Aaron Sloman (1936–) is a renowned artificial intelligence and cognitive science philosopher.
He is a global expert in the evolution of biological
information processing, an area of study that seeks to understand how animal
species have acquired cognitive levels that surpass technology.
He's been debating if evolution was the first blind
mathematician and whether weaver birds are actually capable of recursion in
recent years (dividing a problem into parts to conquer it).
His present Meta-Morphogenesis Project is based on an idea
by Alan Turing (1912–1954), who claimed that although computers could do
mathematical brilliance, only brains could perform mathematical intuition.
According to Sloman, not every aspect of the cosmos,
including the human brain, can be represented in a sufficiently massive digital
computer because of this.
This assertion clearly contradicts digital physics, which
claims that the universe may be characterized as a simulation running on a
sufficiently big and fast general-purpose computer that calculates the cosmos's
development.
Sloman proposes that the universe has developed its own
biological building kits for creating and deriving other—different and more
sophisticated—construction kits, similar to how scientists have evolved,
accumulated, and applied increasingly complex mathematical knowledge via
mathematics.
He refers to this concept as the Self-Informing Universe,
and suggests that scientists build a multi-membrane Super-Turing machine that
runs on subneural biological chemistry.
Sloman was born to Jewish Lithuanian immigrants in Southern
Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
At the University of Cape Town, he got a bachelor's degree
in Mathematics and Physics.
He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and earned his PhD in
philosophy from Oxford University, where he defended Immanuel Kant's
mathematical concepts.
He saw that artificial intelligence had promise as the way
forward in philosophical understanding of the mind as a visiting scholar at
Edinburgh University in the early 1970s.
He said that using Kant's recommendations as a starting
point, a workable robotic toy baby could be created, which would eventually
develop in intellect and become a mathematician on par with Archimedes or Zeno.
He was one of the first scholars to refute John McCarthy's
claim that a computer program capable of operating intelligently in the real
world must use structured, logic-based ideas.
Sloman was one of the founding members of the University of
Sussex School of Cognitive and Computer Sciences.
There, he collaborated with Margaret Boden and Max Clowes to
advance artificial intelligence instruction and research.
This effort resulted in the commercialization of the widely
used Poplog AI teaching system.
Sloman's The Computer Revolution in Philosophy (1978) is
famous for being one of the first to recognize that metaphors from the realm of
computers (for example, the brain as a data storage device and thinking as a
collection of tools) will dramatically alter how we think about ourselves.
The epilogue of the book contains observations on the near
impossibility of AI sparking the Singularity and the likelihood of a human
Society for the Liberation of Robots to address possible future brutal
treatment of intelligent machines.
Sloman held the Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive
Science chair in the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham
until his formal retirement in 2002.
He is a member of the Alan Turing Institute and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
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You may also want to read more about Artificial Intelligence here.
See also:
Superintelligence; Turing, Alan.
References & Further Reading:
Sloman, Aaron. 1962. “Knowing and Understanding: Relations Between Meaning and Truth, Meaning and Necessary Truth, Meaning and Synthetic Necessary Truth.” D. Phil., Oxford University.
Sloman, Aaron. 1971. “Interactions between Philosophy and AI: The Role of Intuition and Non-Logical Reasoning in Intelligence.” Artificial Intelligence 2: 209–25.
Sloman, Aaron. 1978. The Computer Revolution in Philosophy: Philosophy, Science, and Models of Mind. Terrace, Hassocks, Sussex, UK: Harvester Press.
Sloman, Aaron. 1990. “Notes on Consciousness.” AISB Quarterly 72: 8–14.
Sloman, Aaron. 2018. “Can Digital Computers Support Ancient Mathematical Consciousness?” Information 9, no. 5: 111.
