Maps | General information (large file!) | Details and features | Specifications | Issue areas | Press release
Methodology | Background paper | The cartographic metaphor | Criteria | How the maps work (large file!)
For Instructors and Students | Importance of Turing debate | For instructors | For students | Protagonist index | FAQS
Commentary and Reviews | Commentary and reviews | Errata and corrections
Action Items | Buy the set of maps | How you can participate in this debate
Examples | View the maps. | Map 1 | Map 2 | Map 3 | Map 4 | Map 5 | Map 6 | Map 7 | (large files!)
MacroVU home page | Send us a message | Project Director's Home Page

Good overview texts are hard to find. Moreover, those that do exist are always from a specific, single-disciplinary, and ultimately narrow point of view. This is unavoidable with summary of a debate as complex as this one. With the visual representation of information, these maps move beyond a narrow point of view to a visual, bird's-eye view that incorporates the entire debate.

Save Time

One former Stanford University philosophy graduate student says, "Having access to these maps would have saved me about 500 hours of study time during my first year of graduate school! ... I read all of the several hundred papers I was supposed to read. I understood every word in them. But I didn't have any idea how all the ideas fit together. These maps make the connections."

Help Navigation

Maps like these are invaluable when you're dealing with the amorphous parts of a debate-the spots where it's easy to lose your footing as you navigate through the history of the argument to try to make sense of what you're reading now.

See Active Areas of Dispute

The maps help pinpoint live research issues and open questions. Seeing the arguments side by side on the maps reveals quickly where the disputes are most active and also where further research seems unnecessary. Avoid costly work on 'dead-end' arguments and zero in on where your own work is likely to be most productive.

Provide Context

The maps work on two levels. On a basic level, they give concise summaries of difficult theories. More importantly, they set up the structure of the whole argument so you can see the context right in front of you. Grasping the context in which each argument sits can be difficult with true intellectual disputes, as opposed to - for example - learning in the natural sciences. In part this is because everyone involved in the debate is attacking the foundational structures of the debate since it's still an open question. Also, all the players have different ways of organizing and responding to the same piece of information, even when they're not attacking it.

Illustrate Socratic Dialogue at Its Best

The maps graphically depict the dialectical nature of philosophical and scientific argumentation by situating arguments and counterarguments side by side in linear threads. Readers come to understand an issue by working through the controversies which surround it, much as Socrates' students came to understand philosophical concepts by engaging in disputes with their teacher.

Situate Debate Philosophically and Historically

The maps situate the contemporary debate about machine intelligence in its broader philosophical tradition. It is interesting to see how far back in history the issues in this very modern debate can be traced. For example, the debate about the possibility of representing human knowledge with computer symbols goes back to Locke, Hume, and the British empiricists. Arguments against the use of explicit computer tractable rules are traced back to Wittgenstein. Arguments that explicit data can't structure a field of experience are traced to James, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Dewey.

Introduce Philosophical Camps

The maps contain descriptions of eleven major schools or points of view which different protagonists bring to the debates. Too often these are lost in the flurry of words in articles and chapters. Succinct summaries of these points of view are presented with sets of postulates for each camp. Those protagonists who can be clearly identified with these points of view are also identified, permitting students to more easily understand why particular arguments are made about specific claims.

Introduce Contemporary Philosophers and Researchers in the Debate
Some of the most important philsophers, scholars and researchers in artificial intelligence have participated in these debates. For some it has occupied siginificant parts of their professional careers.The maps present their approaches to these questions and and show photographs of 60 of the most significant participants.

Situate Debate Sociologically

In the sociology of knowledge, great modern debates no longer take place in a single field, or in a single country. The 380 participants identified as presenting original arguments in these maps work in countries from Australia and New Zealand, through North America to Europe. Their disciplines range from physics and mathematics to philosophy, artifical intelligence, psychology, linguistics and cognitive science.