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Article 3142 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Philosophy of comp.ai.philosophy
Message-ID: <1992Jan25.063954.10180@a.cs.okstate.edu>
Date: 25 Jan 92 06:39:54 GMT
Organization: Oklahoma State University, Computer Science, Stillwater
Lines: 124


				    It appears that there is a large misunderstanding about what
philosophy is.  Of course, as any philosopher will tell you,
philosophy itself has been in crisis, in the Kuhnsian(The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions) sense of the word, since its
inception.  However, this does not necessarily mean that
philosophers babble without rhyme or reason.  
	Sciences, such as Computer Science, verify the validity of a
particular scientific statement made by means of an prior
assumptions..  That is to say, that the validity that one expects
from science is consistency with its own principles.  For
example, perhaps Science's most fundamental principle is what we
call in philosophy the "Correspondence Thesis" which means that
to denote an expression TRUE it must correspond to some physical
event or condition in the "REAL" world.  Theoretical Physics, for
example, is not considered as much a hard science as a
conglomeration of extremely precise mathematics (thus, a field of
mathematics more than science) and philosophy. Until
corresponding verification can be made, a statement made by a
theoretical physicist would not be considered a scientifically
true.  The correspondence thesis is only an example of the types
of preconceptions it uses to achieve what it does.  Some may
argue that science has moved so rapidly because it can, unlike
philosophy, agree on something steadfast and proceed from there. 

	    Philosophy, on the other hand, has the job of verifying the
validity of thesises (preconceptions, assumptions or basic
principles) that any field, including philosophy itself, uses to
come to conclusions within that field.  Whereas science concerns
itself with verification of data samples to prove a particular
theory; philosophy questions the very foundation (and whether
there exist any) of science itself.  In short, the principles by
which the sciences proceed are, in their essence, philosophical
principles that continue to be scrutinized by philosophers. 
Science has built its own system of truth based upon a taken-for-
granted underlying system and verifies itself repeatedly in this
process.  In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger uses this as an
example of a system whose TRUTH encloses itself in a circle. 
Science assumes the correspondence thesis to be true and precedes
to verify other theorems taking the correspondence thesis to be
true and then uses the results of those other thesis to verify
the correspondence thesis itself.  For Heidegger, this is a
closed circle; in logic, it assumes what you are trying to prove.

	   The point of this article, however, is not to discredit
either philosophy or the sciences; they both have their place. 
It is to point out some essential differences between the two
that can make philosophers and scientists misunderstand each
other.  I see an awful lot of this going on here on
comp.ai.philosophy.  Scientists claim that philosophers question
everything and do no good.  Philosophers claim that scientists
proceed on possibly mistaken assumptions and may not be doing
anything significant.  On this forum, for example, a scientist
may argue that the actual production of a robot means that we
have figured out the intelligence of a human (Strong AI according
to John Searle), a philosopher is more inclined to say that,
whether or not the production ever happens, the results may or
may not be ontologically or epistemologically significant.  In
fact, in most cases, as I see it, AI continually makes category
mistakes and, furthermore, confuses and conflates the meaning of
words quite frequently.  Philosophy, on the other hand, will try
to point out the confusion; although, they too are subject to
error.  A philosophy (or philosopher) which attempts to clarify
definitions so that a scientist will "say what they mean" is
using a type of philosophy known as the Analytic Philosophy.  The
analytic tradition of philosophy is concerned with the "meaning"
of things, which is their internal and external consistency. 
(Interestingly enough, it appears that a large chunk of
Artificial Intelligence uses analytical philosophy ideas to
support their arguments; whether they know they have done this or
not.)  However, the process of "doing philosophy" is, in part,
the process of verifying the meaning of the words being used; so
in a sense, yes philosophers ask a lot of questions; but, it
should not be assumed that they are unnecessary.
	The problem that this creates is that scientists frequently
use words in unclear ways to help them get their research
programs off of the ground(which they will later, most likely,
clarify).  Analytic philosophers, on the other hand, find this
repulsive.  So an analytic philosopher will attack a scientist on
philosophic ground and the scientist will return in like kind on
a scientific ground.  In effect the two are arguing on two
different stances; and thus, although there seems to be, no clash
actually exists.  By analogy, a lot of philosopher/scientist AI
debate is like the Pro-choice/Pro-Life debate.  That is to say,
they are founded on two different arguments that do not clash. 
As to philosophers who can not identify this; SHAME ON YOU,
because this is your task.  
	The above is an outline of the problem.  The solution is to
either argue on strictly philosophic or scientific grounds.  Some
may say, "That's obvious"; but I reply "That that is obvious is
not so obvious."  Another solution is to actually read the
material that one is arguing on.  Frequently, misunderstandings
in argumentation arise because one individual has taken the time
to read the article; the other has not.  It is easy to identify
who has read what they are talking about and who has not.  The
Searle argument never would have continued on in the way that it
did if most of the people had actually read what they were
talking about.  I could not even begin to trace the
inconsistencies, both internally and externally, of the
argumentation that I saw within 30 pages.  I also have to say
that a lot of people mention ideas and concepts borrowed from
other people's works.  Whereas, I do not believe this is
intentional plagiarism, it would be quite helpful if people would
at least site the document that they are referring to or at least
the author.  Some people may actually take the time to read the
article if they knew what it was.  For example, the chinese room
argument first appeared in "Minds, Brains and Programs" by John
Searle in about 1981.
	    I don't mean to be a gripe.  The debate can be fun; but it
becomes pointless if people can not argue in clash and in "the
know."  I hope that the above differentiation helps both
philosophers and scientists alike when they are replying to
articles posted by other people.

BCnya,
 Charles O. Onstott, III
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles O. Onstott, III                  P.O. Box 2386
Undergraduate in Philosophy              Stillwater, Ok  74076
Oklahoma State University                onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu

"The most abstract system of philosophy is, in its method and purpose, 
nothing more than an extremely ingenious combination of natural sounds."
                                              -- Carl G. Jung


