Flexible and collaborative
Todd Davies, the associate director of Symbolic Systems, said the program fulfills an intellectual hunger among certain students.
"It matches the interests of a natural population – students who are seeking to learn about the relationships between the mind, computers and language," said Davies, who has worked in the program for 16 years.
One of those students is Elise Sugarman. A Symbolic Systems major, she did her senior honors thesis under psychology professor Michael Frank in the Stanford Language and Cognition Lab. Her project involved an online experiment for children that examined how people associate longer words with more complex objects – they generally do, and five year-olds tend to more strongly believe that long words go with more complex things than three- and four-year-olds.
Alexandra To, a graduate student in Symbolic Systems, worked with Michael Bernstein, an assistant professor of computer science, on a computer system that manages online experts known as the "Foundry."
"It's trying to take away some of that management overhead for someone who actually wants to run a team," said To.
Bernstein noted, "Getting this right is an exciting interdisciplinary challenge."
Like To and Sugarman, Davies said, Symbolic Systems students typically draw upon a wide variety of disciplines.
"In other universities, students generally have to choose at an earlier point whether, for example, they are primarily interested in understanding human cognition or in creating useful software. Many students have a strong interest in both and have related their joint interests in unexpected, productive ways," Davies said.
Ask linguistics Professor Dan Jurafsky what makes a Symbolic Systems student different, and he offers a few explanations.
"They're not afraid of learning more math or the humanities – at the same time," said Jurafsky, who's taught Symbolic Systems students in linguistics for the past 10 years.
"Intellectually brave" is another way he describes them. "They take a step away from the known into the unknown."
One student, Jurafsky recalled, wrote her thesis on "computer models of poetic beauty."
Some of science's greatest innovations came from "outside" the disciplines, he noted. When a philosopher approaches a complex robotics challenge, the outcome might be different –more successful – than conventionally expected.
This spirit of inquiry is what drives Symbolic Systems, Jurafsky said. "Sometimes it's not about asking the same old questions, but about asking new and different questions."
For example, some of the common paths of inquiry in Symbolic Systems include the following questions:
- What is information?
- What is intelligence?
- How are they related?
- Is the world a creation of mind?
- Does intelligence require consciousness?
- How does language and meaning fit into the picture?
That is just the tip of the intellectual iceberg. Learning to think abstractly while gaining real-world skills like programming cultivates a potentially rewarding career path. Some of the tech titans who studied in Stanford's Symbolic Systems program include Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, Mike Krieger of Instagram, Peter Deng of Facebook and Marissa Mayer of Yahoo!
Symbols and relationships
In order to graduate with a BS in Symbolic Systems, a student must complete core requirements – courses in the philosophy of mind, formal linguistics, cognitive psychology, programming, the mathematics of computation, statistical theory, artificial intelligence and cognitive science – plus a five-course concentration. A master's degree involves an in-depth study on a particular topic.
Above all, the curriculum represents flexibility in thought and openness to the unexpected solution or discovery.
"We attract a lot of students who are comfortable defining their own path," said Davies, the associate director. "They are excited by the possibilities of technology but grounded in their understanding of human needs and limitations."