Xref: utzoo comp.ai:2714 talk.philosophy.misc:1633
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ukma!uflorida!novavax!maddoxt
From: maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Message-ID: <821@novavax.UUCP>
Date: 28 Nov 88 05:22:34 GMT
References: <484@soleil.UUCP> <1654@hp-sdd.HP.COM> <1908@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1791@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <819@novavax.UUCP> <1976@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Reply-To: maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox)
Organization: Nova University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Lines: 134

In article <1976@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes:
>In article <819@novavax.UUCP> maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox) writes:
>>However, if like Cockton you restrict the
>>possibilities of acquisition of intelligence to social situations,
>
>   Intelligence is a social construct.  The meaning of the word is
>   defined through interaction.  Dictionary definitions are
>   irrelevant, and certainly never accurate or convincing.  

	Indeed dictionary definitions are irrelevant to this argument,
and I have no idea why Cockton brought them in.  In fact, *definition*
is not in question; *acquisition* is.

>   I have keep referring to the arguments against (or grounds for failure of)
>   the C18 encyclopadists.  Dictionaries arose in the enlightenment as
>   well.  

	More irrelevancies.  Prescribing meaning is no more an issue
than definition was to begin with. 
 
>   Since AI is just Diderot on disc, arguments against the C18
>   encyclopaedists, apart from being more convincing than the 
>   encyclopaedists' case, are also highly relevant today.  Someone
>   mailed me with the ignorant comment that C18 philosophy was adolescent
>   and whiggishly outdated by modern developments.  Is it hell.  Read
>   before you wallow in ignorance.  Wittgenstein however backs up much
>   of the case against the encyclopaedists.  His arguments on the
>   centrality of practice to knowledge and meaning rule out a
>   logocentric theory of truth.  I regard all symbol systems as
>   effectively logocentric.

	"AI is just Diderot on disk":  a remarkable statement, one
that if true would surprise a number of people; if Diderot could be
around, him most of all.  
	In what sense is your statement true? one might
ask.  Also, are you referring to the Diderot of the Encyclopedia, of
Rameau's Nephew, Jacques the Fatalist?
	Then Wittgenstein gets dragged in, and Derrida is invoked
indirectly through the mention of logocentrism.  This is not an
argument so much as a series of irrelevancies and non sequiturs.

>   Intelligence can only be acquired in social situations, since its
>   presence is only acknowledged in social situations.  The meanings
>   are fluid, and will only be accepted (or contested) by humans in
>   social contexts.  AI folk can do what they want, but no one will
>   ever buy their distortions, nor can they ever have any grounds for
>   convincement in this case.

	Again a series of disconnected and entirely unsupported
remarks.  Given that intelligence is acknowledged in social
situations, how does this affect the case for or against AI?
Presumably any artificial intelligence could be acknowledged in a
social situation as easily as organic intelligence howsoever defined.

>   What I am saying is that you cannot prove anything in this case by
>   writing programs.  Unlike sociology, they are irrelevant.  You can
>   stick any process you like in a computer, but its intelligence is a
>   a matter for human negotiation.  

	This is no more than a restatement of Turing's position,
hardly, therefore, a refutation of AI.

[. . .]
>   AI cannot prove anything here.  It can try to convince (but doesn't
>   because of a plague of mutes), but the judgement is with the wider
>   public, not the self-satisfied insiders.
>
>   Now brave freedom fighter against the tyranny of hobbyhorses, show
>   me my circular reasoning?

	At this point your reasoning is not so much circular as
non-existent.  You presume that the current non-existence of
artificial intelligence proves the impossibility of same.  I leave to
the reader the elementary disproof of this position.  

>linhart@topaz.rutgers.edu (Phil) writes in 
>
>> The gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes (jokingly?):
>> -=> Cos you can't take a computer, not even the just truly awesomest
>> -=> nooral network ever, to see the ducks, get it to throw them bread,
>> -=> etc, etc.
>
>Not completely jokingly, just a less direct European style.  There was
>a serious point in there, but the etc. etc. marked out my feeling that
>full elaboration was unnecessary.

	Note Cockton's implication that those wily Europeans need to
be explained to us simpletons over here in the USA.

>I'll try to sum up in a more direct manner for SAT level literacy :-)

	Sorry, pal, but that smiley doesn't obscure the offensiveness
of the remark.  Your continuing snottiness in these matters perhaps deserves
equally snotty and waspish rebuttal.

>(but really, it's a question of styles across cultures, which is
>ironic, for those cultures which understand irony that is!)

	Now what cultures might those be, Cockton?   Could you be
referring to all those complex and indirect European cultures, where
everyone could be expected to sift through the fine ironies you employ
to the wisdom buried within?  Certainly you couldn't be referring to
American culture, that callow, mechanistic, unironic haven for
soulless technocrats.  

	You really are a pretentious, overbearing shit.  While you are 
certainly free to have contempt for things American, you are not free to 
substitute your prejudices for discussion without being answered with a 
rudeness equal to your own.
 
[. . .] 

>This is Britain.  You will find a range of people working in CS
>departments.  As part of the Alvey programme, HCI research was
>expanded in the UK.  You'll find sociologists, historians, fine
>artists, literature graduates, philosophers and educationalists working
>in CS departments here, as well as psychologists and ergonomists.
>As part of the Alvey HCI programme, technical specialists HAVE come in
>(perhaps unfairly at times) for a lot of flack over the way they
>design (on a good day) computer systems.  No need to think before I
>flame, as we don't expect blind dormitory brotherhood loyalty over
>here.  This is a university, not a regiment.

	Again the implication that *there* things are done properly,
humanly, with a due respect for all human culture, while *here* . . .
well, my dear, we are (see above) a narrow group of regimented
technophiles. 

	Cockton, I've said it before, but as you've done nothing to
change my evaluation, I'll say it again:  you read like a particularly
narrowly-conceived language-generating program compounded of equal
parts Dreyfus and Jeremy Rifkin.  Now, however, you've apparently added
a sub-program intended to reproduce the rude anti-Americanism of Evelyn 
Waugh on an especially nasty day.