Abstract
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.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barr, A. and E. Feigenbaum (eds): 1981, The Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, Vol. I, William Kaufmann, Inc., Los Altos, California.
Dennett, D.: 1987, ‘Cognitive Wheels: the Frame Problem of AI’, in Z. Pylyshyn (ed.), The Robot's Dilemma: the Frame Problem in Artificial Intelligence, Ablex, Norwood, New Jersey.
Fodor, J.: 1983, The Modularity of Mind, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Fodor, J.: 1987, ‘Modules, Frames, Fridgeons, Sleeping Dogs, and the Music of the Spheres’, in Z. Pylyshyn (ed.), The Robot's Dilemma: the Frame Problem in Artificial Intelligence, Ablex, Norwood, New Jersey.
Goodman, N.: 1965, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, 2nd ed., Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, Indiana.
Haugeland, J.: 1985, Artificial Intelligence: the Very Idea, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Haugeland, J.: 1987, ‘An Overview of the Frame Problem’, in Z. Pylyshyn (ed.), The Robot's Dilemma: the Frame Problem in Artificial Intelligence, Ablex, Norwood, New Jersey.
Holland, J., K. Holyoak, R. Nisbett and P. Thagard: 1986, Induction, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Janlert, L.: 1987, ‘Modeling Change — The Frame Problem’, in Z. Pylyshyn (ed.), The Robot's Dilemma: the Frame Problem in Artificial Intelligence, Ablex, New Jersey.
McCarthy, J. and P. Hayes: 1969, ‘Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence’, in B. Meltzer and D. Michie (eds.), Machine Intelligence 4, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
Pylyshyn, Z. (ed.): 1987, The Robot's Dilemma: the Frame Problem in Artificial Intelligence, Ablex, Norwood, New Jersey.
Shoham, Y.: 1988, Reasoning about Change, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lormand, E. Framing the frame problem. Synthese 82, 353–374 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413881
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413881