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Article 5667 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: AI failures
Message-ID: <1992May14.234328.12094@news.media.mit.edu>
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References: <1992May13.173251.17396@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992May13.234419.17060@news.media.mit.edu> <92May14.134243edt.47895@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Date: Thu, 14 May 1992 23:43:28 GMT
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In article <92May14.134243edt.47895@neat.cs.toronto.edu> cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>Marvin Minsky applauds Bill Skaggs:
 etc.>
> 
>Professor Minsky backs himself up by quoting an eminent authority:
>| Section 5.2 UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS ...
>|   What caused the universe, and why?  
>|   What is the purpose of life?
>|   How can you tell which beliefs are true?  
>|   How can you tell what is good?
>| 
>| These questions seem different on the surface, but all of them share
>| one quality which makes them impossible to answer: all of them are
>| circular! 

> ...  Even if I am wrong, his sentiment
>and Marvin's boosting of it help to promote a discouraging, and perhaps even
>a dangerous, view, which is that there is no point to moral reasoning since
>"it's all circular". 

1. Well, I don't know what you mean by discouraging.  Discouragement is
in the mind of the listener, not in the nature of the assertion.

2. Dangerous to whom, and how.  The danger of faithfully adopting some
unsupported answers to questions is hard to assess.  Please elaborate.

3. In your fit of annoyance, perhaps you didn't actually read the
whole page. I didn't say there was no point; onm the contrary I
suggested that there were powerful and perhaps productive social
consequences:

  All human cultures evolve institutions of law, religion, and
  philosophy, and these institutions both adopt specific answers to
  circular questions, and establish authority-schemes to indoctrinate
  people with those beliefs.  One might complain that such
  establishments substitute dogma for reason and truth.  But in
  exchange, they spare whole populations from wasting time in fruitless
  reason-loops.  Minds can lead more productive lives when working on
  problems which can be solved.
     But when thinking keeps returning to its source, it doesn't always
  mean that something's wrong.  For circular thinking can lead to growth
  when it results, at each return, in deeper and more powerful ideas.
  Then, because we can communicate, such systems of ideas may even find
  the means to cross the boundaries of selfish selves - and thus take
  root in other minds.  This way, a language, science, or philosophy can
  transcend the limitation of each single mind's mortality.  [Atheistic
  joke deleted here.]

I suppose that this idea might be considered dangerous.  I suppose
that ignoring this view is also dangerous.  Are you saying that we
should support moral reasoning under all circumstances, even it if has
circular foundations, and no matter where it might lead?  My goodness,
what _are_ you trying to say?

.


