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Article 3862 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: daryl@oracorp.com
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Humongous table-lookup misapprehensions
Message-ID: <1992Feb19.133228.8404@oracorp.com>
Date: 19 Feb 92 13:32:28 GMT
Organization: ORA Corporation
Lines: 51

Jeff Dalton writes: (in response to Michael Gemar)

>> But many cognitive scientists see the purpose of their discipline not to
>> explain *human* intelligence, but intelligence *per se*.

> Don't you think there'd be at least something a bit odd about it if
> Cog Sci ended up explaining intelligence per se but still not human
> intelligence?

It would be odd if human intelligence were not an instance, but there
is nothing odd about saying that the study of intelligence in general
may not explain the *particulars* of human intelligence. By analogy, a
general understanding of algorithms obtained through studying Turing
machines does not help you to understand why ADA has the syntax it
does.

> On the other hand, the recurring suggestion that, because "flying"
> has a more or less behavioral definition, all sorts of words like
> "understanding" and "intentionality" should have a behavioral
> definition too, looks like an attempt to take over all the words, and
> so to win the argument by removing all the vocabulary that we use to
> talk about the interesting cases.  Perhaps we will no longer think
> these words refer to anything interesting after Cog Sci completes its
> task; but I think we should wait until that happens.

I have never heard anyone argue that *because* flying has a behavioral
definition, then understanding does. I have heard just the opposite
argument made; that just as a simulation of flying (for instance, by a
flight simulation program) is not real flying, simulation of
understanding is not real understanding.

I think that your worries about words getting "taken over" are
groundless. Shannon took over the word information when he defined it
as the mathematical measure of the unpredictability of data, but that
hasn't prevented people from using the word in other ways; even in
other technical ways. There are at least three technical meanings of
information:

    1. Shannon's information as a quantitative measure of content of data.
    2. Information flow used by computer security.
    3. Keith Devlin's information defined in terms of Barwise's situations.

In addition to these technical meanings, information is still used in
its informal sense.

In my opinion, technical use of words doesn't "take over" the meaning
of the words unless people lose interest in alternative meanings.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY


