Margaret Boden

For Heinrich Himmler's wife, see Margarete Himmler.

Professor Margaret A. Boden OBE ScD FBA
Born	(1936-11-26) 26 November 1936 London
Nationality	English
Occupation	Professor at the University of Sussex
Known for	AI
Children	2
Academic background
Alma mater	Harvard University University of Cambridge
Academic work
Discipline	Cognitive science
Website	www.ruskin.tv/margaretboden

Margaret Ann Boden, OBE, ScD, FBA (born 26 November 1936) is research professor of cognitive science at the department of informatics at the University of Sussex, where her work embraces the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive and computer science.

Early life and education

Boden was educated at the City of London School for Girls in the late 1940s and 1950s. At Newnham College, Cambridge, she took first class honours in medical sciences, achieving the highest score across all Natural Sciences. In 1957 she studied the history of modern philosophy at the Cambridge Language Research Unit run by Margaret Masterman.

Career

Boden was appointed lecturer in philosophy at the University of Birmingham in 1959. She became a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University from 1962 to 1964, then returned to Birmingham for a year before moving to a lectureship in philosophy and psychology at Sussex University in 1965, where she was later appointed as Reader then Professor. She was awarded a PhD in social psychology (specialism: cognitive studies) by Harvard in 1968.

She credits reading "Plans and the structure of behavior" (Miller) with giving her the realisation that computer programming approaches could be applied to the whole of psychology.

She was the founding Dean of the University of Sussex's School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences (COGS), precursor of the university's current Department of Informatics. Since 1997 she has been research professor of cognitive science at the Department of informatics, where her work encompasses the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive and computer science.

Boden is a member of the editorial board for The Rutherford Journal.

Media

In October 2014 and January 2015, Boden was interviewed by Jim Al-Khalili on the BBC Radio Four programme The Life Scientific.

In February 2017, Boden, along with other researchers, participated in a debate organized by the British Academy on the readiness of humans to develop romantic relationships with robots.

Publications

• Purposive Explanation in Psychology (Harvard University Press, 1972);
• Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man (1977/1987: 2nd edn., MIT Press), ISBN 978-0-262-52123-9
• Piaget (Fontana Modern Masters 1979; 2nd edn. Harper Collins, 1984);
• The Case for a Cognitive Biology. (In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 54: 25–40, with Susan Khin Zaw, 1980);
• Minds and Mechanisms (Cornell University Press, 1981);
• Computer Models of Mind: Computational approaches in theoretical psychology (Cambridge University Press, 1988), ISBN 978-0-521-27033-5
• Artificial Intelligence in Psychology: Interdisciplinary Essays (MIT Press, 1989), ISBN 978-0-262-02285-9
• The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, ed. (Oxford Readings in Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 1989/90), ISBN 978-0-19-875155-7
• The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms (Weidenfeld/Abacus & Basic Books, 1990; 2nd edn. Routldge, 2004), ISBN 978-0-415-31453-4
• Dimensions of Creativity, ed. (MIT Press, 1994);
• The Philosophy of Artificial Life, ed. Oxford University Press, 1996).
• Artificial Intelligence (Handbook of Perception and Cognition, 2nd Ed, Academic Press Inc., 1996), ISBN 978-0-12-161964-0
• Mind As Machine: a History of Cognitive Science, (2 volumes, Oxford University Press, 2006), ISBN 978-0-19-929237-0 / ISBN 978-0-19-924144-6. This generated public disagreement with Noam Chomsky.
• AI: Its Nature and Future (2016), ISBN 978-0198777984

Honours

• Boden was awarded an O.B.E. in 2001 for "services to cognitive science".
• Fellow (and former Vice-President) of the British Academy — and Chairman of their Philosophy Section until July 2002.
• Member of the Academia Europaea.
• Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).
• Fellow of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI).
• Life Fellow of the UK's Society for Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour.
• Member of Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.
• Former Vice-President (and Chairman of Council) of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
• In April 2004 she was awarded an Honorary Degree by the Open University as Doctor of the University.

See also

• Cognitive biology
• Mike Cooley

External links

• Prof. Maggie Boden, University of Sussex, Department of Informatics
• Humbleapproach.templeton.org
• University of Sussex, Department of Informatics
• Critical review of Mind As Machine by Noam Chomsky
• Boden's reply to reviews by Feldman, Thagard, and Chomsky of Mind As Machine
• Downloadable 30 minute interview on BBC Radio Four The Life Scientific.