Excerpt: In this chapter we show how ‘language as action’ and ‘language as interpretation’ can be reconciled. In doing this we will move back and forth between two fundamental questions: “How does an utterance have meaning?” and “What kinds of actions do we perform in language?” The juxtaposition of these questions leads us to a new grounding for our understanding of language and the nature of human existence as language.

Excerpt: The preceding chapters have examined the current understanding of computers and the predictions for ‘intelligent’ machines and their uses. We have argued that artificial intelligence is founded on assumptions that limit its potential to generate new designs. The basic question we come back to in our concluding chapters is “What can people do with computers?” and to begin with, “What do people do?”

Excerpt: Current thinking about computers and their impact on society has been shaped by a rationalistic tradition that needs to be re-examined and challenged as a source of understanding, As a first step we will characterize the tradition of rationalism and logical empiricism that can be traced back at least to Plato. This tradition has been the mainspring of Western science and technology, and has demonstrated its effectiveness most clearly in the ‘hard sciences’ – those that explain the operation of deterministic mechanisms whose principles can be captured in formal systems. The tradition finds its highest expression in mathematics and logic, and has greatly influenced the development of linguistics and cognitive psychology. We will make no attempt to provide a full historical account of this tradition, or to situate it on some kind of intellectual map Instead, we have chosen to concentrate on understanding its effects on current discourse and practice, especially in relation to the development and impact of computers. The purpose of this chapter is to outline its major points and illustrate their embodiment in current theories of language, mind, and action.

Excerpt: The previous chapters have dealt with fundamental questions of what it means to exist as a human being, capable of thought and language. Our discourse concerning these questions grew out of seeing their direct relevance to our understanding of computers and the possibilities for the design of new computer technology. We do not have the pretension of creating a grand philosophical synthesis in which Maturana, Heidegger, Gadamer, Austin, Searle, and others all find a niche. The importance of their work lies in its potential for unconcealing the rationalistic tradition in which we are already immersed. Their unity lies in the elements of the tradition that they challenge, and thereby reveal. As background to our study of computers and programming in Part II, this section summarizes the concerns raised in previous chapters, pointing out their areas of overlap and the role they play in our detailed examination of computer technology and design.

Excerpt: In this chapter we introduce Heidegger’s analysis of understanding and Being, Heidegger’s writings are both important and difficult, and we will make no attempt to give a thorough or authoritative exposition. Our intention is to bring out those aspects relevant to our examination of language and thought and to our understanding of technology. Before turning to Heidegger, however, it will be useful to look briefly at issues that arise in interpreting texts. In addition to the obvious relevance of this material to our discussion of language, we have found that it is easier to grasp the more radical phenomenological statements about interpretation if we first consider interpretive activity in a more obvious setting. When someone speaks of ‘interpretation,’ the most likely association is with artistic or literary works. The musician, the literary critic, and the ordinary reader of a poem or novel are all in some immediate sense ‘interpreting’ a collection of marks on a page. One of the fundamental insights of phenomenology is that this activity of interpretation is not limited to such situations, but pervades our everyday life. In coming to an understanding of what it means to think, understand, and act, we need to recognize the role of interpretation.

Excerpt: There is an intimate connection between intelligence and language. Many of the representation techniques described in the previous chapters were first developed in trying to process natural language with computers, Our position, in accord with the preceding chapters, is that computers cannot understand language… Some important observations can be made along the route to that conclusion, and in this chapter we review the existing research work in some detail. We are concerned with the technical details here because natural language research has been the context for many of the efforts within artificial intelligence to deal with the theoretical issues we raise. Mechanisms such as ‘frames,’ ‘scripts,’ and ‘resource-limited reasoning’ have been proposed as ways to build machines that in some sense deal with ‘understanding’ and ‘interpretation.’ We need to examine them carefully to evaluate these claims…

Evolutionary epistemology has been often criticized as unduly ‘adaptationistic’. There is some substance to this criticism. One of the main roots of evolutionary epistemology is indeed an adaptationist theory of evolution. In this paper, however, I give some arguments for a non-adaptationist version of evolutionary epistemology by paying attention to organisms as active systems and organismic constraints for evolutionary change. I also compare this view with some implications of constructivism. The result is that cognition, be it in humans or other living beings, is neither a mere adaptation to, nor a construction of an external world, but rather a phenomenon that is to be explained by the organisms’ requirements and their interrela-tion with the surroundings.

Key words: evolutionary epistemology, adaptation, adaptationism, correspondence, coherence, realism, constructivism.