Academics

Rapaport has done research and written extensively on Intentionality

Intentionality

The term intentionality was introduced by Jeremy Bentham as a principle of utility in his doctrine of consciousness for the purpose of distinguishing acts that are intentional and acts that are not...

 and Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

. He has research interests in Computer Science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

, Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 (AI), Computational Linguistics

Computational linguistics

Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective....

, Cognitive Science

Cognitive science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

, Logic

Logic

In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

 and Mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, and published many scientific articles on them.

While a philosophy graduate student at Indiana University

Indiana University

Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...

, he concocted the sentence: "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo". Throughout his career he developed this theme, and discussed it extensively.

Rapaport is also interested in Science Educational Theory and has received the New York Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching

Rapaport has clearly explained the field of intentionality, and his papers on the subject have influenced leading scientists and writers such as Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett

Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...

, Hector Neri Castaneda and John Searle

John Searle

John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...

 (with whom he disagrees).

Other Activities

In June 1988, Rapaport compiled a list of restaurants in the Buffalo area to give attendees of an ACL

Association for Computational Linguistics

The Association for Computational Linguistics is the international scientific and professional society for people working on problems involving natural language and computation. An annual meeting is held each summer in locations where significant computational linguistics research is carried out...

 meeting at SUNY Buffalo. Now, the list is interactive and updated frequently with user reviews of restaurants.

Rapaport and his wife Mary are the principal donors to the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center

Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center

The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center is a museum in Jamestown, New York, dedicated to the lives and careers of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. The museum officially opened in 1996 "to preserve and celebrate the legacy of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz and enrich the world through the healing powers of love...

 in Jamestown, NY. The Desilu Playhouse, located in the Rapaport Center, contains memorabilia and other vintage I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy is an American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The black-and-white series originally ran from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, on the Columbia Broadcasting System...

 items. He and his wife have also purchased and renovated Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball

Lucille Désirée Ball was an American comedian, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy...

's childhood home in Celoron, New York

Celoron, New York

Celoron is a village in Chautauqua County, New York, United States. It sits on the west boundary of the City of Jamestown, New York and is surrounded by the Town of Ellicott. The population was 1,295 at the 2000 census.- History :...

. They have a son Michael.

Books and Articles

• Intentionality and the Structure of Existence, Unpublished Ph.D. Indiana University, 1976. Available from [ ] AAT 7701930
• Thought Language and Ontology Edited by William J. Rapaport et al. Includes various essays by Dr. Rapaport and his colleagues.
• Cognition and Fiction, with Stuart C. Shapiro (PostScript format
• To Be and Not To Be
• Representing Fiction in SNePS
• In Defense of Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition
• What Did You Mean by That? Misunderstanding, Negotiation, and Syntactic Semantics
• Yes, She Was! Reply to Ford's "Helen Keller Was Never in a Chinese Room"
• Predication, fiction, and artificial intelligence
• On cogito propositions
• Because mere calculation isn't thinking

External links

• Dr Rapaport's CSE Department Profile - including image.
• Rapaport's donation to the Jamestown shelter - Picture of wife.
• Bill Rapaport's Buffalo Restaurant Guide