Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!Batali@MIT-OZ From: Batali%MIT-OZ@sri-unix.UUCP Newsgroups: net.ai Subject: Foundations of Perception, AI Message-ID: <2766@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Tue, 28-Jun-83 21:13:00 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.2766 Posted: Tue Jun 28 21:13:00 1983 Date-Received: Sat, 9-Jul-83 15:28:11 EDT Lines: 21 From: John Batali[Reprinted from the Phil-Sci discussion.] [...] We aren't in the same position in AI as early physicists were. Physics started out with a more or less common and very roughly accurate conception of the physical world. People understood that things fell, that bigger things hurt more when they fell on you and so on. Physics was able to proceed to sharpen up the pre-theoretic understanding people had of the world until very recently when its discoveries ceased to be simply sharpenings and began to seem to be contradictions. "Mind studies" (AI, psychology, philosophy, and so on) don't seem to have such a common, roughly correct, theory to start with. We don't even agree on what it is we are supposed to be explaining, how such explanations ought to go, or what constitutes success. [John Batali ]