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L&M Symposium: Why an ourang-outan? Thinking and Computing with Edgar Allan Poe |
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4/30/2009 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
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Speaker: Professor Sydney Lévy, Department of French and Italian, UCSB
Topic: “Why an ourang-outan? Thinking and Computing with Edgar Allan Poe"
 Why did Poe choose an ourang-outan as the assassin in “The Murders of the Rue Morgue”? Poe’s “Analysis of Analysis” suggests a context for the answer to this question. Poe was preoccupied with the “Analysis of Analysis” during the composition of a number of important pieces, e.g., The Dupin Stories and “Maelzel’s Chess-Player,” which features a chess-playing automaton. Drawing on Searle’s “Minds, Brains and Programs” and Turing’s “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” we will focus on Poe’s attempts to distinguish clearly between the thinking of humans and machines.
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is available at http://www.eapoe.org/WorkS/tales/morguef.htm
“Maelzel’s Chess Player” is available at http://www.eapoe.org/WorkS/essays/maelzelb.htm
Turing, Allan. “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Mind, New Series, Vol. 59, No. 236 (Oct., 1950), pp. 433-460: http://cogprints.org/499/0/turing.html
Searle, John. “Minds, Brains and Programs”, The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, 1980, pp 417-457: http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.searle2.html |
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