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AIList Digest Volume 5 Issue 009
AIList Digest Tuesday, 20 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 9
Today's Topics:
Queries - Math and Learning Programming &
Proposals to Host IJCAI-91 Outside of North America,
Humor - Clock Seminar,
Philosophy - Minds & Inten(s/t)ion, Introspection
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Date: 19 Jan 87 13:29:06 GMT
From: atux01!jlc@rutgers.rutgers.edu (J. Collymore)
Subject: Math & Learning Programming: Cognitive Aspects
I am posting this query for a friend of mine who does not have access to the
net. Any of you who can provide help, please send e-mail to me and I will
have it forwarded. Thank you.
Jim Collymore
================================================================================
In computer science, mathematical expressions are used to describe
events or objects. One of the difficulties that novice programmers may
have in learning programming logic is that they do not understand that
mathematical expressions model real situations or, if they do understand
that then they don't understand how to go about setting up such an
expression correctly for their application.
I'm wondering if anyone out there in CRTville has references to how
people come to understand these relationships between mathematical
expressions and reality.
Thanks.
Jonthan Levine
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 87 14:13:35 est
From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker)
Subject: REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS TO HOST IJCAI-91 OUTSIDE OF NORTH AMERICA
PROPOSALS FOR SITES FOR IJCAI-91 SOLICITED
The site for IJCAI-91 will be selected at the IJCAI-87 in Milan this
coming summer (23-28 August). Because of the size of the conferences,
it is now necessary to plan four years in advance. The selection
process has become more complicated for the same reason. As a result,
it will be necessary for countries that would like to host IJCAI-91 to
submit detailed proposals describing their plans for the meeting and
to prepare thorough budget estimates in advance. It will be necessary
for an officially recognized AI organization in the country selected
to sign an agreement with IJCAII that establishes a formal commitment
to hold the conference and that defines mutual responsibilities.
IJCAI conferences are organized every two years, usually in August,
and they alternate between North America and other parts of the world.
Since IJCAI-89 will be held in Detroit, Michigan, USA, IJCAI-91 will be
held outside of North America.
Proposals will be evaluated in relation to a number of site selection
criteria:
1. National, regional, and local AI community support.
2. National, regional, and local government and industry support.
3. Accessibility, attractiveness, and desirability of proposed site.
4. Appropriateness of proposed dates.
5. Adequacy of conference and exhibit facilities for anticipated number
of registrants (currently 7500-10000 for North America; 2000-3000
or more elsewhere, depending on the location).
6. Adequacy of residence accommodations and food services in a range of
price categories.
7. Adequacy of budget projections.
Prospective hosts should request a detailed list of site information
required and a set of budget categories as soon as possible. Initial
draft proposals should be submitted by 15 April 1987; final proposals
must be distributed to the Executive Committee by 15 July 1987.
Direct requests for proposal information to the IJCAII Secretary-Treasurer:
Dr. Donald E. Walker (IJCAII)
Bell Communications Research
435 South Street, MRE 2A379
Morristown, NJ 07960-1961, USA
+1 201 829-4312
telex: 275209 BELL UR
arpanet: walker@flash.bellcore.com
usenet: {ucbvax, ihnp4, mcvax, or ... }!bellcore!walker
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 87 12:46:55 pst
From: laurieed%lapis.Berkeley.EDU@BERKELEY.EDU (Laurie Edwards)
Subject: Re: AIList Digest V5 #8
I found it amusing that Brian Smith's talk on the Semantics of Clocks was
posted without a time being mentioned!
More seriously, it is an intriguing topic - I remember a seminar given by
Gregory Bateson in 1974 in which the intial assignment was to say what
a clock is ...
[I believe the omission of the seminar time was my fault.
The event had already taken place, though. -- KIL]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1987 01:55 EST
From: MINSKY%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: AIList Digest V5 #4
I don't believe that the phenomenon of "first order cosciousness"
exists, that Harnad talks about. The part of the mind that speaks is
not experiencing the toothache, but is reacting to signals that were
sent some small time ago from other parts of the brain. I think
Harnad's phenomenology is too simple-minded to take seriously. If he
has ever had a toothache, he will remember that one is not conscious
of it all the time, even if it is very painful; one become aware of it
in episodes of various lengths. I suppose he'll argue that he remains
unconsciously conscious of it. I don't want to carry on, only to ask
him to review his insistence that ANTHING can happen instantaneously -
no matter how convincing the illusion is, for example that you are
seeing what is happening before your eyes, now, rather than something
that happened d/c seconds ago, or that signals travel from one part of
the brain/mind to another faster than light. As for that "mind/body
problem" I repeat my slogan, "Minds are simply what brains do."
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 87 09:00 MST
From: Mandel%pco@HI-MULTICS.ARPA (Mark A. Mandel)
Reply-to: Mandel%pco@HI-MULTICS.ARPA (Mark A. Mandel)
Subject: Discussion of "consciousness"
> I would say that if one is "conscious" of an event, then
> the features/schema of that event are available to his
> goal-setter/planner for planning of future behavior ( and
> vice-versa ).
This is true, but its (in this context) implied converse is not.
Clinical psychology furnishes ample examples of goalsetting/planning
that is not accessible to the person's conscious awareness in the usual
ways. Q: "Why did you walk into that restaurant?" A: "No particular
reason, I just suddenly felt like having a cup of coffee." Further
probing by the therapist brings forth the awareness that certain
circumstances of weather, recent experience, and hearing a song on the
radio, all associated with an emotion-packed memory of a dead friend,
had "caused" the person to attempt to reproduce an occasion on which he
had met with that friend.
The example is wholly fictitious, but this sort of hidden cause comes up
all the time in therapy. Evidently some process in the person planned
to meet the friend by going into the restaurant, although the person was
not consciously aware of the plan or the conditions that had produced
it; if he had been, he would certainly have recognized the impossibility
of meeting someone who is dead. And if we say that he was aware of the
conditions and planned consciously, but immediately forgot the entire
operation, how do we explain (except by special pleading) his failure to
recognize the unreality of the plan? The only solution is to accept
unconscious planning.
So we cannot use "subject has access to event X for purposes of
planning" as a criterion for "subject is conscious of event X."
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 87 23:21:03 pst
From: ucsbcsl!uncle@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: minds and minsky
[The following message is in the style of comments on comments
on quoted text that was common on the Phil-Sci list at MIT.
While I recognize that the potential for such annotation is
a major advantage of online discussion, I hope that members
of the list will show restraint in order to keep the traffic
volume down. A well-reasoned argument is preferable to several
quoted paragraphs and a one-line comment. -- KIL ]
QUESTIONS (-->> ...) re: QUESTIONS (> ...) re: M.M.
ANNOTATIONS TO THE ARTICLE:
>From harnad@seismo.CSS.GOV@mind.UUCP Sat Feb 5 22:28:16 206
On mod.ai, MINSKY%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky) wrote:
> the phenomena we call consciousness are involved with our
> short term memories. This explains why... it makes little sense to
> attribute consciousness to rocks.
I agree that rocks probably don't have short-term memories. But I
don't see how having a short-term memory explains why we're conscious
and rocks aren't. In particular, why are any of our short-term
memories conscious, rather than all being unconscious?
-->> ?? maybe because `consciousness' has something to do with
discriminating changes in a temporal sequence of events
whose time scale is more like the duration of a heartbeat
than the duration of a whole life or an eon ??
The extracts from Marvin Minsky's new book look as if they will be
very insightful correlative accounts of the phenomenology of (i) subjective
experience and (ii) the objective processes going on in machines that can be
interpreted as analogous to (i) in various ways. What none of the
extracts he has presented even hints at is (a) why interpreting any of
these processes (and the performance they subserve) as conscious is
warranted, and (b) why even our own processes and performance should
be conscious, rather than completely unconscious. [...]
[...]
(2) Before claiming with conviction that one has shown "why" a certain
performance is accomplished by a process that is validly interpreted
as a conscious one, one should indicate why the very same performance could
not be accomplished by the very same process, perfectly UNconsciously
(thereby rendering the conscious interpretation supererogatory).
> although people usually assume that consciousness is knowing
> what is happening in the minds, right at the
> present time, consciousness never is really concerned with the
> present, but with how we think about the records of our recent
> thoughts... how thinking about our short term memories changes them!
-->> ?? I think I agree with `>', is he not saying here something about
discriminating changes in a temporal sequence on a short
time scale ??
[...]
My question concerns how the memory hypothesis -- or any other --
accounts for the fact that what is going on there in real time is
conscious rather than unconscious; how does it account for my
EXPERIENCE of pain?) And once that's answered, the second question is
(2) why couldn't all that have been accomplished completely
unconsciously? [...]
-->> ?? Hmmmmm: THINKING and FEELING or rather:
COMPUTING and FEELING . As a marginal intelligence,
artificial or otherwise, I can only grab at a straw such
as the organizational/functional notion `goal'. Experience and
Feeling are functions which evaluate elements of the short-term
temporal sequence of events/representations with respect
to `goals'. Hmmmmm, do planaria think? THE BIG QUESTION
THAT DISTURBS ME IS MORE OR LESS IN LINE WITH THE QUESTIONER
ABOVE:
WHY SHOULD MATTER THINK?????? This, of course
has nothing to do with the real universe where some
material aggregates DO think;
however, if the universe wants to blow up,
convert itself into successive populations of stars etc
etc, and then implode, why does it need to have us think
about it?
[...]
[Let me also add that there are good reasons why it is called the
"mind/body" problem and not the "mindS/body" problem, as Marvin Minsky's
tacit pluralizations would seem to imply. The phenomenological fact is that,
at any instant, I (singular) have a toothache experience (singular).
Having this (singular) conscious experience is what one calls having a
(singular) mind. Now it may well be that one can INFER multiple processes
underlying the capacity to have such singular experiences. But the processes
are unconscious ones, not directly EXPERIENCED ones, hence they are not plural
minds, properly speaking.
-->> ?? HOLD ON, aren't you indulging in a kind of , what is the word,
psychologism, based upon a linguistic prejudice? The
get-food-subsystem doesn't go through a speech-act trip
ending in the formulation of the well formed english
phrase `i'm hungry', but it knows what it wants and
communicates its wishes by making `OUR' stomach hurt ??
[...]
> Our brains have various agencies that learn to
> recognize - and even name - various patterns of external sensations.
> Similarly, there must be other agencies that learn to recognize
> events *inside* the brain - for example, the activities of the
> agencies that manage memories. And those, I claim, are the bases
> of the awarenesses we recognize as consciousness... I claim that to
> understand what we call consciousness, we must understand the
> activities of the agents that are engaged in using and changing our
> most recent memories.
You need an argument for (1) why any process you propose is correctly
interpreted as the basis of 1st-order awareness of anything --
external or internal -- rather than just a mindless process, and (2)
why the functions you describe it as accomplishing in the way it does
need to be accomplished consciously at all, rather than mindlessly.
-->> ?? But (some) matter DOES think and we know that! Explaining
WHY (some) matter should be conscious is like explaining why
the universe is as it is. As for the question of HOW
it is conscious, it seems quite plausible that
evolution changed MOTILITY into MOTIVATION and when
motivation got hold of adequate methods and representations,
je pense, donc clyde est un elephant! ??
[...]
> When people ask, "Could a machine ever be conscious?" I'm often
> tempted to ask back, "Could a person ever be conscious?"
> ...we can design our new machines as we wish, and
> provide them with better ways to keep and examine records of their
> own activities - and this means that machines are potentially capable
> of far more consciousness than we are.
-->> Sounds plausible to me!
[...]
> To "notice" change requires the ability to resist it, in order
> to sense what persists through time, but one can do this only
> by being able to examine and compare descriptions from the recent past.
-->> ?? Yes! ??
Why should a process that allows a device to notice (respond to,
encode, store) change, resist it, examine, compare, describe, remember,
etc. be interpreted as (1) a conscious process, and (2) why couldn't it
accomplish the exact same things unconsciously?
-->> ?? We already traversed this semantic loophole!!! ??
I am not, by the way, a spokesman for the point of view advocated by
Dreyfus or by Searle. In asking these pointed question I am trying to
show that the mind/body problem is a red herring for cognitive
science. I recommend methodological epiphenomenalism and performance
modeling as (what I believe is) the correct research strategy. Instead
of spending our time trying to build metaphorical perpetual motion
machines, I believe we should try to build real machines that capture our
total performance capacity (the Total Turing Test).
-------
--->> ?? methodological epiphenomenalism \?\? I don't know the
exact significance of that as a Flachausdruck, but perhaps
M.M. is describing just the epiphenomenon you are looking
for\? ??
------------------------------
Date: 16 Jan 87 19:44:42 GMT
From: berke@locus.ucla.edu
Subject: inten(s/t)ion, introspection
A couple of brief responses to postings:
1) 'Intention' is derived from 'intend' and should not be confused
with 'intension'. People intend to do things and so can be said to
have intentions. Intensional objects versus extensional objects is
a distinction made by Mill and Frege in distinguishing connotations
or senses of names from denotations, the (sometimes concrete) objects named by
names. I believe that Carnap introduced the terms 'intensional' and
'extensional' to correspond to the distinction between properties
and the sets to which the properties apply.
It has to do with the identity criteria for properties, usually
represented by singulary propositional functions. If you feel
that, or require in your formal theory, that two functions are identical
if they are true of (have the same value for)
the same objects, then you are taking functions
"in extension." If you feel that two functions can still be different
even though they are true of the same objects, you are taking functions
"in intension." That is to say that "intensional objects" have stronger
identity criteria (there are more of them) than "extensional objects."
There seem to be levels of degrees of intensionality, depending on the
strength of your identity criteria.
The spelling similarity
(s/t) and identical pronunciation don't necessarily imply a confusion
of the concepts expressed by the different words 'intention' and
'intension', though, given the state of semantics these days, we
may want to make an explicit connection between them. That would
require showing how desires give rise to conepts, or vice versa.
2) I thought introspection was out since Freud demonstrated "the"
unconcious.
(Frege's single quotes used to denote a word rather than
it's meaning (whatever that is), double quotes to
denote the usual meaning of a word, but to emphasize the fact that
enclosed words are used in a technical sense.)
------------------------------
Date: 18 Jan 87 19:17:00 GMT
From: mcvax!ukc!rjf@seismo.css.gov (R.J.Faichney)
Subject: Re: inten(s/t)ion, introspection
In article <3784@curly.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU> berke@CS.UCLA.EDU (Peter Berke) writes:
>[..]
>2) I thought introspection was out since Freud demonstrated "the"
>unconcious.
>
>(Frege's single quotes used to denote a word rather than
>it's meaning (whatever that is), double quotes to
>denote the usual meaning of a word, but to emphasize the fact that
>enclosed words are used in a technical sense.)
Can 'introspection' be 'out'? Surely you are "thinking" of 'extraspection'.
More seriously: I don't follow the reasoning which implies that the existence
of the unconscious invalidates introspection. Having glanced at the history
of psychology, I was under the impression that it was the rise of behaviour-
ism - and associated attempts to make psychology wholly objective and
respectable - which had caused the (temporary) eclipse of the introspective
method.
--
Robin Faichney ("My employers don't know anything about this.")
UUCP: ...mcvax!ukc!rjf Post: RJ Faichney,
Computing Laboratory,
JANET: rjf@uk.ac.ukc The University,
Canterbury,
Phone: 0227 66822 Ext 7681 Kent.
CT2 7NF
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End of AIList Digest
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