ISSSSM@NUSVM.BITNET (Stephen Smoliar) (06/13/91)
In article <1991Jun12.221121.15828@watdragon.waterloo.edu> cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu (cameron shelley) writes: >In article <1991Jun12.130817.3621@kingston.ac.uk> is_s425@kingston.ac.uk >(Hutchison C S) writes: > >>It seems to me that talk of 'partial truths', 'negotiation', and so on, may >>not get us very far. If I'm negotiating with you, I'm really just trying to >>tell you why you are (mostly) wrong and I am (mostly) right. If I adduce >>evidence to support my claims, then we may end up negotiating what counts as >>evidence. We're stuck in a hopeless regress. (Try telling one billion >>Christians or one billion Muslims they're wrong -- especially if it is >>perfectly obvious to you that Humanistic Buddhism is the only right way. Try >>negotiating with the Jehovah's Witness on your doorstep. Try telling the >>free market liberal about the unspeakable suffering and brutality that >>capitalism has wrought upon the cheap labour markets of the Third World.) > >What you seem to be saying is that the *process* of understanding (or >failing to understand) is very hard in difficult cases. Actually, I think that Chris may be saying more than that. I think he also seems to believe that there is some single, fixed resolution to negotiation. My own position is that this is a serious mistake. Any view of intelligence which does not take into account the ongoing nature of behavior is bound to miss the mark; and this includes the fact that negotiations are rarely (if ever) resolved absolutely. > >>To get things in context, despite the political flavour that my question may >>appear to have taken on, my main concern is with automatic knowledge >>acquisition >>from text (whatever kind of text it may be). My problem is: is knowledge >>representation going to be about an intelligent agent's models of the >>physical world or of speakers' reports about the world? This is a technical >>rather than a philosophical issue since it impinges directly on what kinds >>of inference and what sources of knowledge are relevant to the reasoning >>process. > >Like Carbonell's (and Hovy's) systems, a model of the physical world will >require 'objective' input at some point. Since this is not really possible, >I would select option b) you give above. The other possibility is to try to get the objectivity out of the first option. As I pointed out in my previous article, the REAL problem with those African headline lies in trying to assume a "generic" reader. Even Carbonell's liberals and conservatives are basically "generic." When they read about military action in Bhutan, they do not have to worry about running a business there. If we try to build intelligence agents which are less abstract and more subjective, we might be able to make some progress on Chris' first option. =============================================================================== Stephen W. Smoliar Institute of Systems Science National University of Singapore Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Kent Ridge SINGAPORE 0511 BITNET: ISSSSM@NUSVM "He was of Lord Essex's opinion, 'rather to go an hundred miles to speak with one wise man, than five miles to see a fair town.'"--Boswell on Johnson