Aaron Sloman (born 1936) is a philosopher and researcher on

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

and

cognitive science Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...

. He held the Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science at the School of Computer Science at the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

, and before that a chair with the same title at the

University of Sussex The University of Sussex is a public university, public research university, research university located in Falmer, East Sussex, England. It lies mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. Its large campus site is surrounded by the ...

. Since retiring he is Honorary Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science at Birmingham. He has published widely on philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence; he also collaborated widely, e.g. with biologist Jackie Chappell on the evolution of intelligence.

Early life and education

Sloman was born in 1936, in the town of Que Que (now called Kwe Kwe), in what was then

Southern Rhodesia Southern Rhodesia was a self-governing British Crown colony in Southern Africa, established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company (BSAC) territories lying south of the Zambezi River. The region was informally known as South ...

(now

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

). His parents were

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

Jew Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...

s who emigrated to Southern Rhodesia around the turn of the century. Sloman describes himself as an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

. He went to school in

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

between 1948 and 1953, then earned a degree in Mathematics and Physics at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) (, ) is a public university, public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest univer ...

in 1956, after which a

Rhodes Scholarship The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom. The scholarship is open to people from all backgrounds around the world. Established in 1902, it is ...

(from South African College School) took him to the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

(first

Balliol College Balliol College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1263 by nobleman John I de Balliol, it has a claim to be the oldest college in Oxford and the English-speaking world. With a governing body of a master and ar ...

, and then

St Antony's College St Antony's College is a colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1950 as the result of the gift of French merchant Sir Antonin Besse of Aden, St Antony's specialises in intern ...

). In Oxford, he became interested in philosophy after a brief period studying

mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of Logic#Formal logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory (also known as computability theory). Research in mathematical logic com ...

supervised by Hao Wang, eventually writing a DPhil in philosophy, defending the ideas of

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...

about the nature of mathematical knowledge as non-

empirical Empirical evidence is evidence obtained through sense experience or experimental procedure. It is of central importance to the sciences and plays a role in various other fields, like epistemology and law. There is no general agreement on how t ...

and non-analytic ('Knowing and Understanding', 1962).

Career

His first job was teaching philosophy at the

University of Hull The University of Hull is a public research university in Kingston upon Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1927 as University College Hull. The main university campus is located in Hull and is home to the Hu ...

(1962–64), after which he moved to Sussex University where he worked on

philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the Body (biology), body and the Reality, external world. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a ...

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, ...

meta-ethics In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, ground, and meaning of moral judgment, ethical belief, or values. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normativ ...

, and various topics in

epistemology Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...

. In 1969, he learned about

(AI) from Max Clowes, then a leading UK AI researcher in vision. As a result of this, he published a paper distinguishing analogical representations' from Fregean representations and criticising the logicist approach to AI as too narrow. It was presented at IJCAI in 1971, then reprinted in ''

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

''. Subsequently, he was invited by Bernard Meltzer to spend a year (1972–1973) in

Edinburgh University The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the town council under the authority of a royal charter from King James VI in 1582 and offi ...

where he met and worked with many leading AI researchers. When he went back to Sussex he helped to found what eventually grew into COGS, the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences. He managed the Poplog development team between 1980 and 1991. While at Sussex University he published "The Computer Revolution in Philosophy: Philosophy science and models of mind" (which emphasised the importance of architectures) in 1978, and other papers on various aspects of philosophy and AI, including work on the analysis of 'ought' and 'better', on

vision Vision, Visions, or The Vision may refer to: Perception Optical perception * Visual perception, the sense of sight * Visual system, the physical mechanism of eyesight * Computer vision, a field dealing with how computers can be made to gain und ...

emotion Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiology, neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavior, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or suffering, displeasure. There is ...

s in robots, on forms of representation and other topics. Much of his energy was devoted to developing new kinds of teaching materials based on

POP-11 POP-11 is a Reflective programming, reflective, Dynamic compilation, incrementally compiled programming language with many of the features of an interpreted language. It is the core language of the Poplog Computer programming, programming system ...

and Poplog for students learning AI and cognitive science. In 1991, after 27 years at Sussex, he was offered a research chair in the School of Computer Science at the

, where he started a cognition and affect project (later on the Free Open Source Poplog Portal) and is still on it. He retired in 2001, but continues working full-time.

Influences

His philosophical ideas were deeply influenced by the writings of

Gottlob Frege Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic philos ...

and

Karl Popper Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian–British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the ...

, and to a lesser extent by John Austin,

Gilbert Ryle Gilbert Ryle (19 August 1900 – 6 October 1976) was a British philosopher, principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase " ghost in the machine". Some of Ryle's ideas in philosophy of mind have been ca ...

, R. M. Hare (who, as his 'personal tutor' at

discussed meta-ethics with him),

Imre Lakatos Imre Lakatos (, ; ; 9 November 1922 – 2 February 1974) was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its "methodology of proofs and refutations" in its pre-axiomatic stage ...

and

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Witt ...

. What he could learn from philosophers left large gaps, which he decided around 1970 research in

might fill. E.g.

could be transformed by testing ideas in working fragments of minds, and

philosophy of mathematics Philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of mathematics and its relationship to other areas of philosophy, particularly epistemology and metaphysics. Central questions posed include whether or not mathem ...

could be illuminated by trying to understand how a working robot could develop into a mathematician. Much of his thinking about AI was influenced by

Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive scientist, cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research in artificial intelligence (AI). He co-founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...

and despite his critique of logicism he also learnt much from John McCarthy. His work on emotions can be seen as an elaboration of a paper on "Motivational and emotional controls of cognition", written in the 1960s by

Herbert A. Simon Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American scholar whose work influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary research interest was decision-making within organi ...

. He disagrees with all of these on some topics, while agreeing on others.

Recognition

He is a Fellow of

Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international Learned society, scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public under ...

, Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour and European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence. In 2018, he became a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. Sussex University awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Science in July 2006. The Sloman Lounge in the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham is named in his honour. In 2020 the American Philosophical Association (APA) awarded him the K.Jon Barwise Prize "for significant and sustained contributions to areas relevant to philosophy and computing".

Selected publications

* A.Sloman
''Knowing and Understanding: Relations between meaning and truth, meaning and necessary truth, meaning and synthetic necessary truth''
Oxford University DPhil Thesis, 1962 (digitised 2007, Oxford Research Archive), also available with detailed table of contents in htm
here
* A. Sloman

''American Phil. Quarterly'', 6, pp. 43–52, 1969. * A.Sloman

''Proc 2nd IJCAI'', 1971, London. (Reprinted in 'Artificial Intelligence', vol 2, 3–4, pp 209–225, 1971, and in J.M. Nicholas, ed. ''Images, Perception, and knowledge'', Dordrecht-Holland: Reidel. 1977.) * A.Sloman
''The Computer Revolution in Philosophy: Philosophy, science and models of mind''
Harvester press and Humanities press, 1978. (Out of print but now online) * A. Sloman and M. Croucher

''Proc 7th IJCAI'', 1981, pp. 197–202, Vancouver. * A. Sloman, The structure of the space of possible minds, in ''The Mind and the Machine: philosophical aspects of Artificial Intelligence'', Ed. S. Torrance, Ellis Horwood, 1984, Chichester

* A. Sloman

in ''Proc 9th IJCAI'', Los Angeles, pp. 995–1001, 1985
Online presentations
* A. Sloman

Eds. J.B.H. du Boulay, D.Hogg and L.Steels, ''Advances in Artificial Intelligence – II'', Dordrecht, North Holland, pp. 369–381, 1987 * A. Sloman
Did Searle attack strong strong or weak strong AI
Eds. A.G. Cohn and J.R. Thomas, ''Artificial Intelligence and Its Applications'', John Wiley and Sons, 1986 * A. Sloman

in ''Journal of Experimental and Theoretical AI'', 1, 4, pp. 289–337, 1989 * A. Sloman and R.L. Chrisley

in ''Journal of Consciousness Studies'', 10, 4–5, pp. 113–172, 2003. * A. Sloman and J. Chappell
The Altricial-Precocial Spectrum for Robots
in Proceedings IJCAI'05, Edinburgh, pp. 1187–1192, 2005. * J.Chappell and A.Sloman

in ''Int. Journal of Unconventional Computing'', 3,3, pp. 211–239, 2007.

References

External links

Sloman's web pageSloman's 1962 DPhil Thesis, Knowing and Understanding, Relations between meaning and truth, meaning and necessary truth, meaning and synthetic necessary truth
Transcribed 2016, available as HTML, PDF, and plain text (without diagrams). {{DEFAULTSORT:Sloman, Aaron 1936 births South African Jews South African people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent South African Rhodes Scholars Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Alumni of St Antony's College, Oxford Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Academics of the University of Hull Academics of the University of Sussex Academics of the University of Birmingham Artificial intelligence researchers Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Fellows of the SSAISB Living people University of Cape Town alumni White Rhodesian people Rhodesian Jews People from Kwekwe Rhodesian emigrants to the United Kingdom