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AIList Digest Volume 5 Issue 228
AIList Digest Monday, 5 Oct 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 228
Today's Topics:
Queries - Connection Graphs & IEEE Neural Net Conference &
Expert Systems Company Advice & TI Explorer/Common Lisp/PCs &
Protocols,
Graphics - Summary Pending,
Philosophy - Flaws,
Linguistics - Natural Kinds and Indians
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2 Oct 87 11:53:46 GMT
From: mcvax!enea!kuling!nilsh@uunet.uu.net
Subject: Connection Graphs
I've recently heard that there has been quite a lot of
work done on Connection Graphs in West Germany the past
few years. I would like to get in touch with people who
has been involved in this, especially from Munchen,
Kaiserslauten and Karlsruhe. My main interest for the
moment is results concerning completeness for the Connec-
tion Graph Proof Procedure of Kowalski. Please contant
me on net-mail or "snail-mail".
Net-Mail: nilsh@kuling.UUCP
Snail-Mail: Nils Hagner
Dept. of Computing Science
Uppsala University
P.O. Box 520
751 20 Uppsala
SWEDEN
------------------------------
Date: 4 Oct 87 02:54:50 GMT
From: munnari!latcs1.oz.au!suter@uunet.UU.NET (David Suter)
Subject: IEEE conf. (Boulder)
re: "Neural Info. Proc. Systems - Natural and Synthetic" conf.
Boulder, Colorado - Nov. 8-12 1987.
I would like to contact the registration people quickly. My snail mail
to some of the organisers has either been mis-directed or lost. Thus
if anyone can supply a direct conference telephone number, or an e-mail
address for registration - I would be grateful.
---------------------
David Suter ISD: +61 3 479-2596
Department of Computer Science, STD: (03) 479-2596
La Trobe University, ACSnet: suter@latcs1.oz
Bundoora, CSnet: suter@latcs1.oz
Victoria, 3083, ARPA: suter%latcs1.oz@uunet.uu.net
Australia UUCP: ...!uunet!munnari!latcs1.oz!suter
TELEX: AA33143
FAX: 03 4785814
------------------------------
Date: 30 Sep 87 17:11:06 GMT
From: decvax!dartvax!waltervj@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (walter jeffries)
Subject: Expert Systems Company Financing...
I am in the process of starting a company to do expert systems developement
in the field of psychiatry. Principles include two top domain experts in
this field, an expert in data anlysis, and an MBA canidate with training in
marketing in the computer field. I am not the business end of things but
would appreciate any comments/experiences that people may have with getting
capital (sources, things to be careful of, etc.). [...]
Many thanx,
-Waltervj@dartvax
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 87 19:44:19 GMT
From: A385%EMDUCM11.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
Subject: TI Explorer, Common Lisp & PC's
Date: 2 October 1987, 19:42:38 GMT
From: A385 at EMDUCM11
To: AILIST-REQUEST at SRI
Hello AI community from Spain!!
We are a group of absolute beginners using the TI EXPLORER machine.
Our problem is that we only have two 'explorers' for a lot of people and we'd
like to profite our PC's (AT's) in order to get experience using Common Lisp,
but two question arise:
1) Which is the best Common Lisp implementation (with flavors, packages....)
running on AT's??. Is it Golden Common Lisp?
2) Does anyone has any experience connecting PC's and TI Explorers to
transfer files? Is it posible ?
Thank you very much in advance for any help or suggestion.
Yours
Javier Lopez <A385 at EMDUCM11>
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 87 08:05:37 edt
From: steve@hubcap.clemson.edu ("Steve" Stevenson)
Subject: Query on protocols.
I am interested in determining what general principles apply to defining
any type (human,machine, etc) of communications protocol. As an example,
what would one have to do to establish that two protocols are the "same".
[i.e., message-passing vs shared memory/wait/signal].
Steve (really "D. E.") Stevenson steve@hubcap.clemson.edu
Department of Computer Science, (803)656-5880.mabell
Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1906
------------------------------
Date: 30 Sep 87 21:59:17 GMT
From: mcvax!ukc!mupsy!mucs!arnold@uunet.uu.net (Toby Howard)
Subject: Thanks for AI/Graphics...
Some time ago I posted a plea asking for any refs people could give me
on connecting AI and Graphics, and I promised to summarise. This note is to
say I'm really grateful for all the help I've received, and I *really will*
summarise, and thank people individually. Just now I'm mega-busy---but
I haven't forgotten!
toby
[This is a shared account. Please ignore the From: field, and reply to the
following address. Thanks]
Toby Howard Computer Graphics Unit, Manchester University, UK.
janet: thoward@uk.ac.man.cs.cgu
internet: thoward%cgu.cs.man.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk
------------------------------
Date: 02 Oct 87 20:26:00 EDT
From: Walter Roberson <WCSWR%CARLETON.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU>
Subject: flaws
In AILIST of October 2nd,
Christopher Lishka (uwslh!lishka@speedy.wisc.edu), and
J Storrs Hall (topaz.rutgers.edu!josh@rutgers.edu)
discuss whether human minds are inherently flawed. Chris proposes that
human minds just *are*, neither flawed nor unflawed; JoSh disagrees
strongly, and claims Chris's position to not be scientifically based.
Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether mathematics is a
science (at last notice, AILIST list hadn't resolved that one), I
believe that I can offer a mathematical basis for Chris's position.
Consider a set (possibly infinite) of objects, U, and at least two
single-place predicates over that set, P, and Q. Add n-ary predicates
and distinguished constants, if you like. Consider the following
first-order sentance over this language: "For all x in U, Px => Qx". Is
this sentance true? It depends on the relations P and Q. If Qx is
"false" for all x in U, and at least one Px is "true", then the sentance
is false -- for that P and Q. If Px is "false" for all x in U, then the
sentance is true -- again, for that P and Q. Thus, the truth of the
sentance depends upon the structure
(U, set(P, Q, etc), set(constants), set(n-ary functions))
in which it is evaluated. Now, as there is at least one such structure
in which this sentance is false, the sentance is NOT "logically implied"
by the language of its formulation. And, as there is also at least one
such structure in which the sentance is true, one can only talk about
the validity of the sentance in terms of its value in a particular
structure. Loosely speaking, the validity of the sentance varies with
the interpretation one gives to the relationships.
Consider now the above sentance, ("for all x in U, Px => Qx") with the
human intepretation that it denotes "all minds are flawed" -- that is,
Px being interpreted as the predicate "x is a human mind", and Qx being
intepreted as the predicate "x is flawed". Assigning the sentance a
human interpretation makes it no more true or false than before: the
difference is only in the emotional zing of the interpretation.
Assigning a validity to the sentance based on a religious set of values
corresponds to chosing a structure and evaluating the sentance within
that structure. The sentance may be valid or invalid within that
structure, but, in isolation, the sentance will still be neither true
nor false. Chris's position is that "human minds are flawed" is only
true within certain belief sets: that it is not a true statement because
it is not a logically implied statement. JoSH's position is that the
interpretations of the words "human minds", "are" and "flawed", are such
that the statement is implicitly true: that semantically, the statement
is automatically self-restricting to the class of structures in which it
is true.
Certainly the conventional wisdom is that "nobody's perfect". That has a
certain intuitive "rightness" to it which is very compelling. And if
nobody is perfect, then everyone is flawed, right? But what someone
saying, "Nobody's perfect" really means is, "There isn't anyone that
measures up to my standards of perfection". That, however, is more a
reflection of the utterer's standards of perfection than upon the
intrinsic qualities of any other given person. A lot of people have done
things which haven't pleased me, but that's a matter of my expectations,
rather than a question of whether they were "flawed" or not.
---
In part of his response, JoSH disapproves of Chris's position, based
upon operational grounds. Indeed, we do not -need- to study the
aerodynamics of angels in order to build an airplane. I don't believe,
though, that Chris implied that we needed to do so: rather, he favours a
position closer to the doctrine of necessity; that if X isn't necessary
in order to do Y, and Y is your goal, then don't do X. In this case, X
is "assign a definite truth value to 'human minds are flawed'", and Y is
"computationally model a human intelligence". Chris believes X to be
unnecessary (and impossible in finite time anyways). JoSH believes it to
be possible; I haven't been watching closely enough to determine whether
he believes it to be necessary.
---
Is 2+2=4 ? In the ring Z4, No: 2+2=0 instead. And since '=' is merely
the symbol for a binary operation, traditionally a certain well-known
predicate, then sometimes 2+2=5 afterall. Try, for example, reading '='
as denoting the binary predicate traditionally represented as '<'.
Is the broken radio flawed? Well, if it was hit by lightning while
playing "satanic rock music", and melted down into a representation of
"Jesus", I rather doubt people would call it "flawed" when they couldn't
get music out of it. Not much use in trying to decide whether an object
is "flawed" or "bad" or "evil" or whatever -- if it doesn't do what you
want it to, perhaps it'll make a dandy paperweight instead. Or bonfire
fuel, if you've found it particularily frustrating.
Is a dead person "flawed" because they are no longer living? I'm told
that death is a very natural process -- happens to everyone, they say.
But its not going to happen to me -- at least not during my lifetime!
(Thanks, Raymond!)
Walter Roberson <WCSWR%CARLETON.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU>
---
Reference: "A Mathematical Introduction to Logic", Herbert B. Enderton,
1972, Academic Press
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 87 10:30:14 EDT
From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin@cch.bbn.com>
Subject: natural kinds and Indians
> From: cugini@icst-ecf.arpa
> I believe there have been anthropological studies, for instance,
> showing that Indian classifications of animals and plants line
> up reasonably well with the conventional Western taxonomy.
I saw this go by in AIList, and here it comes again in NL-KR, and I just
can't let you get away with it, John.
Glib references to `Indian classifications of animals and plants' remind
one of titles in the 17th century like `The Indian Language Reduced to
Grammar'. `Indian classifications', indeed!
Which of the hundreds of Amerindian languages? Which of the half-dozen
or so linguistic families in North America alone? Linguistic families
in the Americas are as diverse from each other as the Indo-European
family is from the Sino-Tibetan family, and as Finno-Ugaritic is from
both: there is no demonstrated genetic relationship whatsoever.
If the claim is across all Amerindian languages, it seems preposterous
on the face of it.
In some languages, terms for animals and plants are composite, derived
from or related to predicative compounds of the type `water-strider'.
In a polysynthetic language, some of the elements underlying such a
compound might be classificatory morphemes that imply a rather different
taxonomy. Certain of these we might gloss e.g. `long, slender object'
or `spherical object' or `flexible object'. Examining our glosses for
words incorporating these elements as affixes or infixes, however, we
always see abundant grounds for doubting that we have captured the
Indian generalization in our English net. What do `both arms', `lips',
`encircle', `sew' have in common? `Soft opposed forces' is the gloss
given for Pomo bi-. How about `fire, heat, cold, light, emotions,
mind'? Pomo mu- is glossed `nonlong object through the air', and the
above are glosses for its contribution in just some of its occurrences.
In other languages, such terms are (synchronically at least) primitive,
of the type `cat'. What do `horse', `dog', and `slave' have in common?
All are translations of caH:o'm in Achumawi, which appears to refer to a
social role rather than anything like genus or species. Indeed, all
such terms in Achumawi seem to imply place in a kind of `social'
structure involving all beings, a mental system orthogonal to our
Realist presumptions about `objective' `external' reality. Theories of
animism begin to get at it, perhaps, and here you might begin to get at
some cultural/religious commonality among peoples in the Americas.
In Wappo and in Yana, the word for 'dog' and `horse' is again the same,
but is the Spanish loanword chucho (cu:cu' in Wappo, su:su [pronounced
something like shoo-shoo] in Yana). Why not the Spanish word for horse,
cavallo? I don't have any information on the Wappo and Yana words for
`slave', but suspect strongly that the same `taxonomy' has a role here.
Compare Wappo ka'wa:yu?+ne'w `horse-yellowjacket', perhaps on the
analogy of English `horsefly', where ?ne'w is `yellowjacket'.
Achumawi, Pomo, and Yana are all Northern Hokan languages, b.t.w.,
and are (or were) in fairly close proximity in Northern California,
whereas Wappo is an unrelated Yukian language a bit further south,
between the Pomo languages/dialects and San Francisco Bay.
The Achumawi word for `dog' optionally has a diminutive suffix
(caHo'mak!a, `little slave/captive/subordinate one'), and there is
another word ?a?la'?mugi? that means `dog' but not `horse' or `slave'.
Before you get too excited, let me tell you that this appears to be a
descriptive term for a dog whose ears hang down; similarly, Yana
cahtumal?gu `dog', lit. `hang-ears'. In an Achumawi Prometheus myth,
such a dog brings back fire concealed in his ear. A cognate term
`dog-ear' is used for a basketry design, so it is well embedded in the
culture. Utterly no basis for a taxonomy associating dogs with e.g.
foxes, wolves, or coyotes, or them with one another.
References, please. What were the claims, exactly? What was the
claimed basis for them? Was the investigator comparing native
taxonomies or translations thereof into English? With virtual
certainty, the latter. Is your reference to original sources in the
anthropological literature or to secondary or tertiary sources there, or
to n-ary sources in the philosophical literature?
This sort of philosophy strikes me as systematized ethnocentrism. Go
ahead and claim that the world must be thus and so because every
reasonable person you know sees it that way. But don't go dragging the
Indians into it. God knows, they've suffered indignities enough!
Bruce Nevin
bn@cch.bbn.com
(This is my own personal communication, and in no way expresses or
implies anything about the opinions of my employer, its clients, etc.)
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
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