Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

in this section. One context for this clash is provided by the research of eminent AI
researcher Terry Winograd. Winograd’s PhD dissertation involved programming a
computer to understand natural language, the SHRDLU system that operated in
a restricted blocks world (Winograd, 1972a, 1972b). SHRDLU would begin with a
representation of different shaped and coloured blocks arranged in a scene. A user
would type in a natural language command to which the program would respond,
either by answering a query about the scene or performing an action that changed
the scene. For instance, if instructed “Pick up a big red block,” SHRDLU would
comprehend this instruction, execute it, and respond with “OK.” If then told “Find a
block that is taller than the one you are holding and put it in the box,” then SHRDLU
had to comprehend the words one and it; it would respond “By it I assume you
mean the block which is taller than the one I am holding.”
Winograd’s (1972a) program was a prototypical classical system (Harnish, 2002).
It parsed input strings into grammatical representations, and then it took advantage
of the constraints of the specialized blocks world to map these grammatical
structures onto a semantic interpretation of the scene. SHRDLU showed “that if the
database was narrow enough the program could be made deep enough to display
human-like interactions” (p. 121).
Winograd’s later research on language continued within the classical tradition.
He wrote what served as a bible to those interested in programming computers
to understand language, Language As a Cognitive Process, Volume 1: Syntax
(Winograd, 1983). This book introduced and reviewed theories of language and
syntax, and described how those theories had been incorporated into working computer
programs. As the title suggests, a second volume on semantics was planned by
Winograd. However, this second volume never appeared.
Instead, Winograd’s next groundbreaking book, Understanding Computers
and Cognition, was one of the pioneering works in embodied cognitive science
and launched a reaction against the classical approach (Winograd & Flores, 1987b).
This book explained why Winograd did not continue with a text on the classical
approach to semantics, because he had arrived at the opinion that classical
accounts of language understanding would never be achieved. “Our position, in
accord with the preceding chapters, is that computers cannot understand language”
(p. 107).
The reason that Winograd and Flores (1987b) adopted this position was their
view that computers are restricted to a rationalist notion of meaning that, in accordance
with methodological solipsism (Fodor, 1980), must interpret terms independently
of external situations or contexts. Winograd and Flores argued instead for an
embodied, radically non-rational account of meaning: “Meaning always derives from
an interpretation that is rooted in a situation” (Winograd & Flores, 1987b, p. 111).
They took their philosophical inspiration from Heidegger instead of from Descartes.
Marks of the Classical? 317