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Article 3898 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Robotic Follies
Message-ID: <1992Feb20.140749.9003@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 20 Feb 92 19:07:35 GMT
References: <1992Feb15.011214.24421@nuscc.nus.sg> <1992Feb16.211812.8890@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Feb18.000808.12473@nuscc.nus.sg>
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In article <1992Feb18.000808.12473@nuscc.nus.sg> 
smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:

>In article <1992Feb16.211812.8890@husc3.harvard.edu> 
>zeleny@boucher.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>>In article <1992Feb15.011214.24421@nuscc.nus.sg> 
>>smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:

SS:
>>>  It seems
>>>to me that Minsky is questioning whether or not the treatment of beliefs as
>>>propositional attitudes is an adequate model for some of the questions we may
>>>with to ask about the behavior of a reasoning individual.  

MZ:
>>Hoping to avoid the repetition of the erstwhile inflammatory exchanges on
>>the subject of "informal logic", I am nonetheless compelled to inquire:
>>What do any of the "questions we may wish to ask about the behavior of a
>>reasoning individual" have to do with the subject matter of a discipline
>>ostensibly dedicated to the study of *valid* forms of reasoning?  If there
>>be doxastic logic, it must concern itself with questions of valid reasoning
>>about beliefs, no more, no less.  The study of behavior belongs to the
>>purview of natural sciences; likewise for the study of practical reasoning. 

SS:
>I, too, do not wish to stir up those coals of "informal logic" which offered
>far more heat than light.  Let me first propose which I feel may be a more
>suitable choice of my own words:  "questions we may with to ask about the
>behavior of AN INDIVIDUAL MANAGING SUCCESSFULLY IN ITS ENVIRONMENT."  In
>other words I would argue that Minsky is not necessarily concerned with
>the various ways in which we may wish to interpret the word "reasoning;"
>his primary concern is just with how we manage at all.  

Good for him.  However, it still has nothing to do with the question of
logic of belief, the very possibility of which he excludes so forcefully.

SS:
>							Now, I do not claim
>to speak for the entire artificial intelligence community, nor, do I believe,
>does Minsky.  Indeed, the community is so diverse that anyone claiming to do
>so would be presumptuously arrogant.  If you choose to view artificial
>intelligence as "a discipline ostensibly dedicated to the study of *valid*
>forms of reasoning," then it would be a mistake to assume that your own view
>is shared throughout the artificial intelligence community.  Some of us are
>genuinely interested in how it is that vast numbers of agents out there are
>capable of getting on in the world at all, even when large portions of their
>behavior are blatantly irrational by any formal standard.  I can only speak
>for myself, of course;  but I have a strong suspicion that Minsky shares my
>interest.

Please note that in speaking about a discipline ostensibly dedicated to the
study of *valid* forms of reasoning, I was specifically referring to a
branch of deductive logic.  Although I gelerally have no interest in
viewing artificial intelligentsia at all, if pressed, I would characterize
them as a community ostensibly dedicated to the onerous task of teaching
the Shah's ass to speak.  The instructive story of Nasruddin, the great
Shah, and the aforementioned pet animal will be supplied on request.

SS:
>	   Now I have no trouble at all with your categorizing such pursuits
>under "the purview of natural sciences."  To a great extent, this is what
>Minsky has been saying all along (although perhaps he should have been more
>explicit).  His approach to artificial intelligence is, indeed, grounded on
>the study of behavior;  and, assuming that grounding, he is basically arguing
>that propositional attitudes do not provide an adequate model for addressing
>the questions which lie at the heart of that study.  This is not so much an
>attack on formal logic as it is an observation that you do not use a
>screwdriver to cut off pieces of a two-by-four.

I appreciate your conciliatory attempts; alas, to continue the zoological
metaphor, this is most manifestly not the view I have been getting from the
horse's mouth.  Minsky, who more or less dedicates his professional career
to a single-minded dismissal of the very notion of normative reasoning,
could hardly be said to abstain from making an attack on formal logic. 

SS:
>>>					       We start with an observer O who
>>>is observing some entity E.  E' is said to be a MODEL of E if O can use E' to
>>>answer questions that he has about E.  Note that Minsky does not say anything
>>>specific about WHAT those questions are.  What is important is the ternary
>>>relation which unites the observer's questions, the entity, and its model.)
>>>Thus, Minsky is interested in questions such as, "Why does this child keep
>>>repeating the action of piling blocks in a tower and then knocking them
>>>down?"
>>>or "Why does the child walk away from the blocks and look for something else
>>>to
>>>do?"  Minsky is questioning the adequacy of propositional attitudes as a
>>>foundation for dealing with such psychological questions of mind (since
>>>presumably the child is making some conscious decisions here);  and I,
>>>personally, do not think that his doubts have yet been satisfactorily
>>>addressed.

MZ:
>>Again, what does all of this have to do with logic of belief?

SS:
>Again, all of this has NOTHING to do with logic of belief;  so let us see why
>you think this deserves criticism.

You really don't have to travel far to find the crux of my conviction that
Minsky's pronouncements on this subject deserve all the criticism they can
get: as I have explicitly stated on several occasions in the past, Minsky's
strategy consists in declaring his opponents to be anti-scientific
obscurantists.  Just two weeks ago at his Harvard talk, he explicitly
disqualified Eccles' views of the mind-body problem from consideration on
the grounds that they belonged to a devout Catholic.  From where I stand,
this approach deserves criticism for the same reason as the Stalinist
methods of scientific criticism I mentioned earlier.

MZ:
>>  If we are to
>>believe Freud (and Minsky certainly does), the reasons we may adduce for
>>our actions are nothing but ex post factum rationalizations of subconscious
>>conative impulses.  Setting this Schopenhaur-flavored Weltanschauung aside,
>>we may try to answer Minsky's questions with a full-blown theory of behavior
>>dispositions; however, unless you are prepared to be a behaviorist about
>>belief, this course of action would be orthogonal to our issue.

SS:
>I think you have now set yourself (and probably many of critical members of the
>artificial intelligence community) an excellent agenda for reading THE SOCIETY
>OF MIND.  This is not to say that the book builds of that "full-blown theory of
>behavior dispositions" step by step (or even in fits and starts).  However, it
>starts you down the road to building such a theory;  and, yes, going down that
>road IS orthogonal to those issues of logic of belief which you have studied so
>intensely.  I would, however, may one suggestion in terms of situating this
>approach with respect to its intellectual predecessors.  We both agree on the
>debt to Freud, but the sort of behaviorism which Minsky is pursuing is not
>really the behaviorism of Skinner.  A much more significant influence is THE
>STUDY OF INSTINCT by Nikolaas Tinbergen.  Minsky is very interested in the idea
>that instinct (which, perhaps, may also be associated with Freudian drives) is
>responsible for entire PATTERNS of behavior;  and he views those patterns as
>products of entities very much like the agents of his society.  This leads
>to two fundamental questions:
>
>	1.  Where do those patterns come from?
>
>	2.  If you have large numbers of them, how are they controlled?
>
>This is ostensibly a rather more sophisticated view of behavior than can be
>accommodated by ringing changes on the stimulus-response loop.  Now THE SOCIETY
>OF MIND does not provide pat answers to these questions, and one may even agree
>with critics who would argue that it does not provide ANY answers to them.
>However, I would argue that it is a valid alternative to formal logic as a
>focus of attention if we are basically interested in getting on the world
>(and, perhaps, building some robots which can do so).

Sorry, but you are a bit late with your recommendation: having read "The
Society of Mind" in the smallest room in my house, I was quite happy to put
it behind me.  (I prefer La Mettrie for style, and Freud for originality.)
Again, it doesn't concern me in the least whether AI research chooses to
focus its attention on formal logic or the study of behavior; what does
concern me is Minsky's blowhard rhetorical attempts to dismiss the
arguments of anyone, dead or alive, who dares to disagree with his
preferred ortodoxy, while he presumes to encroach on the territory of every
neighboring discipline, from formal logic to the theory of value, using his
alleged authority as a battering ram against the very foundations thereof.

I'll make this very clear: it is because I find this sort of behavior
obnoxiously presumptious, that I feel justified in judging Minsky in the
same manner that he judges others.  To wit, if he feels justified in
putting his authority in the theory of computability behind his eristic
dismissal of the relevant parts of Penrose's argument, I'll see that and
raise him the authority of Putnam, whose relatively brief excursion into
Turing computability (can you say "Hilbert's Problem"?) makes the work of
Marvin's lifetime look like nothing in comparison.

In short, if I were inclined to trust an appeal to authority, why would I
consider Minsky over Putnam?

SS:
>>>One reason for doubting the power of propositional attitudes involves their
>>>own foundation on terms which denote concepts.  In THE MISMEASURE OF MAN
>>>(just
>>>to shift the arena over to Harvard, Mikhail), Stephen Jay Gould discusses the
>>>fallacy of REIFICATION--to wit, the misguided assumption that any word (term)
>>>we use can be reified into a concept.  Interestingly enough, the particular
>>>word Gould is picking on in this book is "intelligence."  Now, clearly, we
>>>can do all sorts of interesting things with these terms at a strictly formal
>>>level;  but to assume that those formal results may serve as a model of the
>>>human (or any animal) behavior we observe may lead to an inadvertent
>>>commission
>>>of this reification fallacy.  It seems to me that the burden of proof lies
>>>with
>>>the builder of the model being able to convince the observer that his
>>>questions
>>>can now be answered satisfactorily.

MZ:
>>All observation that concerns me in this case is given by the data of
>>descriptive linguists.  My interest is in providing a theory of linguistic
>>meaning; for well-known reasons, it turns out that this theory is possessed
>>of a metaphysical import.  Hence we obtain an imposing abstract ontology of
>>propositions and concepts.  As for Gould's worries about reification, they
>>concern me no more than Jerry Fallwell's creationist theories concern him;
>>to put it bluntly, as a philosopher, Gould makes a damn good journalist.

SS:
>Of course, Gould is not TRYING to be a philosopher in this book;  so it makes
>little sense to criticize him for not being one!  He IS trying to be a natural
>scientist (to use your own terminology);  and I think he is succeeding at it
>rather well.  He is concerned with how we make observations and how we may
>misinterpret the observations we make.  (He even includes an anecdote about
>his OWN misinterpretation while analyzing the data discussed in this book,
>lest you think he is trying to take a God's-eye view of natural science.)
>On the basis of his studies, he proposes, as a conclusion, that the word
>"intelligence" cannot be reified into a concept which is susceptible to
>measurement.  For you this may move him into philosophy.  For me it is
>a result based on interpretation of evidence which is up there along with
>the observation that position and momentum of electrons cannot both be
>determined with exact precision.  Just let Gould and Minsky go about with
>their natural science, and let's call a peace!

I have no ideaas to what it would take to measure a concept; assuming that
such measurement is, in fact, impossible, would it follow that no relevant
concept actually exists?  I think not; yet that's the conclusion Minsky
would force on me.  And as long as he feels like imposing his spuriosly
produced conclusions on the properly philosophical grounds, there can be no
peace.

>-- 
>Stephen W. Smoliar; Institute of Systems Science
>National University of Singapore; Heng Mui Keng Terrace
>Kent Ridge, SINGAPORE 0511
>Internet:  smoliar@iss.nus.sg


`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'
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: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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