EDWARDS@STRIPE.SRI.COM.UUCP (07/10/87)
Don Norman assumes that he knows enough about scientific methods to assert that AI doesn't use them. I don't believe that he, or anyone else, has a good general characterization of how science discovers what it discovers. Especially, I don't believe that he has used scientific methods in determining what scientific methods are. Attempts at characterizing the methods of science typically come from intuitive reflection, or from philosophy, not from science. There are some questions we have to make educated guesses at, because scientific answers are not yet available. Norman's attack on AI is vitiated by the same weakness that vitiated Dresher and Hornstein's earlier attack on AI. The critics' characterizations of scientific methods are far *less* firmly grounded than most assertions being made from within the discipline being attacked. Among intuitive and philosophical theories of scientific method--the only kind yet available--a priori reasoning of the type used in AI plays a prominent role. Exactly what relation such a priori reasoning must have to experimental data is very much an open question. My own background is in philosophy. I have gotten involved in AI partly because I believe, on intuitive grounds, that it *is* a science, and that it has a better shot at giving rise to a truly scientific characterization of scientific methods than philosophy, psychology, linguistics, or neuroscience. (I am not saying anything against interdisciplinary cross-fertilization.) I am now trying to work out a logical characterization of hypothesis formation. Douglas D. Edwards EK225 SRI International 333 Ravenswood Ave. Menlo Park CA 94025 (edwards@warbucks.sri.com) (edwards@stripe.sri.com) -------