Cognitive Science Program

Date: December 10, 2001

From: Dennis Proffitt, Director Cognitive Science Program

Re: Judy -or- What Is It Like To Be A Puppet? Written and Performed by Tom Sgouros

We invited Tom Sgouros to the University as a way of providing an event that would be enjoyed equally by faculty and undergraduate students. We were looking for something that would combine entertainment with cognitive science content. Colloquia can be terrific for graduate students and faculty, but undergraduates rarely attend.

Tom’s show was a wonderful success. Students and faculty were curious about the show and the auditorium was full. The show was intellectually engaging and very funny. Basic questions about consciousness, purpose, memory, and intelligence were broached through a “Wizard of Oz” approach to artificial intelligence. The puppet, Judy, is a robot that plays chess, talks, and quizzes her maker about what she is missing by not being human. Her maker, Tom Sgouros, attempts to answer her questions in a way that touches on many of the big conceptual issues in Cognitive Science.

Tom Sgouros’s play was an ideal way to bring together the University’s Cognitive Science community. I wish that I could find other such shows. It was wonderful to see that difficult questions concerning personal identity and existence can be informed by gentle humor.