Language and Software, or: Fritzl’s Quest

A linguist surveying the challenging peaks and valleys of the computational cognitive science landscape was awed by the forceful arguments and brilliant solutions offered by various teams of guides to the problem of traversing this impressive terrain. The AI team turned up with its helicopters, the software engineers offered their snowcats, the philosophers brought along a variety of skis designed for a dizzy slalom ‘alpine’ or a circuitous debate ‘de fond’. And the local travel agent (Frame Problems, Inc.) had a special offer of three styles of planning: the checklist plus rules of thumb (risking accidents), the exhaustive step-by-step chart (with the risk of never finishing) and the list of things that don’t have to be taken along (with the risk of never starting).