The Science of the Artificial ch. 1

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The Science of the Artificial ch. 1

• Charles Reid
• 1/5/2005

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What This Chapter Is About

• Tells us what the book should be about
• A means for relating natural law and human
  purpose
• Symbol systems (the human version)
• Provides some context
• What is an artifact?
• Why do we create them?
• How can they be characterized?
• How might we study them?

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Artifacts

• An artifact is something thats man-made
• We live in a man-made world
• Artifacts are not apart from nature
• They embody natural law and human purpose
• Distinction between artificial and synthetic
• Engineering is concerned with synthesis
• Indications of artifacts (pg. 5)
• Artifacts are synthesized
• Artifacts may imitate appearance but may lack the
  reality
• Artifacts characterized by functions, goals,
  adaptation
• Artifacts are discussed imperatively as well as
  descriptively

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Exploring Artifacts

• Fulfillment of purpose or adaptation to a goal
• Look at the purpose or goal, the character of the
  artifact, and the environment the artifact
  operates in
• Artifact as interface
• Inner environment
• Organization of natural phenomena capable of
  attaining goals
• Outer environment
• Determines conditions for goal attainment
• Functional explanation
• Based on outer environment and observable
  behaviors of the artifact

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Simulation

• We use simulations to gain understanding of the
  imitated system
• Can a simulation tell us something we didnt
  already know?
• Based on known assumptions
• Computer only does what we tell it to do

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How to Study Computers

• Computers as artifacts
• Use a functional explanation based on outer
  environment and observable behavior
• Computers as abstract objects
• Abstractions for components only need to capture
  the nature of the components and not all of the
  implementation details
• Computers as empirical objects
• Most of them have the same basic components and
  there are enough of them in existence today that
  they could be studied empirically
• Computers as thought
• Computers are roughly organized in fashion
  similar to humans processor, memory, I/O
• Could we learn something about human behavior
  from computers?

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Symbol Systems

• Symbol Systems can create, copy, destroy, modify,
  and collect symbols.
• They are goal seeking information processing
  systems
• Computers are symbols systems as is the human
  mind
• Simon hypothesizes that human symbol systems have
  sufficient and necessary means for general
  intelligent work.