Masters Paper

This paper was a huge effort for me in reading and combining the latest ideas from my AI coursework (neural networks (PDP), expert systems, natural language processing) with cognitive psychology, cognitive anthropology, learning theory (behaviorism), decision-making models, generative grammar, Boasian structural linguistics, speech biophysiology (Lieberman), the information processing model (IP) of cognition, knowledge representation, schema theory, and more. The point was to declare the arrival of a new emphasis on ‘learning’ in cognitive science, led by neural networks, and to proclaim the end to the IP analogy in cognitive science and the end of generative grammars in linguistics. Apparently I was ahead of my time on these. The ideas of the paper are dispersed throughout the lectures of my Language Development class. The focus on learning in the formation of culture, and therefore interaction with material environments, I assumed would impress one of my committee members, Marvin Harris. I’m not sure he got the point. In our anthropology department at UF, this Master’s paper was a ‘publishable paper in lieu of a thesis’. It is too bad that I did not pursue publication. I lacked the experience and direction from my committee, I would say now. But also, I was eager to make the pivot to my second major interest in anthropology - ecological and evolutionary anthropology. This paper was lost for many years and only recently rediscovered and reformatted.