Computation -- Turing’s Halting Problem, Church’s Hypothesis; hardware/software tradeoffs, Bremmerman Limits
3. Knowledge-Intensive and Intelligence-intensive systems-- Is there any Difference?
4. Minsky’s Society of Mind
5. Searle’s Chinese Room Argument; Various Responses
6. Feynmann’s Quantum Computers, quantum nonlocality and machine intelligence; symbol generation hypothesis.
Bibliography:
Churchland, P.M. 1992. Matter and Consciousness (revised edition) MIT Press: Cambridge
Dreyfus, H.L.; Dreyfus, S.E.
1985. Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise MacMillan/Free
Press: New York.
Eysenck, M.W. 1995. Cognitive Psychology: A Student’s Handbook (third edition) Psychology Press: East Sussex, U.K.
Feigenbaum, E.A.; Feldman J.A. (eds.) 1963. Computers and Thought. McGraw-Hill: San Francisco.
Genesreth, M.R.; Nilsson, N.J. 1987. Logical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence. Morgan Kaufmann: Lost Altos, California
Kirsh, D. (ed.) 1992. Foundations of Artificial Intelligence. MIT/Elsevier: Cambrige
Kirsh, D. 1990. “When is information explicitedly represented?” In Hanson, P. (ed) Information, Language and Cognition Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science vol. 1 (Univ. of British Columbia Press: Vancouver, BC, 1990): pp. 340-365.
Johnson-Laird, P.N. 1988. The Computer and the Mind. Harvard U.P.: Cambridge
Mangan, B.B. 1991 Meaning and the Structure of Consciousness (dissertation)
Marcel, A.J.; Bisiach, E. 1988. Consciousness in Contemporary Science Oxford Science Publ.: Oxford.
McCarthy, J.; Hayes, P.J. 1969. “Some philosophical problems from the standpoint of AI.” In Meltzer, B.; Michie, D. (eds.) Machine Intelligence. 4:463-502. (American Elsevier)
McClelland, J.L. Rumelhart, D.E. 1986. Parallel Distributed Processing. Vol 1-2, MIT Press: Cambridge
Minsky, M. 1986. Society of Mind. Simon and Schuster: New York.
Minsky, M. 1968. Semantic Information Processing. MIT Press: Cambridge
Searle, J.R. 1980. “Mind, brains and programs.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 3:417-424.
Turing, A. 1950. “Computing machinery and intelligence.” Mind. 59:433-460.
Watson, J.B. 1925. Behaviorism. Norton Press: New York.
Winograd, T.; Flores, F. 1986 Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation Ablex: Norwood, New Jersey.