From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: grounding and the entity/environment boundary
Date: 4 Jan 93 19:50:38 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <C08L0t.Ksv@iat.holonet.net> ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon) writes:
>I agree that such high-bandwidth sensorimotor experience (HBSME) might be
>necessary for the development of biological systems, for example the retina
>and other components of the visual processing system.  But I suspect nature
>relies on HBSME because it's so readily and universally available as a
>source of developmental information.  The evolution of a set of genes that
>could shape the human visual system as accurately as HBSME might take a few
>million years.
>
>However, if we focus on the mature visual system, I think we could
>duplicate the functions electronically, without using HBSME.

I think I've lost you here.  Which element of high-bandwidth sensorimotor
experience is not, in your view, necessary for a "mature visual system":
the high bandwidth, the experience with the world, or the motor component?
And then, given such an alternative system, what are the implications for
grounding?

>As a biological entity, I accept the idea that much of my development
>during the first few years (after birth) depended heavily on HBSME.  
>However I think the bulk of intellectual development that gives me the
>sense of knowing what I'm talking about arises from conceptual activity.

I don't agree.  All of your mature thinking depends heavily on the huge mass
of information about the world acquired during those first few years.

But go ahead, explain color to a blind man, or sex to a virgin, or poverty
to a Republican, so that they know what you're talking about as well as you
do, using language alone.  Good luck...

>In my view, rational thought is a low bandwidth operation, and can be
>recreated on a computer with relative ease.  I would say the complexity or
>bandwidth of rational thought is roughly the same as the bandwidth of
>language usage.  

Here I agree.  Rational thought really is pretty easy to get a computer to do;
and in fact we've had programs that solve theorems, play chess, or calculate
correlations for years.

When you get to language you proceed swimmingly for awhile, because to
some extent language is rational and you can do useful things with it
at the symbolic level; but then you tend to founder on that huge mass of
real-world knowledge that underlies language and thought.  So we have
microworlds like SHRDLU, and raw-translators, but nothing that can rise
even to the dismal standard of the Turing Test.

>>Some alternative conceptions of grounding avoid the boundary problem by
>>concentrating on correlation of the internal world model with the real
>>world. The problem I have with these conceptions is that it's even less
>>clear where you draw the line between an ungrounded system that's just
>>playing with symbols and one that really knows what it's talking about;
>>that it's not clear how many errors, gaps, and ambiguities are permitted
>>in the correlation; and that the origin of the correlation is not taken
>>into account. 

>I think the proof is in the pudding.  If the AI does it's job, then it's
>grounded enough.  

Nonsense.  The job of the top chess programs is to play chess, and they do
it very well; are they grounded?  Obviously the job has to have something to 
do with tasks for which humans need to be grounded-- and even there effective
performance is no proof; a computer might be able to execute those tasks
in a different way, without needing to be grounded at all.

>Suppose the job of the AI is to develop a line of
>rational thought, say participate in a debate.  I think we agree that the
>AI can't perform this task just by using the names of concepts, but must
>use some kind of program structure that is analogous to human thinking.  If
>a human audience thinks the AI can hold its own in a debate with humans,
>then I say it passes the "grounding" test.

And I say you're evaluating "vision" by testing for "sensitivity to light."
An AI that could do well in a debate would be quite interesting; but debating
is a small subset of human experience, and one which panders to the skills
computers can be most easily given, such as memory and logic.  As for whether
debating tests grounding, I would think that a few months' experience with
Usenet would suffice to demonstrate that the ability to dominate a debate
has little to do with knowing what one is talking about.
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy