Very true; and I like Hofstadter. I’m too lazy to read books – not for a long time – but I peruse the Internet like crazy and learn that way.
I looked at his list of major students:
Don Byrd—Music Notation by Computer
David Chalmers—Toward a Theory of Consciousness
Gray A. Clossman—A Model of Categorization and Learning in a Connectionist Broadcast System
Hamid Ekbia—AI Dreams and Discourse: Science and Engineering in Tension
Harry Foundalis—Phaeaco: A Cognitive Architecture Inspired by Bongard’s Problems
Bob French—Tabletop: An Emergent, Stochastic Model of Analogy-Making
Francisco Lara-Dammer—Modeling Human Discoverativity in Geometry
Abhijit Mahabal—SeqSee: A Concept-centered Architecture for Sequence Perception
Jim Marshall—Metacat: A Self-Watching Cognitive Architecture for Analogy-making and High level Perception
Gary McGraw—Letter Spirit (Part One): Emergent High-level Perception of Letters Using Fluid Concepts
Marsha Meredith—Seek-Whence: A Model of Pattern Perception
Eric Nichols—Musicat: A Computer Model of Musical Listening and Analogy-Making
Melanie Mitchell—Copycat: A Computer Model of High-Level Perception and Conceptual Slippage in Analogy-making
John Rehling—Letter Spirit (Part Two): Modeling Creativity in a Visual Domain
Wang Pei (Pei Wang) — Non-Axiomatic Reasoning System: Exploring the Essence of Intelligence
and there’s David Chalmers, who while I disagree with him on _some_ nit-picky points, overall I find it difficult to argue with. [my misgivings were minimal enough that I don’t have to think of them unless probed; much like my misgivings about Sagan; they’re “close enough” for now].
Unfortunately, I don’t recognize the other names, but I love the topics they’re working on. It’s definitely within my family of cognitive beliefs, and I now have a direction of further research to explore and decide what I accept, what I reject, and ultimately making finer and finer cuts in the distinctiveness of “what I believe to be True”, which is one of my missions.
I’m particularly interested in “Jim Marshall—Metacat: A Self-Watching Cognitive Architecture for Analogy-making and High level Perception” – as that’s what I’ve been working on for some time now and I will compare his beliefs with my own. Thank you Don Parker – I look for inspiration everywhere I go because I never no from whence it will come.