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AIList Digest Volume 5 Issue 192
AIList Digest Thursday, 30 Jul 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 192
Today's Topics:
Philosophy - Philosophy-Bashing & AI as a Science &
Natural Kinds & Iconic Representation
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Date: Mon, 27 Jul 87 15:40:12 pdt
From: ladkin@kestrel.ARPA (Peter Ladkin)
Subject: philosophy-bashing
i wish contributors to the ailist who indulge in philosophy could
refrain from including diffuse comments alluding to the lack of
worth of philosophy. philosophers do the same thing, so it's hard
to keep track of who's who.
peter ladkin
ladkin@kestrel.arpa
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Date: 29 Jul 87 15:58:46 GMT
From: sbrunnoc@hawk.CS.ULowell.Edu (Sean Brunnock)
Reply-to: sbrunnoc@hawk.cs.ulowell.edu (S. Brunnock)
Subject: Re: Why AI is not a science
Gentlemen, please! (my apologies to any women reading this)
AI is a very young branch of science. Computer science as a whole
is only a little more than 40 years old. How can you compare AI with
mathematics or physics which are thousands of years old?
Aristotle made some of the first stabs at elemental chemistry and
gravitation. From our enlightened viewpoint, can we call him a scientist?
Give it time, its too early to tell.
S. Brunnock
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Date: 29 July 1987, 14:55:35 EDT
From: Andrew Taylor <ATAYLOR@ibm.com>
Subject: in defence of penguins (natural kinds)
Penguins have been the topic of some discussion. I'd like to correct some
some misconceptions. Penguins are not one species, currently they
are classified into 18 species. Their inability to fly is not a
deficiency. Their wings are merely adapted to a more dense medium, water.
They are not the only flightless birds there are 40+ species
of flightless birds (0.5% of all bird species).
It is not certain penguins are birds. In the past it was believed
that they were independently descended from the reptiles. It is possible
fossils will be found which will cause this belief to rise again.
Penguins may form a clear cut group (order) to ornithologists but
people less expert could easily classify other birds of similar
appearance and habits (e.g auks) into the same group.
Unfortunately species are sometimes not clear cut either.
When two populations are separated, then it can be difficult to decide
whether they are 1 or 2 species. Biologists often merge or split
species in new classifications.
People living close to nature (e.g Amazon Indians) have "kinds"
which mostly correspond to species. Most of us are content with
kinds which lump together a number of species on the basis
of superficial similarities. These kinds often differ from
the classifications biologists make.
Andrew Taylor
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Date: Wed, 29 Jul 87 08:43:05 -0200
From: Eyal mozes <eyal%wisdom.bitnet@jade.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: natural kinds
An important theory that has so far not been mentioned in the
discussion on "natural kinds" is the Objectivist theory of concepts.
In essence, this theory regards universal concepts, such as "chair" or
"bird", as the result of a process of "measurement-omission", which
mentally integrates objects by omitting the particular measurements of
their common characteristics. The theory takes into account the point
mentioned in Minsky's recent message about structure and function, and
completely solves Wittgenstein's problem.
The theory is presented in the book "Introduction to Objectivist
Epistemology" by Ayn Rand, and, more recently, in the paper "A theory
of abstraction" by David Kelley (Cognition and Brain Theory, vol. 7
no. 3&4, summer/fall 1984, pp. 329-357).
Eyal Mozes
BITNET: eyal@wisdom
CSNET and ARPA: eyal%wisdom.bitnet@wiscvm.wisc.edu
UUCP: ...!ihnp4!talcott!WISDOM!eyal
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Date: Wed, 29 Jul 87 08:03:56 EDT
From: powell%mwcamis@mitre.arpa
Subject: Natural Kinds
Minsky's notion of natural types involving both structure and function
does seem plausible. One could think of each natural type as a
bipartite graph where one node class represents structural components
and where the other node type represents each function of the natural
type. Connections between the two node classes would represent
(in a crude way) the way in which portions of each class relate to
the nodes of the other class.
Even more specifically, the entire design foundations
as would be recorded in the data dependency net of an ATMS recording
the design process (function to structure) would capture still more about
the natural type. This seems
like a bizarely specific way to define a hazy notion like natural types,
but it does appear to follow naturally from Minsky's proposal.
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Date: Wed 29 Jul 87 11:28:26-PDT
From: Ken Laws <Laws@Stripe.SRI.Com>
Subject: Structure, Function, and Intention
Minsky's initial message described function (of a chair) in terms
of intended use. I don't believe he elaborated, but it seems
obvious that it could be either the designer of the chair or the
user who provides the intention. (For instance, a chair designed
for one person does not become a couch just because two kids sit
on it at the same time.) Semantic classification thus requires
at least three viewpoints: structure, intended function, and
perceived or implemented function.
-- Ken
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Date: Wed, 29 Jul 87 16:11:23 edt
From: amsler@flash.bellcore.com (Robert Amsler)
Subject: Re: Structural and Functional descriptions
Another division of information which I find significant is that of
visual vs. the combined structural and functional descriptions. While a
visual description might be termed `structural' I think there is a
significant difference. Visual information, i.e. information
obtained from looking at a visual still or moving image of an object,
is often not available in pre-recorded structural form. It `may' be
possible to describe visual information in symbolic text, but it
can prove very hard to extract it from existing descriptions because
there is so much visual information to represent and often the
description doesn't contain the key element needed to answer a
question.
I first encountered this when looking at the information dictionaries
present for a word such as `horse'. They give definitions of all the
parts of a horse, but you cannot assemble a horse from these part
definitions accurately enough to answer a simple question such as
whether the horse's head is higher than its tail? (Dictionaries
almost universally have an illustration for a horse, which suggests
they know something about how hard it is to describe one by
definitions only). Initially I saw this as demonstrating the
complimentarity of visual and definitional information, much in the
same manner that Minsky sees the complimentarity of the structural
and functional descriptions. But now, it looks to be a more basic
problem. Even if you could assemble a horse from the definition plus
the static visual knowledge (e.g. add coordinates and a wire frame model of
a horse to the description), I can't animate it well enough to
answer questions (Are all the feet ever off the ground simultaneously
while running?)
This probably suggests a simulation as the correct representation,
but often a simulation is really just a means of displaying the
visual representation of the object so you can perform the
observation needed on the simulated entity rather than on the real
entity. What this seems to imply is that ultimately the `description'
of an object should be a simulation accurate enough to permit direct
observation and generation of the functional and structural
information we know about the object?
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End of AIList Digest
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