Aaron Sloman is a philosopher and researcher on

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

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

University of Birmingham , mottoeng = Through efforts to heights , established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...

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

University of Sussex , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...

. 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 Kwekwe ( ), known until 1983 as Que Que, is a city in the Midlands province of central Zimbabwe. The city has a population of 119,863 within the city limits, as of the 2022 census, making it the 7th-largest city in Zimbabwe and the second-most p ...

), in what was then

Southern Rhodesia Southern Rhodesia was a landlocked 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 kn ...

(now

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...

). His parents were

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), 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. Lithuania ...

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

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 ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the 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) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

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 the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...

(from South African College School) took him to the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

(first

Balliol College Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the f ...

, and then

St Antony's College St Antony's College is one of the constituent colleges 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 international relations, economic ...

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

mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of for ...

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

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

about the nature of mathematical knowledge as non-

empirical Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...

and non-analytic ('Knowing and Understanding', 1962, now online a
AARON SLOMAN DPHIL 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 Hull ...

(1962–64), after which he moved to

Sussex University , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...

where he worked on

philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addre ...

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...

meta-ethics In metaphilosophy and ethics, meta-ethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics (questions of how one ought ...

, and various topics in

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...

. 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 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 phi ...

representations and criticising the logicist approach to AI as too narrow. It was presented at

IJCAI The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) is the leading conference in the field of Artificial Intelligence. The conference series has been organized by the nonprofit IJCAI Organization since 1969, making it the oldest p ...

in 1971, then reprinted in ''

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

''. Subsequently, he was invited by

Bernard Meltzer Bernard C. Meltzer (May 2, 1916 – March 25, 1998) was a United States radio host for several decades. His advice call-in show, "What's Your Problem?," aired from 1967 until the mid-1990s on stations WPHT, WCAU-AM and WKDN (AM), WPEN-AM in P ...

to spend a year (1972–1973) in

Edinburgh University The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1582 ...

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 Poplog is an open source, reflective, incrementally compiled software development environment for the programming languages POP-11, Common Lisp, Prolog, and Standard ML, originally created in the UK for teaching and research in Artificial Intelli ...

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 un ...

emotion Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...

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, incrementally compiled programming language with many of the features of an interpreted language. It is the core language of the Poplog programming environment developed originally by the University of Sussex, and recentl ...

and

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 phil ...

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 cl ...

, and to a lesser extent by

John Austin John Austin may refer to: Arts and entertainment * John P. Austin (1906–1997), American set decorator * Johnny Austin (1910–1983), American musician * John Austin (author) (fl. 1940s), British novelist Military * John Austin (soldier) (180 ...

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." He was a representative of the generation of British ord ...

R. M. Hare Richard Mervyn Hare (21 March 1919 – 29 January 2002), usually cited as R. M. Hare, was a British moral philosopher who held the post of White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1966 until 1983. He subseque ...

(who, as his 'personal tutor' at

discussed meta-ethics with him),

Imre Lakatos Imre Lakatos (, ; hu, Lakatos Imre ; 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 pr ...

and

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...

. 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 The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. It aims to understand the nature and methods of mathematics, and find out the place of mathematics in people's ...

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 and computer scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, an ...

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 political scientist, with a Ph.D. in political science, whose work also influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary ...

. 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 scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...

Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour or SSAISB or AISB is a nonprofit, scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behaviou ...

and

European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence The European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI) (formerly European Co-ordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI)) is the representative body for the European artificial intelligence community. EurAI was established in 19 ...

. In 2018, he became a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute.

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". https://www.apaonline.org/page/2020Prizes-S

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