shebs@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley Shebs) (09/20/83)
I just read Jon Doyle's article about Rational Psychology in the latest AI Magazine (Fall '83), and am also very interested in the ideas therein. The notion of trying to find out what is *possible* for intelligences is very intriguing, not to mention the idea of developing some really sound theories for a change. Perhaps I could mention something I worked on a while back that appears to be related. Empirical work in machine learning suggests that there are different levels of learning - learning by being programmed, learning by being told, learning by example, and so forth, with the levels being ordered by their "power" or "complexity", whatever that means. My question: is there something fundamental about this classification? Are there other levels? Is there a "most powerful" form of learning, and if so, what is it? I took the approach of defining "learning" as "behavior modification", even though that includes forgetting (!), since I wasn't really concerned with whether the learning resulted in an "improvement" in behavior or not. The model of behavior was somewhat interesting. It's kind of a dualistic thing, consisting of two entities: the organism and the environment. The environment is everything outside, including the organsism's own physical body, while the organism is more or less equivalent to a mind. Each of these has a state, and behavior can be defined as functions mapping the set of all states to itself. Both the environment and the organism have behaviors that can be treated in the same way (that is, they are like mirror images of each other). The whole development is too elaborate for an ASCII terminal, but it boiled down to this: that since learning is a part of behavior, but it also *modifies* behavior, then there is a part of the behavior function that is self-modifying. One can then define "1st order learning" as that which modifies ordinary behavior. 2nd order learning would be "learning how to learn", 3rd order would be "learning how to learn how to learn" (whatever *that* means!). The definition of these is more precise than my Anglicization here, and seem to indicate a whole infinite heirarchy of learning types, each supposedly more powerful than the last. It doesn't do much for my original questions, because the usual types of learning are all 1st order - although they don't have to be. Lenat's work on learning heuristics might be considered 2nd order, and if you look at it in the right way, it may actually be that EURISKO actually implements all orders of learning at the same time, so the above discussion is garbage (sigh). Another question that has concerned me greatly (particularly since building my parser) is the relation of the Halting Problem to AI. My program was basically a production system, and had an annoying tendency to get caught in infinite loops of various sorts. More misfeatures than bugs, though, since the theory did not expressly forbid such loops! To take a more general example, why don't circular definitions cause humans to go catatonic? What is the mechanism that seems to cut off looping? Do humans really beat the Halting Problem? One possible mechanism is that repetition is boring, and so all loops are cut off at some point or else pushed so far down on the agenda of activities that they are effectively terminated. What kind of theory could explain this? Yet another (last one folks!) question is one that I raised a while back, about all representations reducing down to attribute-value pairs. Yes, they used to be fashionable but are now out of style, but I'm talking about a very deep underlying representation, in the same way that the syntax of s-expressions underlies Lisp. Counterexamples to my conjecture about AV-pairs being universal were algebraic expressions (which can be turned into s-expressions, which can be turned into AV-pairs) and continuous values, but they must have *some* closed form representation, which can then be reduced to AV-pairs. So I remained unconvinced that the notion of objects with AV-pairs attached is *not* universal (of course, for some things, the representation is so primitive as to be as bad as Fortran, but then this is an issue of possibility, not of goodness or efficiency). Looking forward to comments on all of these questions... stan the l.h. utah-cs!shebs
samir@drufl.UUCP (09/22/83)
To me personally, Rational Psychology is a misnomer. "Rational" negates what "Psychology" wants to understand. Flames to /dev/null. Interesting discussions welcome. Samir Shah drufl!samir AT&T Information Systems, Denver.
leei@princeton.UUCP (09/22/83)
I really think that the ability that we humans have that allows us to avoid looping is the simple ability to recognize a loop in our logic when it happens. This comes as a direct result of our tendency for constant self- inspection and self-evaluation. A machine with this ability, and the ability to inspect its own self-inspections . . ., would probably also be able to "solve" the halting problem. Of course, if the loop is too subtle or deep, then even we cannot see it. This may explain the continued presence of various belief systems that rely on inherently circular logic to get past their fundamental problems. -Lee Iverson ..!princeton!leei
norm@ariel.UUCP (09/23/83)
Samir's view: "To me personally, Rational Psychology
is a misnomer. "Rational" negates
what "Psychology" wants to understand."
How so?
Can you support your claim? What does psychology want to understand that
Rationality negates? Psychology is the Logos of the Psyche or the logic
of the psyche. How does one understand without logic? How does one under-
stand without rationality? What is understand? Isn't language itself depen-
dent upon the rational faculty, or more specifically, upon the ability to form
concepts, as opposed to percepts? Can you understand without language? To
be totally without rationality (lacking the functional capacity for rationality
- the CONCEPTUAL faculty) would leave you without language, and therefore
without understanding. In what TERMS is something said to be understood? How
can terms have meaning without rationality?
Or perhaps you might claim that because men are not always rational that man
does not possess a rational faculty, or that it is defective, or inadequate?
How about telling us WHY you think Rational negates Psychology?
These issues are important to AI, psychology and philosophy students... The
day may not be far off when AI research yields methods of feature abstraction
and integration that approximate percept-formation in humans. The next step,
concept formation, will be much harder. How does an epistemology come about?
What are the sequential steps necessary to form an epistemology of any kind?
By what method does the mind (what's that?) integrate percepts into concepts,
make identifications on a conceptual level ("It is an X"), justify its
identifications ("and I know it is an X because..."), and then decide (what's
that?) what to do about it ("...so therefore I should do Y")?
Do you seriously think that understanding these things won't take Rationality?
Norm Andrews, AT&T Information Systems, Holmdel, N.J. ariel!normsts@ssc-vax.UUCP (Stanley T Shebs) (09/23/83)
(should be posting from utah, but I saw it here first and just couldn't resist...) I think we've got a terminology problem here. The word "rational" is so heavily loaded that it can hardly move! (as net.philosophy readers well know). The term "rational psychology" does seem to exclude non-rational behavior (whatever that is) from consideration, which is not true at all. Rather, the idea is to explore the entire universe of possibilities for intelligent behavior, rather than restricting oneself to observing the average college sophomore or the AI programs small enough to fit on present-day machines. Let me propose the term "universal psychology" as a substitute, analogous to the mathematical study of universal algebras. Fewer connotations, and it better suggests the real thrust of this field - the study of *possible* intelligent behavior. stan the r.h. (of lightness) ssc-vax!sts (but mail to harpo!utah-cs!shebs)
samir@drufl.UUCP (Shah) (09/26/83)
Norm, Let me elaborate. Psychology, or logic of mind, involves BOTH rational and emotional processes. To consider one exclusively defeats the purpose of understanding. I have not read the article we are talking about so I cannot comment on that article, but an example of what I consider a "Rational Psychology" theory is "Personal Construct Theory" by Kelly. It is an attractive theory but, in my opinion, it falls far short of describing "logic of mind" as it fails to integrate emotional aspects. I consider learning-concept formation-creativity to have BOTH rational and emotional attributes, hence it would be better if we studied them as such. I may be creating a dichotomy where there is none. (Rational vs. Emotional). I want to point you to an interesting book "Metaphors we live by" (I forget the names of Authors) which in addition to discussing many other ai-related (without mentioning ai) concepts discusses the question of Objective vs. Subjective, which is similar to what we are talking here, Rational vs. Emotional. Thanks. Samir Shah AT&T Information Systems, Denver. drufl!samir
norm@ariel.UUCP (09/27/83)
Actually, the word "rational" in "rational psychology" is merely redundant. One would hope that psychology would be, as other sciences, rational. This would in no way detract from its ability to investigate the causes of human irrationality. No science really should have to be prefaced with the word "rational", since we should be able to assume that science is not "irrational". Anyone for "Rational Chemistry"? Please note that the scientist's "flash of insight", "intuituion", "creative leap" is heavily dependent upon the rational faculty, the faculty of CONCEPT-FORMATION. We also rely upon the rational faculty for verifying and for evaluating such insights and leaps. --Norm Andrews, AT&T Information Systems, Holmdel, New Jersey
fostel@ncsu.UUCP (09/28/83)
I must say its been exciting listenning to the analysis of what "Rational
Psychology" might mean or should not mean. Should I go read the actual
article that started it all? Perish the thought. Is psychology rational?
Someone said that all sciences are rational, a moot point, but not that
relevant unless one wishes to consider Psychology a science. I do not.
This does not mean that psychologists are in any way inferior to chemists
or to REAL scientists like those who study physics. But I do think there
is a difference IN KIND between these fields and psychology. Very few of
us have any close intimate relationships with carbon compounds or inter-
stellar gas clouds. (At least not since the waning of the LSD era.) But
with psychology, anyone NOT in this catagory has no business in the field.
(I presume we are talking Human psychology.)
The way this difference might exert itself is quite hard to predict, tho
in my brief forray into psychology it was not so hard to spot. The great
danger is a highly amplied form of anthropomorphism which leads one to
form technical opinions quite possibly unrelated to technical or theoretical
analysis. In physics, there is a superficially similar process in which
the scientist develops a theory which seems to be a "pet theory" and then
sets about trying to show it true or false. The difference is that the
physisist developed his pet theory from technical origins rather than from
personal experience. There is no other origin for his ideas unless you
speculate that people have a in-born understanding of psi-mesons or spin
orbitals. Such theories MUST have developed from these ideas. In
psychology, the theory may well have been developed from a big scary dog
when the psychologist was two. THAT is a differnce in kind, and I think
that is why I will always be suspicious of psychologists.
----GaryFostel----dinitz@uicsl.UUCP (09/30/83)
#R:drufl:-67000:uicsl:15500008:000:217 uicsl!dinitz Sep 29 09:55:00 1983 The book mentioned, Metaphors We Live By, was written by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. It contains some excellent ideas and is written in a style that makes for fast, enjoyable reading. --Rick Dinitz uicsl!dinitz
fostel@ncsu.UUCP (10/05/83)
Someones recent attempt to make the meaning of "Rational Psychology" seem
trivial misses the point a number of people have made in commenting on the
odd nature of the name. The reasoning was something like this:
1) rational "X" means the same thing in spite of what "X" is.
2) => rational psychology is a clear and simple thing
3) wake up guys, youre being dumb.
Well, I think this line misses at least one point. The argument above
is probably sound provided one accepts the initial premise, which I do not
neccessarily accept. Another example of the logic may help.
1) Brute Force elaboration solve problems of set membership. E.g. just
look at the item and compare it with every member of the set. This
is a true statement for a wide range of possible sets.
2) Real Numbers are a kind of set.
3) Wake up Cantor, youre wasting (or wasted) your time.
It seems quite clear that in the latter example, the premise is naive and
simply fails to apply to sets of infinite proportions. (Or more properly
one must go to some effort to justify such use.)
The same issue applies to the notion of Rational Psychology. Does it make
sense to attempt to apply techniques which may be completely inadequate?
Rational analysis may fail completely to explain the workings of the mind,
esp when we are looking at the "non-analytic" capabilities that are
implied by psychology. We are on the edge of a philosophical debate, with
terms like "dual-ism" and "phsical-ism" etc marking out party lines.
It may be just as rediculous to some people to propose a rational study
of psychology as it seems to most of us that one use finite analysis
to deal with trans-finite cardinalities as it seems to some people to
propose to explain the mind via physics alone. Clearly, the people who
expect rational analytic method to be fruitful in the field of psychology
are welcome to coin a new name for themselve. But if they, or anyone else
has really "Got it now" please write a dissertation on the subject and
enter history along side Kant, St Thomas Aquinus, Kierkergard ....
----GaryFostel----