eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) (10/07/89)
;In article <11627@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> finin@prc.unisys.com (Tim Finin) writes:
;;One of the crucial problems facing natural language research is the
;;interpretation of language in context. This requires not only
;;sophisticated systems to analyze the underlying structure of language,
;;but also the representation of general knowledge about the world, and
;;the modelling of natural inference processes. In this talk I will look
;;at one particular problem that requires both structural constraints
;;and inference in order to identify the correct interpretation, namely
;;the identification of the intentions of the speaker.
To which I wrote:
;Evidently Artificial Intelligence has not yet met Jacques Derrida.
I've been asked to explain myself. Well now, just didn't you fall into the
trap though. Even with a sophisticated system to analyze the underlying
structure of what I said, namely your brain, general knowledge about the
world and the ability to make inferences, you still can't identify the
correct interpretation of what I said, namely the identification of my
intentions.
Yes yes I know. What you REALLY mean is that you're going to ask your
program to show you the large screwdriver (ref: Winston & Horn, LISP,
2nd Ed., pg 302). Or have I failed to identify your intentions?lammens@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU (Joe Lammens) (10/10/89)
In article <10744@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes: > >;Evidently Artificial Intelligence has not yet met Jacques Derrida. > >I've been asked to explain myself. Well now, just didn't you fall into the >trap though. Even with a sophisticated system to analyze the underlying >structure of what I said, namely your brain, general knowledge about the >world and the ability to make inferences, you still can't identify the >correct interpretation of what I said, namely the identification of my >intentions. > Next thing you know we'll be reading deconstructionist `theory' in this newsgroup. Before that happens: that is of no possible importance to AI. Even the people who are going on and on about not being able to deduce the writer's intentions from a text, how a text is a world in itself with a million meanings and how it is full of contradictions, do not apply their own `theories' to their own writings on the subject, since that would imply that their writings are meaningless or at least not usable as vehicles for talking about their beloved subject. They very much want their readers to deduce the writer's intentions from the text, though they'd probably rather drop dead than admit it :-). Sound confusing? It's nothing compared to deconstructionism. Of deconstructionists, Save us Lord! Joe Lammens BITNET: lammens@sunybcs.BITNET Internet: lammens@cs.Buffalo.EDU UUCP: ...!{watmath,boulder,decvax,rutgers}!sunybcs!lammens
eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) (10/10/89)
In article <11577@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> lammens@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU.UUCP (Joe Lammens) writes:
;Even the people who are going on and on about not being able to
;deduce the writer's intentions from a text, how a text is a world in
;itself with a million meanings and how it is full of contradictions,
;do not apply their own `theories' to their own writings on the
;subject, since that would imply that their writings are meaningless or
;at least not usable as vehicles for talking about their beloved
;subject.
As a matter of fact you're wrong, which is why deconstruction offers no
reading method, at least one that can be couched in propositional terms.
The implications of this idea would, of course, be disasterous for
those factions of AI that do feel that the discernment of meaning and
intention is subject to rule decomposition, if it were to be taken
seriously. Eventually, I strongly suspect, it will be.
;They very much want their readers to deduce the writer's
;intentions from the text, though they'd probably rather drop dead than
;admit it :-).
If "they" were justified in wanting "their readers" to "deduce"
"their intentions" we or they would be living in a different world altogether,
possibly one called shrdlu, certainly not one called earth. First of all,
intentions are inferred or abducted, certainly not "deduced." Second of
all I assume that you exclude yourself from this class, otherwise you would
say, "They want me to deduce their intentions," or "They wanted me to deduce
their intentions and I have" which you don't because you're unable to and
merely infer that there are others who can. And thirdly your statement is
literally false, in that no text is readable in isolation. richard@munnari.cs.mu.oz (Number 6) (10/10/89)
Ok, ok, already! Can anyone explain just what the various claims for the usefulness or otherwise of Derrida's ideas actually are? Or are we just going to keep struggling along in the `my paradigm is bigger than your paradigm' vein? richard
lammens@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU (Joe Lammens) (10/10/89)
In article <10780@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes: >In article <11577@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> lammens@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU.UUCP (Joe Lammens) writes: > >;Even the people who are going on and on about not being able to >;deduce the writer's intentions from a text, how a text is a world in >;itself with a million meanings and how it is full of contradictions, >;do not apply their own `theories' to their own writings on the >;subject, since that would imply that their writings are meaningless or >;at least not usable as vehicles for talking about their beloved >;subject. > >As a matter of fact you're wrong, which is why deconstruction offers no >reading method, at least one that can be couched in propositional terms. >The implications of this idea would, of course, be disasterous for >those factions of AI that do feel that the discernment of meaning and >intention is subject to rule decomposition, if it were to be taken >seriously. Eventually, I strongly suspect, it will be. > Now how can I be wrong in stating something like that, given that your own paradigm states that you cannot infer/abduct (nice lingo :-)) any singular meaning from what I wrote, let alone what I intended to write? Saying that I'm wrong implies (or presupposes, if you like fancier terms) that you inferred a propositional meaning from what I wrote, and then decided on the truth value of it, the outcome being "false". Now that is exactly what I meant: even you, a proponent of deconstructionism I suppose, do not apply your theory in practice, since that makes everything meaningless and/or communication impossible. I think deconstructionism should be confined to the area of literary theory/criticism; it has no value outside of that, as its proponents continually demonstrate, perhaps unwittingly. It's certainly not going to provide a basis for NL understanding work in AI. Please explain yourself if you think it does, I really would like to know. And forgive me if I sounded a bit unrespectful. Joe Lammens BITNET: lammens@sunybcs.BITNET Internet: lammens@cs.Buffalo.EDU UUCP: ...!{watmath,boulder,decvax,rutgers}!sunybcs!lammens
eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) (10/11/89)
In article <11597@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> lammens@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU.UUCP (Joe Lammens) writes: ;In article <10780@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes: ;>In article <11577@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> lammens@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU.UUCP (Joe Lammens) writes: ;> ;>;Even the people who are going on and on about not being able to ;>;deduce the writer's intentions from a text, how a text is a world in ;>;itself with a million meanings and how it is full of contradictions, ;>;do not apply their own `theories' to their own writings on the ;>;subject, since that would imply that their writings are meaningless or ;>;at least not usable as vehicles for talking about their beloved ;>;subject. ;>As a matter of fact you're wrong, which is why deconstruction offers no ;>reading method, at least one that can be couched in propositional terms. ;>The implications of this idea would, of course, be disasterous for ;>those factions of AI that do feel that the discernment of meaning and ;>intention is subject to rule decomposition, if it were to be taken ;>seriously. Eventually, I strongly suspect, it will be. ;Now how can I be wrong in stating something like that, given that your ;own paradigm states that you cannot infer/abduct (nice lingo :-)) any ;singular meaning from what I wrote, let alone what I intended to ;write? Look, "deconstructing the deconstructionists" is as old as the hills. The trouble is that it predates the deconstructionists and so is already a part of their discourse. It's like trying to defraud Freud by subjecting his writings to freudian analysis. You can do it, but what does it show? Either an awareness or a lack of awareness that the text was subject to decomposition in this way. Deconstructionist texts are partly informed -- or, as a deconstructionist would say, "constructed" -- by this awareness, and that's what makes them so complicated. To deconstruct a text is not to show that a text has contradictions and is therefore meaningless. What a deconstructionist tries to do is to restructure the priorities of a text by analyzing the contradictory "awarenesses" and intentions which participate in its construction. A simple priority, for example, is that "a text exists in order to convey the intention of its author." This model is good enough for Unix shell commands. When I say "ls" my immediate intention is to make "ls" do whatever it's defined as doing. But the model is not good enough for natural languages, because "conveying intentions" or "understanding" is not necessarily a priority of natural language. The kind of language that is described by these priorities is really a command language, as when, for example, the Feldwebel says "Raus!" and the POW obeys. It isn't really natural language at all. It's a kind of glorified Unix shell language. Natural language is partly constructed through an awareness that the recipient of the message WILL interpret and restructure the text according to his particular priorities. Natural language does not assume that the relationship of speaker to recipient is that of master to slave. And whatever assumptions are made of the recipient are partly determinants of the shape of natural language. In order to understand language, in the sense of standing back and trying to see how it works, it needs to be deconstructed. You need to ascertain the nature of the awarenesses, multiple and conflicting, that are constructed by the fact, at the very least, that its purposes are intended to act within the world of human discourse. And that's why I think that machine understanding of natural language has failed, and will continue to fail. This isn't to deny that machines can't be instructed to parse a limited subset of English, defined over a finite and knowable set of intentions. But this is no longer natural language. This language makes assumptions that are never made in natural language, one of which is that "I happen to be talking to a machine which has no real understanding." And I don't see the point, except to sell business applications, of pretending that anything significant has been accomplished by writing programs that are able to sustain the illusion that understanding has taken place for all of three minutes. If an artificer of intelligence is seriously interested in gaining some basic understanding of what it is he's supposed to be doing, I think that these expectations and "research goals" ought to be jettisoned, or, at least, laughed at. They are naive.
adt@castle.ed.ac.uk (A.Turland) (10/11/89)
In article <11597@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> lammens@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU.UUCP (Joe Lammens) writes: >In article <10780@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes: >>In article <11577@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> lammens@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU.UUCP (Joe Lammens) writes: >> >>;Even the people who are going on and on about not being able to >>;deduce the writer's intentions from a text, how a text is a world in >>;itself with a million meanings and how it is full of contradictions, >>;do not apply their own `theories' to their own writings on the >>;subject, since that would imply that their writings are meaningless or >>;at least not usable as vehicles for talking about their beloved >>;subject. Deconstruction is a method which is parasitic upon texts (no texts no deconstruction) and as such is applicable to texts of a deconstructionist nature. Some authors indicate/utilise this parasitising at the same time as applying it to other texts producing so-called self-deconstructing texts. Applying deconstructive methods does not *require* an author to generate a self-deconstructing text. Simply because a text has "margins" and multiple interpretations does not render it meaningless (in fact meanings are multiplied). As texts are viewed classically there is a standard interpretation (over which there can be dispute); all that deconstruction demonstrates (for me) is that no standard interpretation can be independent of the use to which the interpretation is to be put. >> >>As a matter of fact you're wrong, which is why deconstruction offers no >>reading method, at least one that can be couched in propositional terms. >> > I think deconstructionism should be confined to the area >of literary theory/criticism; it has no value outside of that, as its >proponents continually demonstrate, perhaps unwittingly. It's >certainly not going to provide a basis for NL understanding work in >AI. Please explain yourself if you think it does, I really would like >to know. And forgive me if I sounded a bit unrespectful. If you are using texts, then literary theory/criticism is implicitly relevant to them. I suspect that even formal mathematics texts could be shown to have "margins" which allow the generation of contradictory interpretations if the analysis is taken to a deep enough level. The standard interpretation in this instance is of use in a well-defined domain and the dependence on the use of the interpretation welcomed instead of disparaged! If you are not worried that the standard interpretation is dependent on the use to which you want to put it, then i don't think there is any problem for you in ignoring deconstruction (although you will miss out on all that free play :-)). > >Joe Lammens alan
lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) (10/12/89)
From article <10791@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, by eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman): " ... A simple priority, for example, is that "a text exists " in order to convey the intention of its author." This model is good enough " for Unix shell commands. When I say "ls" my immediate intention is to make ""ls" do whatever it's defined as doing. ... Maybe you're debugging ls, to figure out just what it is defined as doing. The response you get from ls depends on who you are -- root or not, person who has a right to expect a response (permissions) or not. " Natural language is partly constructed through an awareness that the recipient " of the message WILL interpret and restructure the text according to his " particular priorities. I see a difference in degree of complexity, but no difference in kind. " Natural language does not assume that the relationship " of speaker to recipient is that of master to slave. And whatever assumptions " are made of the recipient are partly determinants of the shape of natural " language. ... I think I understand the game here. It's to make natural language seem as impenetrable as possible and computer language seem very simple -- to load the dice in favor of obscurantism. But you oversimplified your pragmatic account of `ls', which was already, I suppose, the most primitive example of communication with a computer that occurred to you. And you overcomplicate your account of natural language. *Sometimes* specific assumptions about the hearer's circumstances partly determine the form of natural language expressions, sure. But if this pragmatic dependency were crucial to human communication, you'd have no idea what I'm (trying to) say now. If you will note the use of `this' and `now' in the preceding sentence, you will see that the context required for the interpretation of such deictic expressions can be established with just a few sentences, and can probably be analyzed syntactically rather than pragmatically. Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu
lammens@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU (Joe Lammens) (10/15/89)
In article <10791@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes: > >Look, "deconstructing the deconstructionists" is as old as the hills. It's not me who declared everything to be a text and therefore amenable to deconstruction, which seems to include writings on deconstruction. They are definitely texts, no? If it is not justified to deconstruct them than that confirms that deconstruction should be limited to the domain of literary theory/criticism, and that it cannot be sensibly applied outside of those domains. >To deconstruct a text is not to show that >a text has contradictions and is therefore meaningless. What a >deconstructionist tries to do is to restructure the priorities of a text by >analyzing the contradictory "awarenesses" and intentions which participate >in its construction. A simple priority, for example, is that "a text exists >in order to convey the intention of its author." This model is good enough >for Unix shell commands. When I say "ls" my immediate intention is to make >"ls" do whatever it's defined as doing. But the model is not good enough for >natural languages, because "conveying intentions" or "understanding" is not >necessarily a priority of natural language. The kind of language that is ^^^^^^^^^^^ >described by these priorities is really a command language, as when, for >example, the Feldwebel says "Raus!" and the POW obeys. It isn't really >natural language at all. It's a kind of glorified Unix shell language. That is an interesting explanation of deconstructionism. And you're quite right about the necessarily, but I think work in NL understanding usually assumes that the language in question *is* primarily meant to convey "intentions" or "understanding". Although I'm not sure about work in story-understanding in this respect. I don't know of any work trying to interpret poetry, for instance. But I'm sure you wouldn't want that :-). But your comment seems to imply that what we are writing here (and also what deconstructionists write about their theory) belongs to the domain of command languages, not the natural languages, since the priorities are clearly "conveying intentions" or "understanding" in this case, wouldn't you agree? I would be perfectly happy with an NL understanding system that could read and understand what we are writing here. If you want to call this kind of discourse a glorified shell language, that is fine with me. As long as we both know what we mean by it :-). >Natural language is partly constructed through an awareness that the recipient >of the message WILL interpret and restructure the text according to his >particular priorities. Natural language does not assume that the relationship >of speaker to recipient is that of master to slave. I think nobody doubts that. >[...] >And that's why I think that machine understanding of natural language has >failed, and will continue to fail. Now here is what your postings were really about: you do not *believe* that NL understanding in an AI system is possible, and you find that Derrida's theories support your belief. The former is an interesting proposition worthy of discussion, but I do not agree with the latter. Or have I abducted the wrong intentions from your writings? >This isn't to deny that machines can't >be instructed to parse a limited subset of English, defined over a finite >and knowable set of intentions. But this is no longer natural language. This >language makes assumptions that are never made in natural language, one of >which is that "I happen to be talking to a machine which has no real >understanding." I think the assumption in NL understanding work is exactly that the machine does have (or could have) real understanding. But what does it mean to have real understanding? That discussion has been going on at length here and elsewhere, without any satisfactory outcome. >[...] If an artificer of intelligence is >seriously interested in gaining some basic understanding of what it is >he's supposed to be doing, I think that these expectations and "research >goals" ought to be jettisoned, or, at least, laughed at. They are naive. That sums up your presuppositions rather nicely. Joe Lammens BITNET: lammens@sunybcs.BITNET Internet: lammens@cs.Buffalo.EDU UUCP: ...!{watmath,boulder,decvax,rutgers}!sunybcs!lammens
sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu (Celso Alvarez) (10/15/89)
From article <10791@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, by eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman): >"Natural language is partly constructed through an awareness that the recipient >"of the message WILL interpret and restructure the text according to his >"particular priorities. >"Natural language does not assume that the relationship of speaker to >"recipient is that of master to slave. And whatever assumptions are made of >"the recipient are partly determinants of the shape of natural language. ... Similarly, in article <5086@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) writes: >*Sometimes* specific assumptions about the hearer's circumstances partly >determine the form of natural language expressions, sure. As a hypothesis, I have no problems with the above statements. It's nice, it makes sense. But, is it provable? If we view assumptions as *determinant* of speech forms we cannot avoid methodological circularity. Anything in natural language could thus be (unsatisfactorily) explained in terms of speaker's presuppositions operating as variables or originating principles on language production. In turn, we could then make explicit those presuppositions in terms of the language forms encountered in the text. What would that explain? If we're dealing with interpretation, there is no other way out of this circularity but by looking internally at the discursive process to document `awareness' and `intentions' in terms of the sequential organization of interaction (verbal and non-verbal exchanges). The farthest I personally can go in this perspective is to postulate that in the interpretive process a given form of linguistic action *signals* for a given hearer a given intention. This signalling effect is documentable through the listener's subsequent responses, which interactionally *count as* indexes that the listener has engaged in an inferential process about the speaker's intentionality when producing such turn. In the light of this interpretation the listener in turn produces another form of linguistic action *to the effect that* (a) the signalling effect of the first action is acknowledged, and (b) subsequent actions are to be interpreted to be in some kind of (note: *some kind of*) relationship with the other speaker's previous action(s). Why do I get the impression that contributors to this discussion, despite being talking about interpretations carried out by social actors, by human subjects, have nevertheless problems in conceiving of natural language as action? Am I in the wrong newsgroup? Celso Alvarez sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu
lammens@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU (Joe Lammens) (10/16/89)
Come to think of it again, probably the only way one can hope to do
any kind of useful NL processing is to *assume* that the participants
in the conversation (be they human or machine) share a minimal set of
beliefs about the language they are using, the purpose of the
conversation, the world around them, etc (cp. Grice's Maxims for
instance). If not, communication will be pretty much impossible.
Perhaps that assumption is not made in deconstructionist theories,
which may be an interesting exercise but, as I posed before, not very
relevant to NL processing in AI. An interesting question is what to do
if one finds out that some of the beliefs assumed to be shared turn
out not to be, and how one finds out in the first place. Some of the
foregoing discussion seemed to amount to exactly this kind of discovery.
Joe Lammens
BITNET: lammens@sunybcs.BITNET Internet: lammens@cs.Buffalo.EDU
UUCP: ...!{watmath,boulder,decvax,rutgers}!sunybcs!lammens