MINSKY@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU.UUCP (07/06/87)
I would like to see that discussion of "symbol grounding" reduced to much smaller proportions because I think it is not very relevant to AI, CS, or psychology. To understand my reason, you'd have to read "Society of Mind", which argues that this approach is obsolete because it recapitulates the "single agent" concept of mind that dominates traditional philosophy. For example, the idea of "categorizing" perceptions is, I think, mainly an artifact of language; different parts of the brain deal with inputs in different ways, in parallel. In SOM I suggest many alternative ways to think about thinking and, in several sections, I also suggest reasons why the single agent idea has such a powerful grip on us. I realize that it might seem self-serving for me to advocate discussing Society of Mind instead. I would have presented my arguments in reply to Harnad, but they would have been too long-winded and the book is readily available.
HAYES@SPAR-20.ARPA.UUCP (07/07/87)
Talk about walking into a minefield, but here goes. Concerning the Harnad grounding problem. This is lovely stuff, and I save every word for later reading, but it does seem recently to have gone from interesting discussions and arguments to a rather repetitive grinding over the main points again and again. THe result is that Stevan is reduced to repeating himself and reiterating his points in the face of what must seem to him to be increasing stubbornness. I seem to be seeing more and more phrases like '..as I have emphasised earlier..'. All of us who teach are familiar with the syndrome where the 35th occurrence of the same error makes us more exasperated than the first one did. Let me suggest that perhaps nothing much new is being said in these discussions any more, and certainly no-one is saying anything which is going to cause Stevan to change any of his positions. Perhaps the right thing to do is for people to send their comments directly to Harnad, and for him to send us the selections which HE considers worth public airing, together with his responses. That way we will be spared reading all this stuff which is, apparently, of such low intellectual caliber, and Laws will have an easier time, and public feelings will not get to the point which produces letters like David Harwood's. Just an idea. Pat Hayes -------