rapaport@sunybcs (William J. Rapaport) (03/08/88)
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO BUFFALO LOGIC COLLOQUIUM RANDALL R. DIPERT Department of Philosophy SUNY Fredonia THE INADEQUACY OF THE TURING TEST AND ALTERNATIVES AS CRITERIA OF MACHINE UNDERSTANDING: Reflections on the Logic of the Confirmation of Mental States In this paper, I address the question of how we would confirm a machine's, or any entity's, "understanding". I argue that knowledge of the internal properties of an entity--as opposed to "external" proper- ties and relations, such as to a linguistic or social community, or to abstract entities such as propositions--may not be sufficient for the justified attribution of understanding. I also argue that our knowledge of the internal construction or of the origin of an artificial system may serve as defeating conditions in the analogical reasoning that oth- erwise supports the claim of a system's understanding. (That is, the logic of the confirmation of understanding is itself non-monotonic!) These issues are discussed within an analysis of the complex fabric of analogical reasoning in which, for example, the Turing Test and Searle's Chinese Room counterexample are merely examples of larger issues. No previous contact with the logic of analogy, artificial intelligence, or the philosophy of mind (other than having one) is assumed. [Shorter summary: Will we (ever) be able justifiably to say that an artificial system has "understanding"? Probably not.] Tuesday, March 15, 1988 4:00 P.M. Fronczak 454, Amherst Campus For further information, contact John Corcoran, (716) 636-2438.
rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) (04/04/89)
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK BUFFALO LOGIC COLLOQUIUM GRADUATE GROUP IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE and GRADUATE RESEARCH INITIATIVE IN COGNITIVE AND LINGUISTIC SCIENCES PRESENT JACEK PASNICZEK Institute of Philosophy and Sociology Department of Logic Marie Curie-Sklodowska University Lublin, Poland FIRST- AND HIGHER-ORDER MEINONGIAN LOGIC Meinongian logic is a logic based on Alexius Meinong's ontological views. Meinong was an Austrian philosopher who lived and worked around the turn of the century. He is known as a creator of a very rich objec- tual ontology including non-existent objects, and even incomplete and impossible ones, e.g., "the round square". Such objects are formally treated by Meinongian logic. The Meinongian logic presented here (M- logic) is not the only Meinongian one: there are some other theories that are formalizations of Meinong's ontology and that may be considered as Meinongian logics (e.g., Parsons's, Zalta's, Rapaport's, and Jacquette's theories). But the distinctive feature of M-logic is that it is a very natural and straightforward extension of classical first- order logic--the only primitive symbols of the language of M-logic are those occurring in the first-order classical language. Individual con- stants and quantifiers are treated as expressions of the same category. This makes the syntax of M-logic close to natural-language syntax. M- logic is presented as an axiomatic system and as a semantical theory. Not only is first-order logic developed, but the higher-order M-logic as well. Wednesday, April 26, 1989 4:00 P.M. 684 Baldy Hall, Amherst Campus For further information, contact John Corcoran, Dept. of Philosophy, 716-636-2444, or Bill Rapaport, Dept. of Computer Science, 716-636-3193.