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AIList Digest Volume 2 Issue 069
AIList Digest Tuesday, 5 Jun 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 69
Today's Topics:
Parapsychology - ESP,
Philosophy - Correction & Essences,
Cognitive Psychology - Mental Partitioning,
Seminars - Knowledge Representation & Expert Systems
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Date: Mon, 4 Jun 84 18:50:50 PDT
From: Michael Dyer <dyer@UCLA-CS.ARPA>
Subject: ESP
to: Topher Cooper & others who claim to believe in ESP
1. this discussion SHOULD be moved off AIList.
2. the technical discussion of wavelengths, etc is fine but
3. anyone who claims to believe in current ESP should FIRST read
the book: FLIM-FLAM by James Randi (the "Skeptical Inquirer"
journal has already been mentioned once but deserves
a second mention)
------------------------------
Date: 31 May 84 19:31:04-PDT (Thu)
From: decvax!ittvax!wxlvax!rlw @ Ucb-Vax.arpa
Subject: Message for all phil/ai persons
Article-I.D.: wxlvax.287
Dear net readers,
I must now apologize for a serious error that I have committed.
Recently, I posted two messages on the topic of philosophy of AI. These
messages concerned a topic that I had discussed with one of my professors,
Dr. Izchak Miller. I signed those messages with both his name and mine.
Unfortunately, he did not see those messages before they were posted. He
has now indicated to me that he wishes to disassociate himself from the
contents of those messages. Since I have no way of knowing which of you
saw my error, I am posting this apology publicly, for all to see. All
responses to those messages should be directed exclusively to me, at the
address below. I am sorry for taking up net resources with this message,
but I feel that this matter is important enough. Again, I apologize, and
accept all responsibility for the messages.
--Alan Wexelblat
(currently appearing at: ...decvax!ittvax!wxlvax!rlw. Please put "For Alan"
in all mail headers.)
------------------------------
Date: Mon 4 Jun 84 13:49:58-PDT
From: WYLAND@SRI-KL.ARPA
Subject: Essences, objects, and modelling
All the net conversation about essences is fascinating,
but can be a little fuzzy making. It made me go back and review
some of the basics. At the risk of displaying naivete and/or a
firm grasp of the obvious, I thought I would pass some of my
thoughts along.
The problem of essences has been treated in philosophy
under the heading of metaphysics, specifically ontology. I have
found a good book covering these problems in short, clear text.
It is: "Problems & Theories of Philosophy" by Ajdukiewicz,
Cambridge University Press, 1975, 170 pp. in paperback.
About substance (from the book, p. 78):
".... the fundamental one is that which it was given by
Aristotle. He describes substance as that of which something can
be predicated but which cannot itself be predicated of anything
else. In other words, substance is everything to which some
properties can be attributed, which can stand in a certain
relationship to something else, which can be in this state, etc.,
but which is not itself a property, relation or a state, etc.
Examples of substances are: this, this table, this person, in a
word concrete individual things and persons. To substance are
opposed properties which in contradistinction to substances can
be predicated of something, relations which also in
contradistinction can obtain between certain objects, states,
etc. The scholastics emphasized the self-subsistance of
substance in contrast to the non-self-subsistance of properties,
relations, states, etc. The property of redness, for example,
cannot exist except in a substance that possesses it. This
particular rose, however, of which redness is an attribute, does
not need any foundations for its existance but exists on its own.
This self-subsistance of substance they considered to be its
essential property and they defined substance as 'res, qui
convenit esse in se vel per se'."
To me, this implies that an object/substance is an
axiomatic "thing" that exists independantly - it is the rock that
kicks back each time I kick it - with the characteristic that it
is "there", meaning that each time I kick at the rock, it is
there to kick back. You can hang attributes on it in order to
identify it from some other thing, both now and over time. The
Greek Ship problem in this approach becomes one of identifying
that Object, the Greek Ship, which has maintained continuous
existance as The Greek Ship - i.e., can "be kicked" at any time.
This brings us to one of the problems being addressed by
this discussion of essences, which is distinguishing between
objects and abstractions of objects, i.e. between proper nouns
and abstract/general nouns. A proper known refers to a real
object, which can never - logically - be fully known in the sense
that we cannot be sure that we know *all* of its attributes or
that we *know* that the attributes we do know are unchanging or
completely predictable. We can always be surprised, and any
inferences we make from "known" attributes are subject to change.
Real objects are messy and ornery. An abstract object, like pure
mathematics, is much neater: it has *only* those attributes we
give it in its definition, and there WILL BE no surprises.
The amazing thing is that mathematics works: a study of
abstractions can predict things in the real world of objects!
This seems to work on the "Principle of Minimum Astonishment"
(phrase stolen from Lou Schaefer @ SRI), which I interpret to
mean that "To the extent that this real object posseses the same
characteristics as that abstract object, this real object will
act the same as that abstract object, *assuming that it doesn't
do anything else particularly astonishing*." And how many
carefully planned experiments have foundered on THAT one. There
is *nothing* that says that the sun *will* come up tomorrow
except the Principle of Minimum Astonishment.
So what? So, studies of abstractions are useful;
however, an abstract object is not the same as a real object: the
model is not the same as the thing being modelled. There is not
an infinite recursion of attributes, somewhere there is a rock
that kicks back, a source of data/experience from *outside* the
system. The problem is - usually - to create/select/update an
abstract model of this external object and to predict our
interactions with it on the basis of the model. The problem of
"identifying" an object is typically not identifying *which* real
object it is but *what kind* of object is it - what is the model
to use to predict the results of our interaction with it.
It seems to me that model forming and testing is one of
the big, interesting problems in AI. I think that is why we are
all interested in abstraction, metaphor, analogy, pholosophy,
etc. I think that keeping the distinction between the model and
the object/reality is useful. To me, it tends to imply two sets
of data about an object: the historical interaction data and the
abstracted data contained in the current model of the object.
Perhaps these two data sets should be kept more formally separate
than is often done.
This has gotten quite long winded - it's fun stuff. I
hope that this is useful/interesting/fun!
Dave Wyland
WYLAND@SRI
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 2 Jun 84 13:11:35 PDT
From: Philip Kahn <kahn@UCLA-CS.ARPA>
Subject: Relevance of "essences" and "souls" to Artificial Intelligence
Quite a bit of the AILIST has been devoted of late to metaphysical
discussions of "essences" (e.g., the Greek ship "problem") and "souls."
I don't argue the authors' viewpoints, but the discussion has strayed far
from the intent of the original Greek ship problem. In short, the problem
with "essences" and "souls" are the questions posed, and not the answers
given.
We are concerned with creating intelligent machines (whether we consider
it "artificial" or "authentic"). The "problem" of "essence" is only caused
by the necessity that a hard-and-fast, black-and-white discrimination is being
asked whether "The reassembled ship is 'essentially' the same." It should be
clear that the question phrased as such cannot be answered adequately because
it is not relevant. You can say "it looks the same," "it weighs the same," "it
has the same components," but how useful is it for the purposes of an
intelligent machine (or person) to know whether it is "essentially" the same
ship? The field of AI is so young that we do not even have a decent method of
determining that it even IS a Greek ship. Before we attempt to incorporate
such philosophical determinations in a machine, wouldn't it be more useful
to solve the more pressing problem of object identification before problems of
esoteric object distinctions are examined?
The problem of "souls" is also not relevant to the study of AI (though
it is undoubtedly of great import to our understanding of our role as humans
in the universe). A "soul," like the concept of "essence," is undefinable.
The problem of "cognition" is far more relevent to the study of AI because
it can be defined within some domain; it is the object oriented interpretation
of some phenomena (e.g., vision, auditory, context, etc.). Whether "cognition"
constitutes a "soul" is again not relevent. The more pressing problem is
the problem of creating a sufficient "cognitive" machine that can make
object-oriented interpretations of sensory data and contextual information.
While the question of whether a "soul" falls out of this mechanism may be
be of philosophical interest, it moves us no closer to the description of
such a mechanism.
Another writer's opinion,
P.K.
------------------------------
Date: 3 Jun 84 12:24:57-PDT (Sun)
From: decvax!cwruecmp!borgia @ Ucb-Vax.arpa
Subject: Re: Essences and soul
Article-I.D.: cwruecmp.1173
** This is somewhat long ...
You might learn something new ...
... from Intellectuals Anonymous (IA not AI)
**
A few years ago, I became acquainted with an international group called
Community International that operates through a technique called Guided
Experiences to assist individuals in their progress towards self
actualization. I remember that some of the techniques like Dis-tension,
and the Experience of Peace were so effective that the Gurus in the
group were sought by major corporations for their Executive Development
programs. The Community itself is a non-profit, self-sustaining
organization that originated somewhere in South America.
The Community had a very interesting (scientific?) model for the body
and soul (existence and essence) problem. The model is based on levels
or Centers for the Mind.
I will summarize what I remember about the Centers of the Mind.
1. The major Centers of the Mind are the Physiological Center, the Motor
Center, the Emotional Center, and the Intellectual Center.
2. The functional parts of the Mind belong to different (matrix) cells
in a tabulation of major Center X major Center.
To illustrate the power of this abstraction, consider the following
assertions where the loaded words have the usual meaning.
The intellectual part of the intellectual center deals with reason or
cognition. The rationalist AI persons must already feel very small.
Reliance on reason alone indicates a poverty of the mind!
The motor part of the intellectual center deals with imagination and
creativity. The emotional part of the intellectual center deals with
intuition.
Similarly the motor center has intellectual, emotional and motor
parts that control functions like learning to walk, the Olympics, and
reflexes.
The emotional center has intellectual, emotional, and motor parts that
control faith and beliefs, the usual emotions like fear, anger, joy etc.
and stuff like euphoria, erotica.
The Physiological center is unfortunately the least understood. The
center controls the survival drives for food, sex, safety etc.
(And I believe, rational economic behaviour, free markets etc.)
The thesis is that the lower centers (Physiological) must be developed
before the higher centers can be productive. This must seem obvious
since we don't expect a starving man to cry out with joy, or an
emotionally disturbed person to reason effectively.
************************************************************************
I would appreciate any comments, anonymous or otherwise. Does this make
any sense to you? Does this change your picture of your own mind?
************************************************************************
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Date: Mon, 4 Jun 84 17:07:34 PDT
From: Joe Halpern <HALPERN%ibm-sj.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Seminars - Knowledge Representation
[Forwarded from the IBM/Halpern distribution by Laws@SRI-AI.]
The knowledge seminar will be meeting again at 10 AM, Friday, June 8,
in Auditorium A of Building 28 at IBM. This week Joe Karnicky will
speak on "Knowledge Representation and Manipulation in an Expert System"
and I will speak on work in progress entitled "Towards a Theory of
Knowledge and Ignorance". I have appended the abstracts
below. I have speakers lined up for three more sessions, which will
be held June 22, July 6, and July 20. After that the seminar will stop,
unless we can find some more volunteers to speak. As you can see by my
talk, discussing work in progress is perfectly reasonable, as is talking
about research other than your own. If you have any suggestions for
speakers, or directions the seminar might take, please let me know.
10 AM -- Knowledge Representation and Manipulation in an Expert System
Joe Karnicky, Varian Systems and Techniques Lab (Palo Alto)
We are constructing an expert advisory system for chromatography,
i.e. a computer program which is to perform as an advisor to analytical
chemists (chromatographers) with functionality on the level of human experts.
One of the most important considerations in the design of such a program
is the choice of techniques for the representation and manipulation of
the knowledge in the system. I will discuss these choices of knowledge
representation, the results we have achieved, and the advantages
and disadvantages we have discovered.
The techniques to be discussed include:
PREDICATE LOGIC-inference by a prologue-type interpreter (backward chaining
+ unification) modified to include certainty factors and predicates to be
evaluated outside of the rule base.
PRODUCTION SYSTEMS-collections of situation-action (if...,then...)rules.
FRAMES-heirarchically related data structures.
PROCEDURES- small programs for specific tasks in specific situations.
ANALOG REPRESENTATIONS-in this case, a detector's output signal vs. time.
11 AM. -- Towards a Theory of Knowledge and Ignorance
Joe Halpern, IBM Research
Suppose you only have partial information about a particular domain.
What can you be said to know in that case? This turns out to be a
surprisingly tricky question to answer, especially if we assume that
you have introspective knowledge about your knowledge. In particular,
you know far more than the logical consequences of your information.
For example, if my partial information does not tell me anything about
the price of tea in China, then I know I don't know anything about the
price of tea in China. Moreover, I know that no one else knows that
I know the price of tea in China (since in fact I don't). Yet this
knowledge is not a logical consequence of my information, which
doesn't mention the price of tea in China at all!
I will discuss the problem of characterizing an agent's state of
when s/he has partial information, and give such a characterization
in both the single agent and multi-agent case. The multi-agent
case turns out to be much harder than the single agent case, and
we're still not quite sure that we have the right characterization
there. I will also try to relate this work to results of Konolige,
Moore, and Stark, on non-monotonic logic and circumscriptive ignorance.
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End of AIList Digest
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