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From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Subject: Re: On Going Beyond The Information Given & 'Cognition'
References: <400mb0$l5b@mp.cs.niu.edu> <807660805snz@longley.demon.co.uk> <405bi9$i7q@zen.hursley.ibm.com>
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Date: Fri, 11 Aug 1995 09:03:16 GMT
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In article <405bi9$i7q@zen.hursley.ibm.com> jmendoza@shawnee.cse.ucsc.edu (Jose L. Mendoza) writes:

>that, through accident or bad luck or bad judgement,
>I might end up in prison - an English prison.

>Without seeking to pass judgement on the approriateness of
>David Longley's *techniques*, it worries me in the extreme
>that I might become someone at the receiving end of this sort 
>of closed-minded extensionalist dogma. It worries me enormously 
>that David is unable to separate extensionalism from what doesn't 
>seem particularly controversial - that clinical judgement would
>benefit from improved documentation.

This is excellent news. The next step is to work out how to
communicate this fear to the burglars, muggers, and other sundry
recidivists who currently overfill our prisons. The first step is
obviously to have philosophy classes in jail. Is David Longley's PROBE
the right tool for monitoring the philosophical progress of the
inmates? I think there could be difficulties here, at least as far as
traditional academic methods of establishing the philosophical views
and competences of students goes. While philosophy is rather too
subtle for multiple choice exams to be a good assessment tool, we
could perhaps compromise by encouraging the inmates to express their
views by means of extensive quotation from established authorities.
With suitable measurements, this would go some way towards bringing
their philosophical progress within PROBEable scope.

There does of course remain the knotty problem of critical review and
debate. I must confess this baffles me, since it is not possible to
capture this within the quotational style, yet stepping outside that
style renders their behaviour difficult to PROBE unless the
philosophical assumptions behind PROBE itself are changed. And we can
hardly do that if we hope to reduce recidivism by communicating Jose
Mendoza's fear of prison to them. It's all rather distressingly
circular.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@aifh.ed.ac.uk         +44 (0)131 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
"The mind reigns, but does not govern" -- Paul Valery
