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AIList Digest Volume 2 Issue 127
AIList Digest Friday, 28 Sep 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 127
Today's Topics:
Computer Music - Mailing List,
Expert Systems - Windows,
Machine Translation - Natural Languages as Interlinguas,
Natural Language - Idioms,
Logic - Induction and Deduction,
Seminar - Anatomical Analogy for Linguistics
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 26 September 1984 1043-EDT
From: Roger Dannenberg at CMU-CS-A
Subject: Computer Music Mailing List
[Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
If you are interested in announcements pertaining to computer music
(such as the one you are reading), send mail to Dannenberg@cmu-cs-a and
I'll put you on my mailing list.
First announcement: there will be a seminar on Monday, October 8,
from 11 to 1 with pre-presentations of 3 talks from the 1984 International
Computer Music Conference. Please let me know if you plan to attend.
------------------------------
Date: Thu 27 Sep 84 10:09:16-MDT
From: Stan Shebs <SHEBS@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Subject: Windows and Expert Systems
Has anyone else become bothered by the recent apparent equation between
window packages and expert system tools? The recent spiel on Teknowledge's
M.1 takes care to mention that it provides windows (along with other features).
However, other vendors (for instance all of those at the recent AAAI) seem
to emphasize their window and menu capabilities at the expense of actual
reasoning capacity. Recent papers on expert systems at both AAAIs and IJCAIs
include the obligatory picture of a screen with all the capabilities being
shown at once (even if they're not really related to the paper's content).
What's going on?
Does a window system really have something substantial to offer expert systems
development? If so, what is it? Ultra-high bandwidth for display, so that
the system doesn't have to decide what the user wants to see - it just shows
everything? Do people get entranced by all the pretty pictures? Ease of
managing multiple processes (what expert system tools can even employ multiple
communicating processes)? We've got zillions of machines with window systems
around here, but they seem supremely irrelevant to the process of expert
system development (perhaps because I tend to regard a system that requires
only low-bandwidth communication to be more inherently intelligent - it has
to do more inference to supply missing information). Can anyone give a solid
justification for windows being an essential part of an expert systems tool?
(Please no one say anything about it being easier to sell tools with flashy
graphics...)
stan shebs
------------------------------
Date: 26 Sep 1984 09:33-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Rick Briggs <briggs@RIACS.ARPA>
Subject: natural languages as interlinguas for MT
Sergia Nirenburg's statement that "a natural language and an
MT interlingua have different purposes and are designed differently"
is false and reveals an incorrect premise underlying much linguistic and
AI research. There is a natural language which was spoken between
1000 B.C. and 1900 A.D. which was used amongst a scientific community,
and which was ambiguity free(in some senses syntax-free) and which
fascilitated automatic inference. Instead of saying "John gave Mary
a book" these scientists would say "there was a giving event, having as
agent John, who is qualified by singularity...etc".
I have shown this well-developed system to be equivalent to
certain semantic net systems, and in some cases the ancient language
is even more specific.
The language is an obscure branch of Indo-Iranian of which there
are no translations, but the originals are extant.
Natural languages CAN serve as interlingua.
Rick Briggs
briggs@riacs
------------------------------
Date: Thu 27 Sep 84 10:58:36-CDT
From: David Throop <LRC.Throop@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Having no crime rate & other text curiosities
Continuing the consideration of texts that contain mistakes but are still
comprehensible:
Another example, this from the Summer '84 issue of Foreign Affairs (p 1077):
"In nine months... the [Argentine] peso fell in value by more than 400
percent."
------------------------------
Date: 9 Sep 84 10:06:00-PDT (Sun)
From: hplabs!hp-pcd!hpfclk!fritz @ Ucb-Vax.arpa
Subject: Re: Inductive Proof - The Heap Problem
Article-I.D.: hpfclk.75500005
As an example of improper induction, consider the heap problem.
A "heap" of one speck (e.g., of flour) is definitely a small heap.
If you add one speck to a small heap, you still have a small heap.
Therefore all heaps are small heaps.
-- Ken Laws
That's a little like saying, "The girl next to me is blonde. The
girl next to her is blonde. Therefore all girls are blonde." (Or,
"3 is a prime, 5 is a prime; therefore all odd numbers are prime.")
An observation of 2 (or 3, or 20, or N) samples does *not* an inductive
proof make. In order to have an inductive proof, you must show that
the observation can be extended to ALL cases.
[I disagree with Gary's analysis of the flaw. I didn't say "if
you add one speck to a one-speck heap", I said that you could add
one speck to a (i.e., any) small heap. -- KIL]
Mathematician's proof that all odd numbers are prime:
"3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime; therefore, by INDUCTION,
all odd numbers are prime."
Physicist's proof:
"3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime,... uhh, experimental error ...
11 is a prime, 13 is a prime, ...."
Electrical Engineer's proof:
"3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, 9 is a prime, 11 is a prime..."
Computer Scientist's proof:
"3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime,
7 is a prime,
7 is a prime,
7 is a prime,
7 is a prime, ..."
Gary Fritz
Hewlett Packard Co
{ihnp4,hplabs}!hpfcla!hpfclk!fritz
------------------------------
Date: Wed 26 Sep 84 10:42:28-MDT
From: Stan Shebs <SHEBS@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Induction
There's another name for "induction" on one case: generalization. Lenat's
AM and the Boyer-Moore theorem prover are both capable of doing
generalizations, and there are probably others that can do it also.
Not too hard really; if you've set up just the right formalism,
generalization amounts to easily-implemented syntactic mutations (now
all we need is a program to come up with the right formalisms!)
stan shebs
------------------------------
Date: 17 Sep 84 9:03:48-PDT (Mon)
From: hplabs!pesnta!scc!steiny @ Ucb-Vax.arpa
Subject: Re: induction vs. deduction
Article-I.D.: scc.156
A point about logical induction that has not come up is
what Charles Sanders Peirce (who coined the
term "pragmatism") argued that one could never prove
anything inductively. We believe that any human will die
eventurally and we reason that is so inductively.
We do not, however, have records on every human that has
ever existed, and humans that are still alive offer
no evidence to support the statement "all humans die".
Peirce (being pragmatic), did not think we should
throw away the principle just because we can't prove anything
with it. He suggested renaming it "reduction" (and renaming
deduction "abduction"). This would leave the word
"induction" available to those special cases where
we do have all the evidence.
--
Don Steiny - Personetics @ (408) 425-0382
109 Torrey Pine Terr.
Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060
ihnp4!pesnta -\
fortune!idsvax -> scc!steiny
ucbvax!twg -/
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 84 17:27:31 pdt
From: chertok%ucbkim@Berkeley (Paula Chertok)
Subject: Seminar - Anatomical Analogy for Linguistics
BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM
Fall 1984
Cognitive Science Seminar -- IDS 237A
TIME: Tuesday, October 2, 11 - 12:30
PLACE: 240 Bechtel Engineering Center
DISCUSSION: 12:30 - 2 in 200 Building T-4
SPEAKER: Jerry Sadock, Center for the Advanced Study
in the Behavioral Sciences; Linguistics
Department, University of Chicago
TITLE: Linguistics as Anatomy
ABSTRACT: The notion of modularity in linguistic sys-
tems is often supported by invoking an ana-
tomical metaphor in which the various sub-
systems of the grammar are the analogues of
the organs of the body. The primitive view
of anatomy that is employed supposes that
the organs are entirely separate in internal
structure, nonoverlapping in function, shar-
ply distinguished from one another, and
entirely autonomous in their internal opera-
tion.
There is a great deal of suggestive evidence
from language systems that calls many of
these assumptions into question and indi-
cates that there are transmodular `systems'
that form part of the internal structure of
various modules, that there is a good deal
of redundancy of function between grammati-
cal components, that the boundaries of the
modules are unsharp, and that the workings
of one module can be sensitive to the work-
ings of another. These facts do not speak
against either the basic notion of modular-
ity of grammar or the anatomical analogy,
but rather suggest that the structure of
grammatical systems is to be compared with a
more sophisticated view of the structure of
physical organic systems than has been popu-
larly employed.
The appropriate analogy is not only biologi-
cally more realistic, but also holds out the
hope of yielding better accounts of certain
otherwise puzzling natural language
phenomena.
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
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