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.