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AIList Digest Volume 2 Issue 166
AIList Digest Saturday, 1 Dec 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 166
Today's Topics:
Administrivia - Remailing,
Philosophy - Dialectics and Piaget,
Logic Programming - Book Review,
PhD Oral - Nonclausal Logic Programming,
Seminar - Learning Theory and Natural Language (MIT),
Conference - Logics of Programs
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Date: Thu 6 Dec 84 09:20:51-PST
From: Ken Laws <Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA>
Reply-to: AIList-Request@SRI-AI
Subject: Lost Issue
It seems likely now that very few, if any, sites received this issue
on the first mailing. I am therefore sending it out to all subscribers.
It has been gratifying to learn how many people just can't do without
an AIList issue, but you can all stop sending me messages about #166 now.
-- Ken Laws
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Date: 30 Nov 84 14:17:42 PST (Friday)
From: Rosenberg.PA@XEROX.ARPA
Subject: Dialectics and Piaget
Your summary of dialectics is quite nice, but your portrayal of Piaget
has a major error: Piaget was not a nativist, so it's unfair to lump him
together with, say, Kant. (After all, Chomsky denounces him as an
empiricist!) In fact, his constructivist genetic epistemology is
similar in many ways to the dialectical position you outlined (cf. his
books on negation and contradiction).
Jarrett Rosenberg
------------------------------
Date: 30 Nov 84 0059 EST (Friday)
From: Alex.Rudnicky@CMU-CS-A.ARPA
Subject: Piaget & dialectic
I would take issue with Bill Frawley's contention that Piaget's theory
is idealist in flavour. If anything, it is essentially dialectical
in nature. Piaget's work is often popularized in terms of his ``stages''
of intellectual development and their apparently immutable order.
His major contribution, however, is probably his elaboration of the
mechanisms by which this development could take place. Specifically,
I would point to Piaget's concept of ``equilibration'', which can
(loosely) be described as the constant interaction between internal
cognitive structures and external events that results in modification
of internal structures. Equilibrium is never quite reached, a state
that persists throughout an individual's life. On the matter of
Piaget vs dialectics, I can offer the following quote:
"... in the domain of the sciences themselves structuralism has always
been linked with a constructivism from which the epithet "dialectical"
can hardly be withheld---the emphasis upon historical development,
opposition between contraries, and ``Aufhebungen'' (``de'passements'')
is surely just as characteristic of constructivism as of dialectic,
and that the idea of wholeness figures centrally in structuralist as
in dialectical modes of thought is obvious." (Piaget, Structuralism,
1970, p.121).
------------------------------
Date: 30 Nov 84 09:46 PST
From: Newman.pasa@XEROX.ARPA
Subject: Re: Dialectics, V2 #163
In reference to the recent posting on Dialectics, and in spite of the
fact that some of this has very little to do with AI.
Question: How does dialectics interact with the Heisenberg uncertainty
principle and other facets of quantum theory? It seems to me that the
idea of an interaction between the object and the observer which results
in some knowledge on the part of the observer might be an interesting
topic to discuss in terms of dialectics.
Comment: More in line with the basic topic of the digest, I think it is
obvious that there is some interaction between the observer and the
observed since psychology has shown that (to put it very simply) we see
and hear what we want to, and we don't notice what we wish to avoid.
However, this evidence and your arguments do not conclusively show that
Positivism is entirely wrong. Because I think that there are other
reasons to dismiss Behaviorism and I am not sure how Dialectics deals
with it, I will not deal with Behaviorism in this comment.
The best reason that I can think of on short notice for not dismissing
Positivism is that we must suppose that objects have some existence and
characteristics independent of the observer. I think that we would all
agree that there will be shock waves travelling through the air when the
tree falls in the forest, though we might disagree on whether this
constituted a sound (depending on the possible presence of an observer).
I am not sure what your position is on this issue, but my inclination is
that there is a position combining elements of Dialecticism and
Positivism which is more aceptable than either of its parents.
Note that this is just an opinion since I don't have the time or
resources to do justice to the topic at the moment.
>>Dave
------------------------------
Date: 30 Nov 1984 04:55-EST
From: ISAACSON@USC-ISI.ARPA
Subject: Dialectics: Perils, and Promises for AI
Bill Frawley has written a thought-provoking introduction for a
discussion on dialectics [AIList v2 # 163, 11/29/84]. As he
mentioned, he applies dialectics in his work on Soviet theories of
language and cognition, and studies the use of Soviet theories to
explain language learning and text processing. My own work relates
to a new mode of information processing which is dialectical in
nature. One of its applications is in Dialectical Image Processing
(DIP), reported in AIList v2 #153, 11/12/84. It goes without saying
that I think that things dialectical are crucial to things
intelligent. But before I proceed to elaborate this point of
view, I wish to caution the uninitiated, and point out some of the
many perils of dialectics.
The Perils of Dialectics
"Dialectics" is basically an elusive, vague, and often controversial
and misunderstood term. Its origin is in antiquity (Plato and
Aristotle). It attained prominence and immense influence through
the German idealism of the early nineteenth century (Fichte,
Schelling, and, most notably Hegel) and has been transformed later
into "dialectical materialism" by no other than Karl Marx. Major
American philosophers (notably C. S. Peirce) have been greatly
influenced by Hegelianism, and significant Hegelian influences have
reached as far as Japan (Nishida). All in all, huge segments of
humanity today live under political philosophies, or ideologies,
that are dialectical at their roots in one way or another. Through
it all, though, dialectics has remained elusive, unformalizable, and
-- in the view of many, especially in the West -- unscientific and
hence irrelevant to Western science. A weird mixture of a method, a
(non-standard) logic, a philosophy, and sometimes a political
ideology, it usually baffles the Western mind and hopelessly
frustrates attempts to harness it in the interest of scientific or
technological objectives. In fact, if you wish to dispose of
dialectics altogether, you are urged to read a most devastating
critique by Karl Popper ("What is dialectics?" - Chap. 14) in his
*Conjectures and Refutations* book. Written many years ago, when
Marxist ideology seemed even more menacing than it is today, Popper
shows very little patience with "dialecticians" and portrays them
as a bunch of misguided cynics, intellectual dwarfs, and pseudo-
scientific misfits. And, I should add, his points are not without
merit in many instances, and should not be ignored.
In addition, beyond philosophical and scholarly controversy and
confusion, there always looms the ideological/political stigma
which is usually attached to dialectics. For it is the case that
"dialectical materialism" has become the official dogma of Marxism-
Leninism. Much of Soviet science is constrained by their political
ideology, and, almost Pavolovian-style, researchers are sometimes
rewarded for exhibiting "dialectical thinking" in their work. Yet,
few Soviet scientific discoveries are known, or recognized, in the
West that owe their existence to dialectical foundations. In other
words, even a totalitarian society that promotes, and rewards,
dialectical thinking among its intellectuals has failed to produce
significant scientific or technological results which are genuinely
dialectical. So, the questions should be asked: What's really good
about that dialectical stuff? What's the hidden promise, if any?
Why drag it into AI, our good old American AI?
The Promises of Dialectics for AI
The answers are not easy to state, and surely are incomplete here.
Bill Frawley gave his own sketchy rationale for adopting dialectics
for certain language learning theories. I am generally in sympathy
with his reaching out for dialectics, but my reasons for using
dialectics in AI are more basic and, admittedly, almost bizarre.
Having an engineering background, I never dreamt of using anything
as remote as dialectics for anything as technically mundane as
image processing. It so happened that, for something like five
years (in the mid 60's) certain simple types of operations yielded
imagery that was "interesting" but unexpected and not particularly
meaningful or interpretable. Only after the fact, and after
outsiders had been consulted, it has become clearer (and later
obvious!) that what that type of image processing was doing was
Hegelian dialectics, pure and simple. All in all, that exercise
took some twenty years. In other words, we've learned about
dialectics from the machine, rather than have had any premeditated
intention to program the machine to do dialectics! Put another way,
the machine had been doing dialectics for us for some five years,
well before we ever heard the term for the first time. Well, twenty
years is certainly a long time, and serious study of dialectics and
its ramifications has led, little-by-little, to the realization that
its application in the implementation of certain intelligent tasks
is potentially very powerful. The reality of an implemented
"dialectical machine" then took hold and has opened up tremendous
possibilities.
To put it all in very simple terms. We on this project don't
particularly care for Hegelian philosophy, nor do we care about
Marxist ideology. Here is a machine that, of its own accord,
behaves in a classical dialectical mode. While doing so, it
processes images in an unusual (non-programmed) way that is useful
in machine-vision. And there are clear indications that other
applications in other machine-intelligence domains are feasible, and
we hope to hear from others about those in this forum. Anyway, we
think that the promise of dialectics for AI clearly outweighs its
traditional perils, and recommend that people consider the issues
and ramifications involved.
-- J. D. Isaacson
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 84 13:03:28 EST
From: Anonymous
Subject: Foundations of Logic Programming
[Forwarded from the Prolog Digest by Laws@SRI-AI.]
Foundations of Logic Programming
J.W. Lloyd
Springer-Verlag,ISBN 3-540-13299-6
This is the first book to give an account of the mathematical
foundations of Logic Programming. Its purpose is to collect,
in a unified and comprehensive manner, the basic theoretical
results of Logic Programming, which have previously only been
available in widely scattered research papers.
The book is intended to be self-contained, the only prerequisites
being some familiarity with Prolog and knowledge of some basic
undergraduate mathematics.
As well as presenting the technical results, the book also
contains many illustrative examples and a list of problems
at the end of each chapter. Many of the examples and problems
are part of the folklore of Logic Programming and are not easily
obtainable elsewhere.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1. DECLARATIVE SEMANTICS
section 1. Introduction
section 2. Logic programs
section 3. Models of logic programs
section 4. Answer substitutions
section 5. Fixpoints
section 6. Least Herbrand model
Problems for chapter 1
Chapter 2. PROCEDURAL SEMANTICS
section 7. Soundness of SLD-resolution
section 8. Completeness of SLD-resolution
section 9. Independence of the computation rule
section 10. SLD-refutation procedures
section 11. Cuts
Problems for chapter 2
Chapter 3. NEGATION
section 12. Negative information
section 13. Finite failure
section 14. Programming with the completion
section 15. Soundness of the negation as failure rule
section 16. Completeness of the negation as failure rule
Problems for chapter 3
Chapter 4. PERPETUAL PROCESSES
section 17. Complete Herbrand interpretations
section 18. Properties of T'
section 19. Semantics of perpetual processes
Problems for chapter 4
------------------------------
Date: 29 Nov 84 0255 PST
From: Yoni Malachi <YM@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject: PhD Oral - Nonclausal Logic Programming
[Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
Monday 3 December, 1984, 2:15pm, 146 MJH
PhD Orals
Yoni Malachi
Nonclausal Logic Programming
The Tableau Programming Language (Tablog) is based on the Manna-Waldinger
deductive-tableau proof system and combines advantages of Prolog and Lisp. A
program in Tablog is a list of formulas in [quantifier-free] first-order logic
with equality and is usually more natural than the corresponding program in
either Lisp or Prolog.
The inclusion of equivalence, negation, conditionals, functions, and equality
in Tablog enables the programmer to combine functional and relational
programming in the same framework. Unification is used as the binding
mechanism and makes it convenient to pass unbound variables to a program and
to manipulate partially computed objects.
The tableau proof system is employed as an interpreter for the language in the
same way that a resolution proof system serves as an interpreter for Prolog.
The basic rules of inference used in the system are: nonclausal resolution,
equational rewriting, and replacement of formulas by equivalent ones.
This work describe Tablog and its semantics. In addition to the simple
declarative (logical) semantics of the language, a procedural interpretation
is presented for sequential and parallel models of computation. Various
properties of the language are studied and the language is compared to Lisp
and Prolog and to other combinations of functional and logic programming.
------------------------------
Date: 29 Nov 1984 14:50 EST (Thu)
From: "Robert C. Berwick" <BERWICK%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - Learning Theory and Natural Language (MIT)
[Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.]
Language and Learning Seminar Series
Scott Weinstein
University of Pennsylvania
and
Center for Cognitive Science, MIT
``LEARNING THEORY AND NATURAL LANGUAGE''
Tuesday, December 4, 2 PM
A.I. Playroom
8th floor, 545 Technology Square
Formal learning theory may be conceived as a means of relating
theories of comparative grammar to studies of linguistic development.
After a brief review of relevant concepts, the present talk surveys
formal results within Learning Theory that suggest corresponding
constraints on linguistic theory. Particular attention is devoted to
the question: How many possible natural languages are there?
Host: Prof. Robert C. Berwick
Refreshments at 1:30
------------------------------
Date: 25 Nov 84 1146 EST (Sunday)
From: Edmund.Clarke@CMU-CS-A.ARPA
Subject: Logics of Programs Call for Papers
CALL FOR PAPERS
Logics of Programs 1985
The Workshop on Logics of Programs 1985, sponsored by Brooklyn College
and IBM Corporation, will be held Monday, June 17 through Wednesday,
June 19, at Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, New York. Papers presenting
original research on logic of programs, program semantics, and program
verification are being sought.
Typical, but not exclusive, topics of interest include: syntatic and
semantic description of new formal systems relevant to computation,
proof theory, comparative studies of expressive power, programming
language semantics, specification languages, type theory, model theory,
complexity of decision procedures, techniques for probabilistic,
concurrent, or hardware verification. Demonstrations of working systems
are especially invited.
Authors are requested to submit 9 copies of a detailed abstract (not a
full paper) to the program chairman:
Professor Rohit Parikh
Logics of Programs '85
Department of Computer and Information Science
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn, New York 11210
Abstracts should be 6 to 10 pages double-spaced, and must be received no
later than January 14, 1985. Authors will be notified of acceptance or
rejection by February 18, 1985. A copy of each accepted paper, typed on
special forms for inclusion in the proceedings, will be due on March 24, 1985.
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End of AIList Digest
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