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From: jaspert@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Jasper Taylor)
Subject: Re: Longley's system really processes data about opinions
In-Reply-To: David Longley's message of Mon, 07 Aug 95 01:38:19 GMT
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References: <807014273snz@longley.demon.co.uk> <JASPERT.95Aug6235203@scott.cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
	<807759499snz@longley.demon.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 1995 10:26:46 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.cognitive:8905 comp.ai.philosophy:31358


In article <807759499snz@longley.demon.co.uk> David Longley <David@longley.demon.co.uk> writes:

> In article <JASPERT.95Aug6235203@scott.cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
> jaspert@cogsci.ed.ac.uk "Jasper Taylor" writes:
>>  In article <807014273snz@longley.demon.co.uk>
>> David@longley.demon.co.uk (David Longley) writes:
>> 
>> > A SYSTEM SPECIFICATION FOR PROFILING BEHAVIOUR
>> 
>> I thought I'd struggle through a bit more of this. I can't see how
>> it can claim to be anything more than a management information
>> tool, with no more relevance to science than a word processing
>> package.
>> 
>> Specifically, it doesn't "get rid of intensional
>> predicates"...instead it is aimed in part at
>> 
>> > providing an infrastructure within which individual inmate
>> targets > can be identified, negotiated, contracted and
>> subsequently monitored > by the first-line staff who have the most
>> contact time with inmates.  > It is emphasised that it is those
>> staff who are responsible for > directly training and supervising
>> inmates within specific domains of > expertise, and for want of an
>> adequate technology, such staff's > observations and assessments
>> often go totally unrecorded. The volume

> Have you read any more than the Executive Summary? If not......

I haven't even read all of that. It's tough going, and I pity those
executives. Now this passage mentions 'negotiations' of individual
targets, and the staff's 'observations and assessments' -- not the
results of any tests or measurements. Longley excuses his inclusion of
the latter with...

> Do you consider the assessments of professional NVQ accredited
> instructors as to what level their students to have attained to be
> mere 'opinions'? 

I'm not sure what they learn to get their NVQ accreditation, but it
must go beyond just administering tests, although not transforming
their professional opinions into anything more than opinions.

> Similarly, if one sets standard objectives for
> someone to reach by fixed stages of a course, do you consider
> assessments of performance through standard tests to be mere
> 'opinions'?

This takes another step away from the original passage, but people's
progress in courses is likely to be influenced by the opinions of
their tutors somehow, no matter what tests are used to measure that
progress.

> Do I detect a whiff of scepticism here? Do you consider doctor's
> diagnoses and physicists' observations, mere opinions which if
> recorded in a DBMS can be no more relevance to science than a 'word
> processing package'.

Another step in the chain of rhetoric leading us gradually from the
subjective to the objective; but we're not there yet. If doctors'
diagnoses are more than opinions, why do we seek second ones? We're
almost there with physicists' observations, as it's supposed to be
only bad physicists who let their expectations clutter those.

> Perhaps the same way that a thermometer and stethoscope are no more
> relevant to medicine than say a prescription pad.....?

Here Longley has finally made his comparison between prison officers'
asessments of inmate behaviour and the process of measuring
temperature with a thermometer.

I've got an idea; if you want to stick to making objective
measurements, why not forget behaviourism and see what insights recent
advances in computing can bring to phrenology?
--
Jasper Taylor                        | /www.cogs  /   |  A politically-correct
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