erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Stefan Boleyn) (11/03/90)
(I am cross-posting this to 'comp.ai' for more comments)
In my article <492@pdxgate.cs.pdx.edu> on 'comp.ai.philosophy' I commented
on the current state of discussion in AI/Cognitive Science about the topics of
"conciousness" and "intelligence" primarily, and an e-mail reply was sent to
me commenting on the length of my article (280 lines) and asking that I make
a shorter version of it. (Here it is, don't flame it too badly ;-)
I had four main points and here they are in short:
1) A lot of discussion in AI/CogSci about "conciousness" and
"intelligence" (etc) is inhibited by the lack of a language
(metaphorically speaking) that we can use for it. The terms
we are using are borrowed from our normal social useages and
from psychology/sociology (although I think that they are at
best marginal even there), and from what I have seen of
discussion going on in comp.ai/comp.ai.philosophy and an e-mail
group <cybsys-l@bingvmb.bitnet>, I would definitely say that
they are inadiquate. There is a differentiation of concepts
that happen when one learns about a new subject, and for myself,
at least, I passed up the adiquacy of the language to be clear
a while ago, and I have yet to see (admittedly from my somewhat
scientifically naive point of view) the existence of such a
language.
2) On a similar note, I think that the assumptions brought in
from psychology and sociology, etc. by using *their* admittedly
adopted language are naive in the useful sense. They are useful
since they work with the best known examples we have, but we are
wedding ourselves to too much of the human paradigm. In
mathematics it is an old saying that the hardest things to prove
are the ones we normally take for granted, and I certainly agree
in this case. The connotations are part of what are confusing
us to much. Just because the terms and useages we know are so
eminently useful and practical in the social sense of useage (not
scientific, that is), does not imply in any way that they are
useful to transfer into a scientific domain. Maybe "conciousness"
and "intelligence" are naive questions? I am not sure, but it
is looking more and more so. A related one that comes to mind is
our concept of intentionality, or "purpose". I have come to think
that it is a useful thing to have in terms of object-level
description, but that it may also be a naive notion, one that we
should try to look away from. It was good for a
start, but it is apparent me that we are tripping over ourselves
to get anywhere as a community. So what if we have finely developed
ideas of what is going on, I know I do... but can you communicate
it in any kind of believable way without a considerable amount of
persuasion? It has been my experience that I have developed my
notions to a fine enough extent that it takes a hell of a long
time to communicate it to anyone. We are re-inventing the wheel
far too much.
3) An interesting (but hardly origonal) consideration would be to
think about how we arganize the world internally. There seems to
be a consensus of sorts amoung a good percentage of posters in
this general thread that "higher intelligence" (This so badly
illustrates what I am thinking) is a modeling ability of sorts.
An idea that comes from this is to think of intelligence as an
encoding scheme between inputs and outputs (over time) that on
the low end would be a constant output, and on the high end a
sort of maximal look-up table over time. Our brains certainly
don't handle *all* of the information in from the senses, so in
a sense we are in the middle somewhere.
4) On a related tone to 3, I (and some others, I think), put forward the
idea of attempting to develop a "Turing Test" theory, that would work
at studying invariants in "intelligent" or even "concious" behaviours
or even given some of the internal structure would work from that...
Anyway, it would attempt to try to find ways of difinitively testing
certain things (this is where a language of "AI" would be a lot of
help ;-). An idea would be to think about some kind of complexity
rating for a hypothetical encoding scheme (both "complexity" and
"encoding" are wrong, and possibly inadiquate for this, I know that
if one was to develop something like this, a "complexity" factor would
be only on amung many), which is what I am working on now, although
badly, as can be seen.
This is abbreviated (at least the justifications are), so for a better
reference look to the origonal article, or of course, I'll respond to specific
inquiries. All comments are welcome, and appreciated. I really think
something needs to be done about this, as this "problem", as I see it, has
been around for long enough.
I'm willing to work on this, and would like to know of others who are too.
Erich
/ Erich Stefan Boleyn Internet E-mail: <erich@cs.pdx.edu> \
>--={ Portland State University Honorary Graduate Student (Math) }=--<
\ College of Liberal Arts & Sciences *Mad Genius wanna-be* /
"I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it."