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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.