Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!ucbvax!agate!garnet!weemba
From: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Who else isn't a science?
Message-ID: <10510@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 3 Jun 88 06:58:13 GMT
References: <3c671fbe.44e6@apollo.uucp>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central
Lines: 22
In-reply-to: nelson_p@apollo.uucp

In article <3c671fbe.44e6@apollo.uucp>, nelson_p@apollo writes:

>>fail to see how this sort of intellectual background can ever be
>>regarded as adequate for the study of human reasoning.  On what
>>grounds does AI ignore so many intellectual traditions?

>  Because AI would like to make some progress (for a change!).  I
>  originally majored in psychology.  With the exception of some areas
>  in physiological pyschology, the field is not a science.  Its
>  models and definitions are simply not rigorous enough to be useful.

Your description of psychology reminds many people of AI, except
for the fact that AI's models end up being useful for many things
having nothing to do with the motivating application.

Gerald Edelman, for example, has compared AI with Aristotelian
dentistry: lots of theorizing, but no attempt to actually compare
models with the real world.  AI grabs onto the neural net paradigm,
say, and then never bothers to check if what is done with neural
nets has anything to do with actual brains.

ucbvax!garnet!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720