https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/SymbolicVs.Connecti...

Logical vs. Analogical
or
Symbolic vs. Connectionist
or
Neat vs. Scruffy

Marvin Minsky

INTRODUCTION BY PATRICK WINSTON

Engineering and scientific education conditions us to expect everything, including intelligence, to have a simple, compact explanation. Accordingly, when people new to AI ask "What's AI all about," they seem to expect an answer that defines AI in terms of a few basic mathematical laws.

Today, some researchers who seek a simple, compact explanation hope that systems modeled on neural nets or some other connectionist idea will quickly overtake more traditional systems based on symbol manipulation. Others believe that symbol manipulation, with a history that goes back millennia, remains the only viable approach.

Minsky subscribes to neither of these extremist views. Instead, he argues that Artificial Intelligence must employ many approaches. Artificial Intelligence is not like circuit theory and electromagnetism. AI has nothing so wonderfully unifying like Kirchhoff's laws are to circuit theory or Maxwell's equations are to electromagnetism. Instead of looking for a "Right Way," Minsky believes that the time has come to build systems out of diverse components, some connectionist and some symbolic, each with its own diverse justification.

Minsky, whose seminal contributions in Artificial Intelligence are established worldwide, is one of the 1990 recipients of the prestigious Japan Prize---a prize recognizing original and outstanding achievements in science and technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neats_and_scruffies

Neat and scruffy are two contrasting approaches to artificial intelligence (AI) research. The distinction was made in the 70s and was a subject of discussion until the middle 80s. In the 1990s and 21st century AI research adopted "neat" approaches almost exclusively and these have proven to be the most successful.[1][2]

"Neats" use algorithms based on formal paradigms such as logic, mathematical optimization or neural networks. Neat researchers and analysts have expressed the hope that a single formal paradigm can be extended and improved to achieve general intelligence and superintelligence.

"Scruffies" use any number of different algorithms and methods to achieve intelligent behavior. Scruffy programs may require large amounts of hand coding or knowledge engineering. Scruffies have argued that the general intelligence can only be implemented by solving a large number of essentially unrelated problems, and that there is no magic bullet that will allow programs to develop general intelligence autonomously.

The neat approach is similar to physics, in that it uses simple mathematical models as its foundation. The scruffy approach is more like biology, where much of the work involves studying and categorizing diverse phenomena.[a]

https://www.amazon.com/Made-Up-Minds-Constructivist-Artifici...

Made-Up Minds: A Constructivist Approach to Artificial Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Series) Paperback – January 1, 2003

Made-Up Minds addresses fundamental questions of learning and concept invention by means of an innovative computer program that is based on the cognitive-developmental theory of psychologist Jean Piaget. Drescher uses Piaget's theory as a source of inspiration for the design of an artificial cognitive system called the schema mechanism, and then uses the system to elaborate and test Piaget's theory. The approach is original enough that readers need not have extensive knowledge of artificial intelligence, and a chapter summarizing Piaget assists readers who lack a background in developmental psychology. The schema mechanism learns from its experiences, expressing discoveries in its existing representational vocabulary, and extending that vocabulary with new concepts. A novel empirical learning technique, marginal attribution, can find results of an action that are obscure because each occurs rarely in general, although reliably under certain conditions. Drescher shows that several early milestones in the Piagetian infant's invention of the concept of persistent object can be replicated by the schema mechanism.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/130700.1063243

Book review: Made-Up Minds: A Constructivist Approach to Artificial Intelligence By Gary Drescher (MIT Press, 1991)