Kenneth M. Sayre
| Kenneth M. Sayre | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 13, 1928 Scottsbluff, Nebraska |
| Nationality | United States of America |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Website | Philosophic Institute |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | unaligned |
| Institutions | University of Notre Dame |
|
Main interests
|
Artificial Intelligence Cybernetics Information Theory Philosophy of Mind Environmental Philosophy Plato |
Kenneth M. Sayre is an American philosopher who spent most of his career at the University of Notre Dame (ND). His early career was devoted mainly to philosophic applications of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and information theory. Later on his main interests shifted to Plato, philosophy of mind, and environmental philosophy. His retirement in 2014 was marked by publication of a history of ND’s Philosophy Department, Adventures in Philosophy at Notre Dame.
Sayre was born on August 13, 1928, in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. After graduating from high school in 1946, he spent two years in the US Navy as an electronics technician. He received an AB in 1952 from Grinnell College, Iowa, with a joint major in philosophy and mathematics. Harvard University granted him an MA in 1954 and a PhD in 1958, both in philosophy. From 1953 to 1956 he served as Assistant Dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. While completing his thesis, he spent two years as a systems analyst in MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. He taught at ND from 1958 to 2014, with interim appointments at Princeton University (1966–67), Bowling Green State University (1981), Oxford University (1985), and Cambridge University (1996).
Under the influence of Marvin Minsky and Oliver Selfridge at Lincoln Laboratory, Sayre became the first trained philosopher on record to become actively involved in the new field of artificial intelligence (AI). In Recognition: A Study in the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, his first book on the topic, he set forward the working maxim that our “understanding of a type of human behavior and our ability to simulate it go hand in hand.” A corollary is that a promising way to study natural intelligence is to attempt to reproduce it artificially.
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