cam@edai.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm cam@uk.ac.ed.edai 031 667 1011 x2550) (04/06/89)
In article <2722@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes: >I know of no incident in the history of science where continued >romantic mucking about got anywhere. As A.N. Whitehead argued, all >learning must begin with a stage of Romance, otherwise there will be >no motivation, no drive to learn, no fascination. But it must be >followed by a stage of analysis, a specialisation based on proper Ok, accepting this for the sake of argument, what are the criteria to be used for deciding when to leave the "age of Romance" and enter the "age of analysis"? Gilbert is suggesting that (much of) AI is romantic sci-fi when it should be analytic. My guess is that (much of) AI hasn't yet sorted out its basic concepts, i.e., is in what Kuhn would call the pre-paradigm stage, and analysis under such circumstances would be foolishly premature, would it not? We wouldn't want AI to fall into the horrible trap of physics envy which so disfigured psychology, would we? - "Look Ma, numbers and equations, I'm doing Real Science now!" -- Chris Malcolm cam@uk.ac.ed.edai 031 667 1011 x2550 Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University 5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK
gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) (04/07/89)
In article <323@edai.ed.ac.uk> cam@edai (Chris Malcolm) writes: >We wouldn't want AI to fall into the horrible trap of physics envy >which so disfigured psychology, would we? - "Look Ma, numbers and >equations, I'm doing Real Science now!" The intriguing thing about logical positivism is that it never exists in its ideal sythnesis. One gets logic (the mathematicians in humanists clothing) or positivism (physicists in humanists's clothing), but never both together. Your question is rhetorical - I have no admiration for the crude empiricism of the failed natural scientists who disfigured psychology. Nor are many people impressed by the mathematicians of cognitivie science who come equally unprepared, gauche and unenlightened to the new psychology of jolly clever ideas. Yes, behaviourism was bad, but the logical and mathematical fetishism of much cognitive science is far far worse. At least we had those nice little p < 0.05s in experimental psychology. The alpha centauri mathematical school has no time for truth or margins of error. -- Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs <europe>!ukc!glasgow!gilbert