HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon)
Subject: Re: Drawing the entity/environment boundary
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 14:23:03 GMT

In article <C0E6ww.CDy@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> ,
pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:


>In article <C0BCnA.1A7@iat.holonet.net> ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon)
>writes: 

>>I think you're still leaving out a vital component, the
>>computer/algorithm combination should read computer/algorithm/programmer
>>combination.  At the current state of technology, a programmed computer
>>is simply an extension of the programmer (admittedly a faster running,
>>better remembering extension).   
>> 

>You are wrong. There are many programs nowadays which are so complicated
>that the programmers who wrote them have problems understanding the
>program's overall behavior in many circumstances. 

I HATE it when people say I'm wrong.

Ok, I'll admit that a creation of mind can produce unpredictable results
i.e. a random number generator.

However, it seems to me that one of a programmer's main jobs is to bring
the program's unpredictability under control, to get it to do something
like what he had in mind before he started coding.

I'll grant there's an interactive process, a compromise between what the
programmer originally had in mind and what he must settle for.  In fact,
sometimes there is a serendipitous fortuitous improvement over the original
expectation.  

I'll even go so far as to say a program must have a certain amount of
unpredictability to be thought of as intelligent.  

Nonetheless I maintain that creations of man, the essence of the "A" in AI,
must yield to the control of it's creator to be considered truly
artificial.  Should the entity gain autonomy as in Gibson's Wintermute, I
think it has taken on a quality that makes it something more than
artificial.

>And to give another, but a very telling example: Did John Conway, when he
>invented the Game of Life, had any idea of the richness of structure his
>simple rules would lead to? 

I suspect he had some idea, or some hope, certainly some curiosity about
what the thing might do.  Otherwise why invent it?


--
Ken Easlon                | "...somebody spoke and I went into a dream..."
ken@holonet.net           |    -Paul McCartney
Pleasantly Unaffiliated   |

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: plummer@cs.swarthmore.edu (David Barker-Plummer)
Subject: Re: Colbys-Weizenbaum and Overcoming Depression 2.0
Organization: Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA
	<C0o16u.49F@cs.bham.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 15:16:26 GMT

>>>>> On 11 Jan 93 01:23:18 GMT, axs@cs.bham.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman) said:

AS> In the mean time we are talking only about "interactive"
AS> documents, so why make a fuss about them?

I agree with almost everything in your post, neatly summarized by this
paragraph, with one caveat, and that is that computers, as (more
obviously) products of science (than books) carry more weight for many
when they make their pronouncements.  That is, we all understand that
there is a human author behind a book, but somehow that fact is harder
to keep in mind (particularly for the untrained) in the case of
computers.  

This is not, I think, insignificant when arguing that expert systems
are "just" interactive books.

-- Dave
From: pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Drawing the entity/environment boundary
Organization: UTCS Public Access
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 18:55:41 GMT

In article <BILL.93Jan5083352@cortex.nsma.arizona.edu> bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon) writes:
>
>   > If a genuine AI were to come on USENET and admit the fact and
>   > convince us of it, once the novelty wore off I submit we'd start
>   > ignoring it.  It's only a machine after all, we're interested in
>   > talking to real people. 
>
>Interesting.  I don't feel this way at all -- I'm eager to talk to
>anybody who can say things that surprise me, be they man or machine.
>In fact, I'd much rather talk to a clever machine than some of the
>people I know.  :-(
>
Hear, hear. That's exactly my reaction but you have beaten me to it.

>	-- Bill  

Andrzej Pindor
-- 
Andrzej Pindor
University of Toronto
Computing Services
pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Testing AIs
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 23:15:21 GMT

In article <C0HLno.1Hu@iat.holonet.net> ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon) writes:

>I suspect that it's going to be very difficult to separate what we
>generally call intelligence from the set of qualities that we apply to
>humans.
>
>Even if we say an animal is intelligent, I think to some extent we are
>anthropomorphisizing the poor best.

When I say an animal is intelligent, I don't believe I am
anthropomorphizing.  But, in your statement, you do reveal that you are
homocentrizing your idea of what constitutes intelligence.

>If it passes the Turing test, it seems human-like from one perspective. 
>But if we get inside the program we see that it isn't composing sentences
>the way we compose sentences, so it's not grounded.

Not necessarily true.  We don't yet know enough about how humans compose
sentences.  But when we do, we can start programming our machines to do
it the same way.

>When we listen to a human speaking, we have a sense of commonality.

This "sense of commonality" depends on much more than just being human.
There is much less sense of commonality with humans from very different
cultures.

>Not so with a turing tested computer, unless we happen to be intimately
>familiar with the program.

Who sez?  Do you happen to know of any computers which have passed the TT
so that you can test this out?

>In my mind, the issue of "grounding" boils down to defining the particular
>qualities of our own mind that we would like to see duplicated in the
>computer, the degree of commonality.

It [grounding] has much more to do with what you have learned from
experience, and this includes the many cultural traditions which you take
for granted without any thought.

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin)
Subject: Re: grounding and the entity/environment boundary
Organization: TRW Systems Division, Fairfax VA
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 00:25:51 GMT

I'm not sure chess is a good example to use for grounding. At one time
many years ago, I was a decent player, but I gave it up. One of my reasons
was that playing the game did strange things to my mind, making me feel
disassociated. I would say that grounding is not a good term to apply to
someone playing it.

Cheers,
-- 
Harry Erwin
Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: mstede@cs.toronto.edu (Manfred Stede)
Subject: Re: Colbys-Weizenbaum and Overcoming Depression 2.0
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Date: 11 Jan 93 16:03:59 GMT

plummer@cs.swarthmore.edu (David Barker-Plummer) writes:

>>>>>> On 11 Jan 93 01:23:18 GMT, axs@cs.bham.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman) said:

>AS> In the mean time we are talking only about "interactive"
>AS> documents, so why make a fuss about them?

>I agree with almost everything in your post, neatly summarized by this
>paragraph, 

I don't agree at all;  a person suffering from depression is looking
neither for an intelligent book explaining that "all this is merely
a temporary malfunctioning of your neurotransmitters" or whatever,
nor for a computer program doing the same thing in question-answer mode.
What the person is looking for instead is some emotional support --
which I'm not going to "define", but it's very different from the 
aforementioned two things.

>with one caveat, and that is that computers, as (more
>obviously) products of science (than books) carry more weight for many
>when they make their pronouncements.  That is, we all understand that
>there is a human author behind a book, but somehow that fact is harder
>to keep in mind (particularly for the untrained) in the case of
>computers.  
>This is not, I think, insignificant when arguing that expert systems
>are "just" interactive books.

On the contrary: The book all the time says "hey, I'm just a book,
written two years ago by someone you don't know".  That Colby-program,
on the other hand, _pretends_ to be "someone" by using the first
person singular pronoun.  Cf. Weizenbaum's older writings on people
treating computers as personae.

-manfred

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Manfred Stede                                 mstede@cs.toronto.edu
Dept. of Computer Science                                          __o
University of Toronto                                            _ \<,_
Toronto M5S 1A4, Canada                                         (_)/ (_)
--------------------------------------------------------------------.
                                                                     \
                                                                      \



Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: nic@uk.co.gec-mrc (Nick Chapman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Drawing the entity/environment boundary
Date: 12 Jan 93 15:45:28 GMT
Organization: GEC-Marconi Research Centre, Great Baddow, UK
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]


Ken Easlon (ken@iat.holonet.net) wrote (quoting others):

> >>>And to give another, but a very telling example: Did John Conway, when
> >>>he invented the Game of Life, had any idea of the richness of structure
> >>> his simple rules would lead to?  
> >> 
> >>I suspect he had some idea, or some hope, certainly some curiosity about 
> >>what the thing might do.  Otherwise why invent it? 
> >> 
> >He certainly had curiosity about what the thing might do. Are you saying
> >that every pattern produced by the Game of Life is an extension of John
> >Conway's ingenuity? He had some goal in mind but his creation is producing
> >results which he certainly did not imagine. The same may be true of  
> >a creator of an AI - gaining autonomy would be such an unexpected thing
> >and even more its autonomous behavior. Why would it invalidate the letter
> >'A'? 


*Did* Conway invent the Game of Life, or did he just write down and
reveal the rules that have always existed?

If Conway is not the games true creator it does not matter if the
patterns produced by it were unforeseen to him.



Nick.
-- 
Nick Chapman. GEC-Marconi Research, Great Baddow, Essex.  nic@uk.co.gec-mrc
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: grounding and the entity/environment boundary
Date: 6 Jan 93 00:54:17 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <C0E8KI.Enu@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>In article <C0CHsG.557@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>>All of your mature thinking depends heavily on the huge mass
>>of information about the world acquired during those first few years.
>>
>Right, but it also depends on the way this huge mass of information is
>conceptualized. One person growing up in poverty may turn out Democrat and
>another - a Republican.

I agree; good point.

>>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...
>>
>But using language one can influence a conceptualization of the existing
>information (Idealized Cognitive Model, in the language of Lakoff, applied to
>make sense of the information). 

Right again.

>>Nonsense.  The job of the top chess programs is to play chess, and they do
>>it very well; are they grounded?  
>
>Are you saying that these programs (or rather processe present when the
>programs are running) are less grounded w.r.t. chess than human players?
>Why so?

For the same reasons that toasters are not grounded w.r.t. making toast.
Groundedness has to do with whether your use of language has semantic
content; you have to have language use before you're even a candidate.

>>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.
>>
>How would one define grounding to make the above statement true?

Consider a medical expert system written in Prolog.  It might well be able
to answer medical questions correctly without knowing anything about medicine
in any useful sense.  All it "knows" is statements like P(x) --> Q(x), 
and rules for manipulating them; the semantics is supplied entirely by
the user.

>Of course there are people who are good at 'mouthing' and nothing else, but
>if you are talking about abstract concepts a Turing type test is an only way
>of testing grounding (may be you know another one, I'll be very glad to learn).

The Turing Test seems to function chiefly as a means of avoiding the task
of analyzing cognitive functions.  If humans can identify groundedness, or
any other cognitive capacity, from a Turing transcript, they should be able
to work out the criteria for their judgments and devise a more direct test.
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Testing AIs
Date: 7 Jan 93 18:31:37 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <C0HLno.1Hu@iat.holonet.net> ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon) writes:
>Back to computers.  I think most people concede that chess playing
>computers can do things that once was considered to require a great deal of
>intelligence.  So now the argument has shifted to "grounding".  (Chess
>playing computers are intelligent? So what, they're not grounded.)

You're making a parody of the issues.  I'm a supporter of AI, not a
detractor.  The issue of grounding is not brought up in order to denigrate
past work in AI.  On the contrary, I believe it's precisely the last forty
years of AI which has challenged the pre-AI conception of human cognition
as being chiefly characterized by reasoning (chess, theorem proving, etc.),
and moved our focus to real-world knowledge.

>I still think the issue is essentially "Is the computer human-like"?

Is it?  Depends on what you're interested in AI for, I suppose.  If you
want to program computers to do interesting things it used to be only
humans could do, it doesn't really matter how human-like your programs are.
If you want to understand human intelligence, you do want human-like
programs, because it's humans you're trying to understand.
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Colbys-Weizenbaum and Overcoming Depression 2.0
Date: 10 Jan 1993 17:49:30 GMT
Organization: Computing Services Division, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.7.4

In article <1993Jan9.173613.18464@netcom.com> nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) writes:
>      It seems a bit much for a system with no capability for living in the
>real world to issue advice on how to do so.

I could just as well (if not more effectively) argue that only those who do NOT
live in the real world will have the perspective and objectivity needed to give
sound advice, whereas everyone else will miss the forest for the trees.  Ergo,
those who don't can, and those who do can't.
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle)
Subject: Re: Colbys-Weizenbaum and Overcoming Depression 2.0
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 17:36:13 GMT

      It seems a bit much for a system with no capability for living in the
real world to issue advice on how to do so.

					John Nagle
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.meta,talk.philosophy.misc
From: ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon)
Subject: Re: How to Build a Person (book by John Pollock)
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 04:16:38 GMT

In article <jampel.726346799@barney> ,
jampel@cs.city.ac.uk (Michael Jampel) writes:

>I do NOT want to start a whole "Chinese room, Penrose, Searle, Turing 
>test ..." thread

Can't say as I blame you for that.

>but specifically talk about Pollock's book, preferably with people who
have >received formal training in philosophy

Humph!

In article <erwin.726353987@trwacs> ,
erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin) writes:

>You will have to argue with the dualists. I don't know all of the 
>theories, but Eccles believes that the point where the mind interacts with
>the brain is the synapse....
>
>Eccles proposes that the probability of (neurotransmitter) release is
>modulated by the "mind" in addition to the known physical processes. 

In article <1993Jan7.003835.24102@news.media.mit.edu> ,
minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:

>I recall a lecture some years ago in which Eccles did indeed identify 
>the synapses in question.  As I recall, they were on the medial 
>surface of the forebrain,  His evidence was that these cells sometimes 
>fired before the pyramidal motor cells fired, thus suggesting that 
>they were being told what to do from afar.... 
 
Seems to me he wouldn't have to look very far to find cells firing before 
the forebrain cells.  I wonder what event he was using to trigger his
timer.

--
Ken Easlon                | "...somebody spoke and I went into a dream..."
ken@holonet.net           |    -Paul McCartney
Pleasantly Unaffiliated   |



Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: grounding and the entity/environment boundary
Organization: UTCS Public Access
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 16:59:47 GMT

I would say that chess playing was occupying so much of your brain resources
that not much was left for other tasks. This may alos happen when one falls
in love or works mentally on a hard problem. Back to chaess, are you 
saying that one can not talk about grounding of chess terms? 
(BTW do you know Stefan Zweig's story about chess?).

Regards
Andrzej Pindor

In article <erwin.726366351@trwacs> erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin) writes:
>I'm not sure chess is a good example to use for grounding. At one time
>many years ago, I was a decent player, but I gave it up. One of my reasons
>was that playing the game did strange things to my mind, making me feel
>disassociated. I would say that grounding is not a good term to apply to
>someone playing it.
>
>Cheers,
>-- 
>Harry Erwin
>Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com
>


-- 
Andrzej Pindor
University of Toronto
Computing Services
pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca
From: silbrmnd@acf3.nyu.edu (Darkmage)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Drawing the entity/environment boundary
Date: 4 Jan 93 07:03:53 GMT
Organization: New York University

markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:

>In article <BzLCx1.JF5@iat.holonet.net> ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon) writes:
>>Oh, THAT "Systems Reply".  Searle discusses it briefly in the Scientific
>>American article, but I don't see how that relates to the entity
>>environment boundary.  

>Neither does Searle, and that's precisely the problem.  Searle never seems
>to question the notion that you can determine whether understanding occurs
>in the Chinese Room by asking if the man in the room understands Chinese.
>The corollary of his position would be that if a Turing Test-passing AI
>*were* intelligent, the intelligence must lie in the *CPU*.  The Systems 
>Reply more sensibly draws the entity boundary around the computer/algorithm
>combination (and emphasizes the need to think more carefully about what 
>systems exhibit what cognitive properties).

>>I guess I'm going to have read Searle to keep up with this group :-(

>Hmm, perhaps we should have a reading list... 

Yes!!!  Please!!!   I'm *very* interested in AI, and I've been trying to
follow the discussions here for the past few months, but a reading list
would be _most_ helpful!  :)

	-Dvora Silberman
From: colby@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Kenneth Colby)
Subject: Re: Colbys-Weizenbaum and Overcoming Depression 2.0
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 19:55:20 GMT



Overcoming Depression 2.0 (OVD) is NOT a simulation or imitation
of a cognitive therapist. It is an entity in its own right, a new
method for alleviating depression with its own strengths and
shortcomings.

Think of OVD as a new kind of book made up of passages of educational
text interspersed with passages of interactive dialogue during
which the reader can communicate with the author using written
utterances.  Each can use the pronoun "I".  The author is not
physically present but the program he has written to conduct a
a conversation stands in for him as a surrogate, a proxy.  In OVD
the computer is not an autonomous independent entity such as
sought by "strong" AI.  In OVD (interventional AI) the computer
is being used as a linguistic medium to convey the interests and
concerns of the program's designer, a cognitive therapist.  Weizenbaum
simply confuses the medium with the messenger.

Pete and Ken Colby
M.A.I.W.

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.meta,talk.philosophy.misc
From: jampel@cs.city.ac.uk (Michael Jampel)
Subject: How to Build a Person (book by John Pollock)
Keywords: strong ai
Organization: City University
Date:  6 Jan 93 18:59:59 GMT

I have recently read the book "How to Build a Person" by John Pollock.

It is a philosophical argument in favour of strong AI, and also
a description of some work Pollock is doing on automatic theorem
proving using his OSCAR program/tool.

His argument is that 'token physicalism' and 'agent materialism' 
are both true, and together lead to the possibility of strong AI
(i.e. that we can construct machines which ARE intelligent, and 
don't simply MIMIC intelligence).

My explanations (not Pollock's) of these terms are as follows;
(don't be too hard on me if all the following is _very_ loosely
worded)

Token physicalism: mental states ARE physical states, i.e. thoughts
are (can be reduced to) chemical interactions in the brain (and hence
why not electrical interactions in a silicon-based machine).

Agent materialism: 'agents' (or 'persons' ?) are physical objects
i.e. 'souls' or 'minds' are physical (not metaphysical).

If you agree with these two views, then strong AI follows.

Anyway, I agree with the book's thesis, and would be interested in 
talking (via email please, not newsgroups) to others who have read it. 
I do NOT want to start a whole "Chinese room, Penrose, Searle, Turing
test ..." thread, but specifically talk about Pollock's book,
preferably with people who have received formal training in philosophy.

I apologise for flooding all these newsgroups, but didn't know which was
appropriate.

=====================================================================
 Michael Jampel         Dept of Computer Science, City University, 
 jampel@cs.city.ac.uk   Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, England
                        Tel +44 71 477 8449, Fax +44 71 477 8587 
--
=====================================================================
 Michael Jampel         Dept of Computer Science, City University, 
 jampel@cs.city.ac.uk   Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, England
                        Tel +44 71 477 8449, Fax +44 71 477 8587 
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy