Xref: utzoo comp.ai:2834 talk.philosophy.misc:1697 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!gatech!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw From: throopw@xyzzy.UUCP (Wayne A. Throop) Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Message-ID: <2221@xyzzy.UUCP> Date: 8 Dec 88 21:30:16 GMT References: <1976@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <2717@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <1985@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Organization: Data General, RTP NC. Lines: 31 > gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) > [...] most AIers believe the assertion that logic encapulates > the rules of thought, and that all sentences can be given a semantics > in formal logic (note how some famous mathematical logicians disagree > and stick to formal languages as being very different things). I dunno. I thought "most AIers" agreed with the formal logicians. It is true that "Knowledge Engineers" and "Expert System" designers are trying to model knowledge as imense sets of formal propositions. But it isn't clear to me that these constitute research so much as technologists spinning off results from former generations of AI research that didn't pan out *as* *AI* (as a whole) (but which might pan out as technology). > Anyone who talks of computers "understanding" does so: > a) to patronise users whom they don't know how to instruct properly; > b) because they are AI types. I dunno. The forms "the program knows", or "the program will try to " seem apt to me. No worse than "the moth knows its mate is upwind" or "the moth will try to reach its mate". I don't think these forms are necessarily silly anthropomorphisms. Hence, I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with the AIer's use of "understanding", "know", "try" and so on as technical terms for what their programs are doing (or states that their programs are in). -- "Technical term" is a technical term for a common word or phrase whose meaning is, in some contexts, distorted beyond mortal comprehension. --- Hal Peterson cray!hrp -- Wayne Throop !mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw