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Article 6245 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Defining "intelligence"
Message-ID: <BILL.92Jun13124510@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>
>From: bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs)
Date: 13 Jun 92 12:45:10
References: <1992Jun10.041831.16727@news.media.mit.edu> <1992Jun10.131608.23965@cs.ucf.edu><1992Jun13.063902.2610@news.media.mit.edu>
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In-reply-to: nlc@media.mit.edu's message of 13 Jun 92 06:39:02 GMT
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nlc@media.mit.edu (Nick Cassimatis) writes:

   clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke) writes:
   >> [ . . . ] The rest of my
   >> post was an attempt to show that the putative limits of understanding
   >> and so forth are not well defined.
   > 
   >Let's define them, if possible!  A good job for collective net
   >intelligence. No?

   Yes, I think that this would be a wonderful task.  But most of the
   discussion here doesn't even bother to do so.  (I've even seen "I
   won't play the definition game.")  There is a criticism of AI that
   goes something like the following: "Define Intelligence.  I don't have
   a definition.  So how can you work on something that is not
   well-defined?"  The response to this is that we are trying to get
   comuters to use language, solve problems and all sorts of other things
   that are not hard to define. 

Definitions are a bit like laws.  There are two kinds of law,
prescriptive (like the "law against committing murder") and
descriptive (like the "law of gravity").  Sophisticated people like us
understand the difference and do not confuse the two.

There are also prescriptive and descriptive *definitions*.  A
prescriptive definition is a set of instructions on how a word is to
be used.  Hard scientists, especially mathematicians, like to begin
with prescriptive definitions of their terms, because then the meaning
of what they say is perfectly clear.

Descriptive definitions are descriptions of how words are used in
practice.  Dictionaries (like Webster's) consist of descriptive
definitions. 

When we are thinking about something like "intelligence", we cannot
begin with a prescriptive definition, because we are trying to
understand the meaning of the word as it is generally used by people.
To prescribe a new meaning is simply to duck the problem.  This is
what Jeff Dalton meant when he said "I won't play the definition
game".  It is quite reasonable, though --- and even necessary -- to
look for a descriptive definition in a situation like this; otherwise
we can never be sure we're all talking about the same thing.

To sum up, I believe the argument here is between people who are
thinking about two different kinds of definition.

	-- Bill


