Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!umd5!uvaarpa!mcnc!gatech!purdue!decwrl!hplabs!sdcrdcf!trwrb!aero!venera.isi.edu!smoliar From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: this is philosophy ??!!? Keywords: I can't believe it Message-ID: <5459@venera.isi.edu> Date: 9 May 88 14:12:39 GMT References: <4134@super.upenn.edu> <3200014@uiucdcsm> <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <30502@linus.UUCP> <1069@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1588@pt.cs.cmu.edu>Sender: news@venera.isi.edu Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!umd5!uvaarpa!mcnc!gatech!purdue!decwrl!hplabs!sdcrdcf!trwrb!aero!venera.isi.edu!smoliar From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: this is philosophy ??!!? Keywords: I can't believe it Message-ID: <5459@venera.isi.edu> Date: 9 May 88 14:12:39 GMT References: <4134@super.upenn.edu> <3200014@uiucdcsm> <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <30502@linus.UUCP> <1069@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1588@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Sender: news@venera.isi.edu Lines: 31 In article byerly@cars.rutgers.edu (Boyce Byerly ) writes: > >Perhaps the logical deduction of western philosophy needs to take a >back seat for a bit and let less sensitive, more probalistic >rationalities drive for a while. > I have a favoire paper which I always like to recommend when folks like Boyce propose putting probabilistic reasoning "in the driver's seat:" Alvan R. Feinstein Clinical biostatistics XXXIX. The haze of Bayes, the aerial palaces of decision analysis, and the computerized Ouija board. CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY AND THERAPUTICS Vol. 21, No. 4 pp. 482-496 This is an excellent (as well as entertaining) exposition of many of the pitfalls of such reasoning written by a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the Yale University School of Medicine. I do not wish this endorsement to be interpreted as a wholesale condemnation of the use of probabilities . . . just a warning that they can lead to just as much trouble as an attempt to reduce the entire world of first-order predicate calculus. We DEFINITELY need abstractions better than such logical constructs to deal with issues such as uncertainty and belief, but it is most unclear that probability theory is going to provide those abstractions. More likely, we should be investigating the shortcomings of natural deduction as a set of rules which represent the control of reasoning and consider, instead, possibilities of alternative rules, as well as the possibility that there is no one rule set which is used universally but that different sets of rules are engaged under different circumstances.