The frame problem is widely reputed among philosophers to be one of the deepest and most difficult problems of cognitive science. This paper discusses three recent attempts to display this problem: Dennett's problem of ignoring obviously irrelevant knowledge, Haugeland's problem of efficiently keeping track of salient side effects, and Fodor's problem of avoiding the use of kooky concepts. In a negative vein, it is argued that these problems bear nothing but a superficial similarity to the frame problem of AI, so (...) that they do not provide reasons to disparage standard attempts to solve it. More positively, it is argued that these problems are easily solved by slight variations on familiar AI themes. Finally, some discussion is devoted to more difficult problems confronting AI. (shrink)

This paper investigates connectionism's potential to solve the frame problem. The frame problem arises in the context of modelling the human ability to see the relevant consequences of events in a situation. It has been claimed to be unsolvable for classical cognitive science, but easily manageable for connectionism. We will focus on a representational approach to the frame problem which advocates the use of intrinsic representations. We argue that although connectionism's distributed representations may look promising from this perspective, doubts can (...) be raised about the potential of distributed representations to allow large amounts of complexly structured information to be adequately encoded and processed. It is questionable whether connectionist models that are claimed to effectively represent structured information can be scaled up to a realistic extent. We conclude that the frame problem provides a difficulty to connectionism that is no less serious than the obstacle it constitutes for classical cognitive science. (shrink)

El problema de marco, interpretado como un problema de determinación de la relevancia, ha sido motivo en las décadas de los 80 ́-90 ́ de grandes debates y controversias. La cuestión clave de este trabajo consistirá en dilucidar la relación que entre la dificultad definicional y resolutiva del problema de marco se establece: es necesario aclarar la interpretación particular que del problema de marco se tenga en mente antes de estimar cualquier solución que intente resolverlo. Una manera de abordar esta (...) cuestión es describir algunas de las varias interpretaciones que del problema se han propuesto y analizar luego las dificultades subyacentes. Al igual que Lormand sugerimos que cada una de estas interpretaciones se refiere a un problema distinto y que es necesario atender a las diferencias que entre éstas se establecen antes de estimar cualquier propuesta de resolución. (shrink)

El problema de marco cuestiona cómo los procesos cognitivos determinan qué información, de entre toda la disponible, es relevante dada una tarea determinada. Aunque postulamos una definición posible, especificar de qué trata este problema es una tarea complicada. Una manera de obtener claridad sobre esta cuestión es explorar distintas interpretaciones del problema de marco, interpretación lógica y filosófica, para dilucidar luego la dificultad en común. Como resultado de nuestro análisis concluimos que, sea la interpretación del problema de marco que se (...) tenga en mente, la dificultad subyacente es la misma: examinar vasta cantidad de información. La dificultad de la vastedad de información, a modo de puente entre ambas interpretaciones, permitiría no solo comprender más claramente de qué trata el problema de marco sino también resolverlo. The frame problem questions how cognitive processes determine what information is relevant, among all available, given a particular task. Although we proposed a possible definition, it is a difficult task to specify what this problem is about. One way to get insight into this matter is to explore different interpretations of the frame problem, a logical interpretation and a philosophical interpretation, to then elucidate the difficulty in common. The conclusion drawn from our analysis is that, irrespective of the interpretation of the frame problem you may have in mind, the underlying difficulty is the same: to examine a vastness of information. The difficulty posed by the vastness of information, taken as a bridge between both interpretations, would not only allow a clearer insight into the frame problem but also to solve it. (shrink)