Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!gatech!bloom-beacon!husc6!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!apollo!laporta From: laporta@apollo.uucp (John X. Laporta) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: The symbol grounding problem: "Fuzzy" categories? Message-ID: <36137eea.c449@apollo.uucp> Date: Wed, 15-Jul-87 11:45:00 EDT Article-I.D.: apollo.36137eea.c449 Posted: Wed Jul 15 11:45:00 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 17-Jul-87 06:03:13 EDT References: <764@mind.UUCP> <768@mind.UUCP> <770@mind.UUCP> Reply-To: laporta@apollo.UUCP (John X. Laporta) Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, MA Lines: 77 In article <3183@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar) writes: >There are probably any number of bindings for BAR for which "What is a BAR?" runs >into ... difficulty and for which "How can I use a FOO as a BAR?" is the more useful >question. > >In an earlier posting, Harnad gave the example of how we classify works of >art ... Such classifications may also be susceptible to this intermediate level of >interpretation. Thus, you may or may not choose to view a particular tapestry >as an allegory ... [or] as a pastoral. Such decisions influence the way you see it and >"parse" it as part of your artistic appreciation, regardless of whether or not your >particular view coincides with that of the creator! > >I suspect there is a considerable amount of such relativity in the way we >detect categories. That relativity is guided not by what the categories >are or what their features are but by how we intend to put those >categories to use. (In other words, the issue isn't "What features >are present?" but "What features do we want to be present?") Umberto Eco writes in "Euge`ne Sue and _Les Myste`res de Paris_" about this problem. Sue was a sort of gentleman pornographer in post-Napoleonic France. One of his series, about a character like the Shadow who worked revenge on decadent aristocratic evildoers, with a lot of bodice-ripping along the way, caught on with the newly literate general working public. They consumed his book in vast quantities and took it as a call to arms so seriously that Paris was barricaded by people inspired by it. A sex-and-violence pornographic thriller became a call to political reform and the return of morality. The relevant semiotic category is "closure." Rougly speaking, a closed work is one that uses a tight code to tell a tale to an audience sharply defined by their sharing of that code. Superman Comics is an example of a closed work. (There is an entertaining study somewhere of explanations offered by New Guinean tribesmen of a Superman Comic.) Closed works don't ring, so to speak, with the resonance of the entire semiotic continuum, while open works do. Closed works are thus easily subject to gross misinterpretation by readers who don't share the code in which those works are written. Open works, on the other hand, enforce their own interpretation. While there is drift over time in these interpretations, it is far smaller than the vastly divergent interpretations offered of closed works by varying interpreters in the same era. Open works connect to the entire semiotic continuum - indeed, the (broadly) rhetorical methods (tropoi) they use bespeak a purpose of educating the reader about the subjects (topoi) they treat. _Remembrance of Things Past_ is an example of an open work. While a great deal of unfamiliar material and controversial analysis is offered to any reader of those 3000 pages, the mere act of reading them enforces what is, for the purpose of semiotics, a uniform interpretation (read disambiguated topical hypothesis). It is very easy to 'use' a closed work by correlating the elements of an external symbol system with the opaque code the work presents. Of course, if the 'grounding' of one's symbol system bears no relation to that which the work employs, one is just as much 'used' by the work as a consequence. (Imagine, for example, using a rectangular bar of plastic explosive as a straightedge.) It is far more difficult to impose an arbitrary interpretation on an open work, since it contains material that tends to contradict incorrect or incomplete hypotheses about its topos. For example, while we are 'told' that Superman comes from the planet Krypton, etc., we learn by watching Marcel what his origins are, and while Superman comes as a given from space, Marcel's character defines itself in our consciousness by our 'observation' of his life. Furthermore, while Superman is always Superman, Marcel has an origin and a destiny. Marcel changes with time, he breaks with Albertine; Superman always almost, but actually never marries Lois Lane. (Spiderman's recent marriage to Mary Jane is an interesting twist. Certainly by comparison with Superman's, Spiderman's story is an open work.) Historians who based hypotheses about 20th century American atittudes on an analysis of Superman comics would have to confirm them by considerable reference to external sources, while students of early 20th century France would likely use _Remembrance of Things Past_ to confirm their ideas. IN SUMMARY: The relativity of categorization is an inverse index of the 'openness' of the thing categorized. Dr. Morbius in "Forbidden Planet" was able to divine the purpose of Krell instrumentation because the science on which it was founded, while more advanced than his own, shared the same basis in physical reality and hypothesis testing. The space-given monolith in "2001" is indecipherable (a real 'black box', but with undefined input and output), and thus can be 'used' for any purpose at all.