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symbolic manipulation and the relatively simple, uniform, statically and locally
connected, highly parallel hardware of the human brain (Fodor & Pylyshyn
1988; Hutchins 1986; Rumelhart et al. 1986). Anthropologists such as Goody
(1986), Ong (1982), Harris (1980, 1987), and Latour (1986) have challenged
views of cognition that make universal principles out of psychological and
social phenomena found only in literate cultures.
This section has three purposes. First I argue that symbolic representation
in artificial intelligence is, historically, modeled on written texts, as opposed
to (say) photographs or spoken utterances. Then I describe how writing is a
bad metaphor for symbolic representation. These arguments implicate preva-
lent technical methods. Finally I describe how writing is a good metaphor for
symbolic representation. These arguments suggest new technical directions.
Representation as writing
Roy Harris (1987), among others, has argued that ideas about representation
in philosophy and linguistics have been biased by writing. He observes that
these fields have emphasized those aspects of human utterances that appear in
a conventional written representation. One might read in a textbook a sentence
such as, “Suppose that John says to Mary, 'Please close the window'.” and this
sentence will be taken to specify some hypothetical event. We do not normally
wonder, and only rarely are we told, about several aspects of John's action:
- his tone of voice
- his articulation of the various phonemes
- the shape of his intonation
- the timing of the various elements within the utterance
- the timing of his utterance relative to other actions and events
- whether he and Mary have a history of interactions over this window
- his position relative to Mary and the window
- is e
- is s
-
his facial expression
-
the direction of his gaze
-
whether and when he has caught Mary's gaze
(For the horrors of trying to make written notations of these things, see Atkin-
son and Heritage (1984) or Levinson (1983) for an introduction to Jefferson's
notation system used in conversation analysis.)
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