Stanford’s Symbolic Systems program bridges the gap between humanity and technology

Symbolic Systems exposes students to interdisciplinary ways of thinking, creativity and knowledge. The examination of the human-computer relationship, the mind and language is a life-changing path of study for many.

By Clifton B. Parker

Josh Haner is a New York Times photographer who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for his riveting feature photography of the Boston Marathon healing process. He is also a 2002 alumnus of the Symbolic Systems program.

"Symbolic Systems gave me the confidence to look at problems with an eye toward solving them – and to never be satisfied if I thought something could be done better," said Haner.

When the New York Times faced a technical challenge in getting photos from big events onto the newspaper's website as quickly as possible, Haner applied his "sym sys" thinking to solve the problem. He built what's called a "remote streaming backpack" that allowed photos to be published to the Times' homepage within a minute of being taken.

That is the kind of thought process encouraged in Stanford's Symbolic Systems academic program, a one-of-a-kind higher education jewel that focuses on how computers, the mind and language integrate.

Interdisciplinary to the hilt, Symbolic Systems exposes students to different ways of thinking. Especially at an undergraduate level, there's enormous benefit to seeing how varying disciplines, thinkers and doers approach confounding problems.

What is Symbolic Systems?

The Symbolic Systems program is the study of "the science of the mind." Blending computer science, psychology, linguistics and philosophy, it examines the relationship between humans and computers; for example, how to endow computers with human-like behavior and understanding, and how to design technology that works well with users.

A student can end up with both a broad interdisciplinary education, in linguistics, psychology and computer science, and a deep concentration on more philosophical topics.

— Kenneth Taylor, Stanford philosophy professor and director of the Symbolic Systems Program

'Best of both worlds'

Kenneth Taylor, a Stanford philosophy professor and director of the Symbolic Systems program, describes it as a major that "self-consciously attempts to obliterate the so-called techie-fuzzy divide" between technology and the humanities.

Suppose a Symbolic Systems student wants to study philosophical approaches to the mind and language, Taylor suggests.

"Well, if he or she does things right, then that student can end up with both a broad interdisciplinary education, in linguistics, psychology and computer science, and a deep concentration on more philosophical topics," he said.

"We not only want to be able to think both computationally and philosophically, but also understand empirical and experimental methods," said Taylor.

"Symbolic systems" is defined as the meaningful symbols that represent the world about us. This is done in human language as well as in computer language. To get an idea of what this actually means as academic fare, consider the wide-ranging topics of recent forums sponsored by the program: "Computing with Natural Language," "Thinking and Learning with Hands," "Acting and Thinking Together" and "The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from WWII to the Psychedelic Sixties."

While the diversity is wide-ranging, focus and structure exist as well. Stanford's most popular study paths in Symbolic Systems are:

Cognitive science

studying human intelligence, natural languages and the brain as computational processes

Artificial intelligence

endowing computers with human-like behavior and understanding

Human-computer interaction

designing computer software and interfaces that work well with human users

Other concentrations include applied logic, computer music, decision-making and rationality, learning, natural language, neurosciences, and philosophical foundations.

Launched in 1986, Symbolic Systems offers both undergraduate (BS) and graduate (MS) degrees and includes affiliated faculty from a number of departments, including computer science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, communication, statistics and education.

Through this cross-fertilization, students explore new frontiers of knowledge while gaining the kind of programming and critical thinking skills prized in places like Silicon Valley and other innovative communities.

This synergy is what Cody Karutz expects in his future studies. The manager of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford, Karutz will enter the Symbolic Systems program as a graduate student in fall 2014.

He says his inspiration comes from a time when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited the lab and said that some of the smartest people at Facebook come from Symbolic Systems.

"In that spirit, I'm choosing to study Symbolic Systems because the unique interdisciplinary curriculum allows me to build the philosophical, logical and computational foundations to approach future technologies," he said.

Student spotlight: Makiko Fujimoto

“Symbolic Systems helped me grow as a thinker by encouraging me to think outside of each discipline's constraints and tie these seemingly different topics together. It taught me how to approach everything with a more critical and flexible perspective, as there are very few issues that are only one-dimensional.”

Symbolic Systems major Makiko Fujimoto, '14, won the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research.

The Virtual Human Interaction Lab

Jeremy Bailenson is the director of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab where many Symbolic Systems students conduct their research and explorations. He said the lab and program have maintained a close relationship for more than a decade.

"The lab has produced a number of honors and masters theses by symbolic systems students, who tend to have great expertise spanning computer science and psychology. Moreover, the lab has relied on the engineering and programming skills of these undergraduates to produce our virtual reality simulations," Bailenson said.

When Mark Zuckerberg visited the lab in March 2014, a Symbolic Systems student helped give the Facebook founder the tour, Bailenson noted. "He told her that he believed Stanford's Symbolic Systems graduates were among the most talented in the world.”

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."

Student spotlight: Elise Sugarman

Symbolic Systems major Elise Sugarman is exploring language development in children in the Stanford Language and Cognition Lab.

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It matches the interests of a natural population – students who are seeking to learn about the relationships between the mind, computers and language.

— Todd Davies, associate director of the Symbolic Systems Program