=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1964/keynote1
|storemode=property
|title=None
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1964/keynote1.pdf
|volume=Vol-1964
}}
==None==
<pdf width="1500px">https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1964/keynote1.pdf</pdf>
<pre>
                       The 28th Modern Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science Conference




                                                      April 28-29, 2017
                                  Indiana University/Purdue University – Fort Wayne (IPFW)
                                                       Fort Wayne, IN
!
                                                  KEYNOTE SPEAKERS




                          Dr. Selmer Bringsjord                                                    Dr. John E. Hummel
            Chair of Cognitive Science Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute        Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-
                    Director of the Rensselaer AI and Reasoning (RAIR) Lab                                        Champaign
                                                                                               Director of the Relational Reasoning Laboratory
            “Inaugurating the Formal Science of Darwin’s Mistake”                         “What Happened to the Human Brain?”
In their bold "Darwin's Mistake," Penn, Holyoak, & Povinelli (PHP; 2008)                   Humans are unique among the great apes
argue that Darwin profoundly erred in holding that there is no discontinuity              in our capacity to reason explicitly about
between the cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals (e.g. dogs, the                      relations—an ability that underlies our
cognitive powers of which he repeatedly exalted, and also e.g.                            capacity for mathematics, science,
                                                 1
chimpanzees) versus those of Homo sapiens. Predictably, many refuse to                    engineering and everything else that
concede that PHP are right. This debate, which continues, is to this point in             distinguishes us as a species. Reasoning
time a decidedly and thoroughly informal affair --- one based in part on                  about relations requires us to represent
evidence, yes; and indeed evidence that comes at least in part from                       relations as entities in their own right, to bind
science, but from empirical science (comparative psychology, mostly). I                   arguments to those relations, to map
begin to recast the debate in the language of the formal sciences, which are              systems of structures based on shared
based directly on formal logic and mathematics and are theorem-                           relations and to use the resulting mappings
driven. The ultimate upshot expected from this recasting is the result that               to constrain inference and learning. During
Darwin's continuity position, which is the very foundation of his Descent of              human evolution something happened to our
Man, is provably wrong. My recasting, among other things, supplants                       brains that makes it possible for us to do
PHP's reference to "physical symbol systems" with formalisms used in                      these things. I will discuss simulations of how
order to be precise about what computation is, and supplants helpful talk of              the human brain accomplishes these tasks,
various cognitive capacities (e.g., “relational reasoning”) with precise forms            and how the resulting algorithms account for
of reasoning over rigorous defined formulas and equations.                                aspects of human thinking, especially those
                                                                                          that make us unique among the great apes.
1
 I have long maintained that Darwin’s /Descent of Man/ is painfully illogical. See e.g.
“How Logical is Darwin’s /Descent of Man”
(2009): http://kryten.mm.rpi.edu/PRES/DESCENT111909/SB_Darwin_Descent.pdf. A
nd I have pointed out that Pinker’s reply to Wallace’s Paradox, on formal grounds,
doesn’t work: see (Bringsjord 2001).
• Bringsjord, S. (2001) “Are We Evolved Computers? A Critical Review of S Pinker’s
    /How the Mind Works/“ /Philosophical Psychology/ 2: 227—243. A preprint is
    available at http://kryten.mm.rpi.edu/selmer.wallaceparadox.pdf.
• Darwin, C. (1997/1871) /Descent of Man/ Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
• Penn, D., Holyoak, K. & Povinelli, D. (2008) "Darwin's Mistake: Explaining the
    Discontinuity Between Human and Nonhuman Minds" /Behavioral & Brain
    Sciences/ *31*: 109--178.




                                  For more information: http://ipfw.edu/maics
                                          Contact: MAICS@ipfw.edu

</pre>