Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!ukma!uflorida!novavax!maddoxt From: maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Message-ID: <834@novavax.UUCP> Date: 3 Dec 88 20:58:38 GMT References: <484@soleil.UUCP> <1654@hp-sdd.HP.COM> <1908@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <281@esosun.UUCP> <177@iisat.UUCP> <800@quintus.UUCP> Reply-To: maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox) Organization: Nova University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Lines: 83 In article <800@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >There's an interesting question here about human psychology: which >emotions are innate, and which emotions are culture-dependent. Lakoff's >book includes a list of apparently culture-independent emotional states >(unfortunately I left W,F&DT at home, so I can't quote it), and I was >surprised at how short it was. From Lakoff, _Women, Fire and Dangerous Things_, p. 38: In a major crosscultural study of facial gestures expressing emotion, Ekman and his associates discovered that there were basic emotions that seem to correlate universally with facial gestures: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and interest. Of all the subtle emotions that people feel and have words and concepts for around the world, only these have consistent correlates in facial expressions across cultures. end-quote I agree that Lakoff's book is extremely interesting with regard to key problems in AI, particularly in its replacement of what he calls the "classical theory that categories are defined in terms of common properties of their members" with a new view ("experimental realism" or "experientialism"). In his "Preface," Lakoff says, The issue is this: Do meaningful thought and reason concern merely the manipulation of abstract symbols and their correspondence to an ojbective reality, independent of any embodiment (except, perhaps, for limitations imposed by the organism)? Or do meaningful thought and reason essentially concern the nature of the organism doing the thinking--including the nature of its body, its interactions in its environment, its social character, and so on? end-quote Like Lakoff, I'm convinced that the second set of answers points in the correct direction. As a science fiction writer who has tried to present an artificial intelligence realistically, I saw from the start that the *embodied* categories Lakoff speaks of had to be presupposed in order to present a being I could consider intelligent. (By the way, I hope readers see there is a difference between Lakoff's view, which poses interesting questions for AI research, and the views of eminent anti-AI theorists such as Dreyfus and Weizenbaum [and vocal net anti-AI types such as Cockton]. Lakoff says (p. 338): I should point out that the studies discussed in this volume do not in any way contradict studies in artificial intelligence . . . in general. . . . We shall discuss only computational approaches to the study of mind. Even there, our results by no means contradict all such approaches. For example, they do not contradict what have come to be called "connectionist" theories, in which the role of the body in cognition fits naturally. end-quote) Lakoff's work is especially interesting when set next to a recent book by Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores, _Understanding Computers and Cognition_. They likewise reject the tradition which sees reason as "the systematic manipulation of representations." However, they use a philosophical tradition very different from that employed in usual AI studies: to wit, the Continental tradition of hermeneutics and phenomenology that includes Heidegger and Gadamer. They also include "speech act" theory, from Austin and Searle and, in biology, Maturana's work. What these books (along with some essays of Daniel Dennett's) represent to me is an attempt at coming to terms conceptually with the high-level problems posed by AI. The doctrinaire anti-AI group continue to snipe from the sidelines, with arguments that say (1) it can't be done, and (2) even if it could, it shouldn't; the workers who are trying to create artificial intelligence (i.e., the makers of the hardware and software) quite often are submersed entirely in their particular problems and speak almost exclusively in the technicalities appropriate to those problems. Thus, the intelligent and approachable work being done by Lakoff et alia serves us all: this is one of the characteristic problems of our time and one of our civilization's greatest wagers, and those of us who are trying to understand it (rather than deride or implement it) need a coherent universe of discourse in which understanding might take place.