Understanding Computers and Cognition A New Foundation for Design
by Winograd, Terry; Flores, FernandoEdition: 1st
Format: Paperback
Pub. Date: 1987-01-01
Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
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Summary
Understanding Computers and Cognition presents an important and controversial new approach to understanding what computers do and how their functioning is related to human language, thought, and action. While it is a book about computers, Understanding Computers and Cognition goes beyond the specific issues of what computers can or can't do. It is a broad-ranging discussion exploring the background of understanding in which the discourse about computers and technology takes place. Understanding Computers and Cognition is written for a wide audience, not just those professionals involved in computer design or artificial intelligence. It represents an important contribution to the ongoing discussion about what it means to be a machine, and what it means to be human. Book jacket.
Author Biography
Terry Winograd is in the department of Computer Science at Stanford University Fernando Flores is now President of Logonet, Inc., an educational corporation, and Chairman of Action Technologies, a software development company
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. xi |
| Acknowledgments | p. xiii |
| Theoretical Background | |
| Introduction | p. 3 |
| The question of design | p. 4 |
| The role of tradition | p. 7 |
| Our path | p. 8 |
| The rationalistic tradition | p. 14 |
| The rationalistic orientation | p. 14 |
| Language, truth, and the world | p. 17 |
| Decision making and problem solving | p. 20 |
| Cognitive science | p. 23 |
| Understanding and Being | p. 27 |
| Hermeneutics | p. 27 |
| Understanding and ontology | p. 30 |
| An illustration of thrownness | p. 33 |
| Breaking down and readiness-to-hand | p. 36 |
| Cognition as a biological phenomenon | p. 38 |
| The closure of the nervous system | p. 41 |
| Autopoiesis, evolution, and learning | p. 44 |
| The cognitive domain | p. 46 |
| Consensual domains | p. 48 |
| The observer and description | p. 50 |
| Domains of explanation | p. 52 |
| Language, listening, and commitment | p. 54 |
| Listening in a background | p. 54 |
| Meaning, commitment, and speech acts | p. 58 |
| Objectivity and tradition | p. 60 |
| Recurrence and formalization | p. 64 |
| Breakdown, language, and existence | p. 68 |
| Towards a new orientation | p. 70 |
| Cognition and being in the world | p. 70 |
| Knowledge and representation | p. 72 |
| Pre-understanding and background | p. 74 |
| Language and action | p. 76 |
| Breakdown and the ontology of design | p. 77 |
| Computation, Thought, and Language | |
| Computers and representation | p. 83 |
| Programming as representation | p. 84 |
| Levels of representation | p. 86 |
| Can computers do more than you tell them to do? | p. 90 |
| Computation and intelligence | p. 93 |
| Why do we ask? | p. 93 |
| Intelligence as rational problem solving | p. 95 |
| The phenomenon of blindness | p. 97 |
| What about learning and evolution? | p. 100 |
| Can pigs have wings? | p. 104 |
| Understanding language | p. 107 |
| Artificial intelligence and language understanding | p. 107 |
| The problem of background | p. 111 |
| Understanding as pattern recognition | p. 115 |
| What does it mean to understand? | p. 119 |
| Current directions in artificial intelligence | p. 125 |
| The forking of the paths | p. 126 |
| Expert systems | p. 131 |
| The fifth generation computer system | p. 133 |
| Design | |
| Management and conversation | p. 143 |
| Management and decision making | p. 144 |
| Decision making and resolution | p. 147 |
| Organizations as networks of commitments | p. 150 |
| Decision support systems | p. 152 |
| Tools for conversation | p. 157 |
| Using computers: A direction for design | p. 163 |
| A background for computer design | p. 164 |
| A design example | p. 167 |
| Systematic domains | p. 174 |
| Technology and transformation | p. 177 |
| Bibliography | p. 181 |
| Name Index | p. 191 |
| Subject Index | p. 194 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
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