petersja@debussy.cs.colostate.edu (james peterson) (03/14/91)
In article <17107@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@venera.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) writes: >However, we are still >left with this awkward position that the inadequacy of symbol manipulating >machines lies in this lack of intentionality. In other words we must now >confront the question of what qualities a machine must possess to allow it >to have intentionality. Saying it has to be more than a symbol manipulator >is not enough. It is still necessary to be able to look at a machine, analyze >it, and conclude from that analysis whether or not it has intentionality. This is the second time Stephen has recently requested clues as to what is so special about intentionality. The first time he asked if "one of the intentionality experts could come up with an argument as to why a lack of intentionality would impede ever implementing [intelligent] behavior...." I certainly don't wish to claim being an intentionality expert, and I don't have an "argument" to offer in the sense intended here, but I have a suggestion as to what is so special about intentionality that I beleive to be at least consistent with Searle. In any case, it may prompt some discussion of something I take to be important. What it is about "intentionality" the lack of which would impede the implementation of intelligent behavior artificially is related to the problem of "relevance." How is it that intelligent creatures are capable of selecting from their manifold inputs that portion which will be considered as important, and that which is to be ignored? How is it, moreover, that intelligent creatures are able to assign relative values to parts of the environment related to importance, and readjust these relative values as they procede? Frames and scripts, it seems to me, gloss over this difficulty by assigning relevance in advance. The hard problem is to account for how relevance comes about in the first place, and how it develops... What makes assignments of relevance possible on an ongoing basis is *motivation* --- things, parts of the environment, are relevant, important, or interesting precisely in the context of some *purpose* (if my purposes change, so does what is relevant); relevance is thus a function of our reasons (or motives) for acting... Humans act for reasons, but for reasons which do not compel or necessitate (reasons are not causes); being free to act according to one's own plans, plans of one's own authorship, and to change those plans on an on-going and flexible manner is what I believe intentionality has that is needed to implement intelligence. Searle says that intentionality and intelligence are tied to "causal powers" -- and this is what I take him to mean -- the ability to cause actions for reasons independent of nature's causal nexus, in a word, motivation. Excuse me if I have been less than clear, I did not have much time to trot this out...... -- james lee peterson petersja@CS.ColoState.edu dept. of computer science colorado state university "Some ignorance is invincible." ft. collins, colorado (voice:303/491-7137; fax:303/491-2293)
cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley) (03/14/91)
In article <13503@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> petersja@debussy.cs.colostate.edu (james peterson) writes: [...] > >What it is about "intentionality" the lack of which would impede the >implementation of intelligent behavior artificially is related to the >problem of "relevance." How is it that intelligent creatures are capable >of selecting from their manifold inputs that portion which will be considered >as important, and that which is to be ignored? How is it, moreover, that >intelligent creatures are able to assign relative values to parts of >the environment related to importance, and readjust these relative values >as they procede? > >Frames and scripts, it seems to me, gloss over this difficulty by assigning >relevance in advance. The hard problem is to account for how relevance >comes about in the first place, and how it develops... > >What makes assignments of relevance possible on an ongoing basis is >*motivation* --- things, parts of the environment, are relevant, important, or >interesting precisely in the context of some *purpose* ... If I can inject a tangential remark here, we should be aware of a traditional division of vocabulary on this issue, namely that between *intention* and *intension*. Intention is related to "intent" and usually refers to a predisposition to some action or view. In this sense, any program has intention --- it is created to fulfil a specific purpose normally in a specific manner. Intension is related to "intense" and usually means whatever the author wants it to, but in this context it refers to "the content of a notion", or let's say "the meaning of an intention". In philosophy (so far as I can tell), it also denotes "the ability to form intentions" plus some intangible spin. Call it "motivation" or "purpose" if you like. The "spin" causes all the mental thrashing (poetic justice?). -- Cameron Shelley | "Belladonna, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu| in English a deadly poison. A striking example Davis Centre Rm 2136 | of the essential identity of the two tongues." Phone (519) 885-1211 x3390 | Ambrose Bierce
evenson@cis.udel.edu (Mark Evenson) (03/15/91)
In article <1991Mar14.150044.12197@watdragon.waterloo.edu> you write: >In article <13503@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> petersja@debussy.cs.colostate.edu (james peterson) writes: >[...] >> >>What it is about "intentionality" the lack of which would impede the >>implementation of intelligent behavior artificially is related to the >>problem of "relevance." How is it that intelligent creatures are capable >>of selecting from their manifold inputs that portion which will be considered >If I can inject a tangential remark here, we should be aware of a traditional >division of vocabulary on this issue, namely that between *intention* and >*intension*. > >Intension is related to "intense" and usually means whatever the author >wants it to, but in this context it refers to "the content of a notion", >or let's say "the meaning of an intention". In philosophy (so far as I >can tell), it also denotes "the ability to form intentions" plus some >intangible spin. Call it "motivation" or "purpose" if you like. > In semantic theories of reference from at least the Philosophy of Science tradition, "intension" is opposed to "extension" as to how words work in refering to qualities of the world. I may attempt to crudely reduce a long debate by suggesting that words work by "picking out" members of the set of all possible objects (that all words refers to objects is of course the primary reduction here). The actual "things" that a word refers to are said to be its extension. As to what unites these varied objects belongs to the realm of the word's intension. So, for example "cat" has the extension of furry creatures with tails, but also has the extension of a hipster as in a "cool cat". In the case, one may argue the the intension of the term "cat" lies in a quality of aloofness, reserve, poise, and cool or something along these. Now, in AI debates there exists the echo of the Logical Positivist project of ascribing one intension and one extension to every word in a formalized languages. Usually this is attempted by defining the proper extension of a word, and then working backwards to the intension. By looking at the set of a words extension, Positivists hoped to clarify and reduce the diaphaenous web of intension to a cut and regulated science. Thus, it is hoped, that language would lose its ambiguity and the quality of its "shiftiness" when you sit down to code out an AI tool. So, intension is allied with "meaning" but it smacks--for me at least--of a very rigid structural attempt to codify its existence from a sort of catalouge of function. I have deeply held convictions on why this attempt will fail, but that is not really relevant to my small insight into "intension". Mark Evenson
smoliar@isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) (03/15/91)
In article <13503@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> petersja@debussy.cs.colostate.edu (james peterson) writes: > > >What it is about "intentionality" the lack of which would impede the >implementation of intelligent behavior artificially is related to the >problem of "relevance." How is it that intelligent creatures are capable >of selecting from their manifold inputs that portion which will be considered >as important, and that which is to be ignored? How is it, moreover, that >intelligent creatures are able to assign relative values to parts of >the environment related to importance, and readjust these relative values >as they procede? > >Frames and scripts, it seems to me, gloss over this difficulty by assigning >relevance in advance. The hard problem is to account for how relevance >comes about in the first place, and how it develops... > >What makes assignments of relevance possible on an ongoing basis is >*motivation* --- things, parts of the environment, are relevant, important, or >interesting precisely in the context of some *purpose* (if my purposes change, >so does what is relevant); relevance is thus a function of our >reasons (or motives) for acting... Humans act for reasons, but for >reasons which do not compel or necessitate (reasons are not causes); being >free to act according to one's own plans, plans of one's own authorship, >and to change those plans on an on-going and flexible manner is what >I believe intentionality has that is needed to implement intelligence. Searle >says that intentionality and intelligence are tied to "causal powers" -- >and this is what I take him to mean -- the ability to cause actions for >reasons independent of nature's causal nexus, in a word, motivation. > Maybe we had better go back to how Searle claims to define intentionality. Unfortunately, his definition is relegated to a footnote in "Minds, Brains, and Programs:" Intentionality is by definition that feature of certain mental states by which they are directed at or about objects and states of affairs in the world. Thus, beliefs, desires, and intentions are intentional states; undirected forms of anxiety and depression are not. Matters such as relevance and causality are secondary. The primary issue is the assumption that there are these mental states and then there are world states. We can talk about things being IN world states at a casual intuitive level, so we assume we can do the same about mental states. Intentionality accounts for the ability to translate between what is IN a mental state and what it IN a world state. Looked at in this light, we can then ask if we can have machine states which admit of a similar translation. Such machine states could be said to have intentionality, which, supposedly, means, that their machines would be capable of the sort of "understanding" which Searle argues is lacking in symbol manipulating systems. On the other hand are we in a position to argue that we can build symbol manipulating machine which LACK such powers of translation? As I said in my last article, I do not think the real issue is one of what machine states have or lack. Rather, the question has to do with the relationship between machine state and machine behavior and with the question of whether or not it makes sense to talk about disembodied mental states. In other words an agent can only HAVE mental states in the first place by virtue of certain properties of its BODY. If you try to abstract away the body (as Turing assumed in his initial paper on artificial intelligence), you lose the mental states, too. Does this make sense? Actually, a more appropriate question would be: CAN this make sense? I think it can. However, the issue is not so much whether we are talking about symbol manipulation as to how we choose to look at machine states. If we view a machine state as a configuration of bits in memory--something we can freeze in time or even copy from one physical machine to another--then we may run into trouble. Such machine states are essentially divorced from the machine itself . . . particularly any peripheral hardware concerned with sensors and effectors. If, on the other hand, we imagine a more dynamic machine in which there is constant interaction between those sensors and effectors and the state of the machine, then it may no longer make sense to try to identify that machine state with something like a pattern of bits in memory. The bits are always changing, and taking away the dynamics of the situation would amount to inducing brain-death. Now this may be naive, but at an intuitive level there seems to be no reason why such a machine cannot be built from components which are basically symbol manipulating systems. Thus, symbol manipulation does not appear to be the critical issue. The critical issue involves the nature of the processing concerned with the management of sensors and effectors and the assumption that such processing is highly dynamic. If we allow such dynamic qualities into the system, we should be able to play the game Minsky has laid out in THE SOCIETY OF MIND, building a system which manages those sensors and effectors up from relatively low-level processing components, very much in the spirit with which Brooks builds his robots. The question is not whether or not our machines have intentionality but whether or not they have bodies through which they interact with what Searle calls "states of affairs in the world." -- USPS: Stephen Smoliar 5000 Centinela Avenue #129 Los Angeles, California 90066 Internet: smoliar@venera.isi.edu
christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) (03/15/91)
In article <1991Mar14.150044.12197@watdragon.waterloo.edu> cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley) writes: > >If I can inject a tangential remark here, we should be aware of a traditional >division of vocabulary on this issue, namely that between *intention* and >*intension*. > >Intention is related to "intent" and usually refers to a predisposition >to some action or view. In this sense, any program has intention --- it >is created to fulfil a specific purpose normally in a specific manner. > >Intension is related to "intense" and usually means whatever the author >wants it to, but in this context it refers to "the content of a notion", >or let's say "the meaning of an intention". In philosophy (so far as I >can tell), it also denotes "the ability to form intentions" plus some >intangible spin. Call it "motivation" or "purpose" if you like. > I really don't like the tone of what I'm about to say but you've got this entirely wrong. IntenTionality, in philosophy, indicates the capacity of some entity to point to or refer to something else. Thoughts (inasmuch as they're propositional attitudes) refer in this way. So do sentences and, sometimes, pictures, although their intentionality seems to be derived from ours -- we use them that way. Intent, as the term is used colloquially (e.g., "I intend to go to the movies") is not at issue. It is only a species of the tehcnical form of IntenTionality and not priveledged in any particular way. IntenSion is an entirely different matter. To put things crudely, the IntenSion of a mental act (Brentano's term) is its representation (or 'mental picture', sometimes) 'in your head'. This is to be contrasted with the extension of the act, the thing in the world which is being represented. There has long been a debate in philosophy over which (the intension or the extension) is the MEANING. Hilary Putnam is particularly notable for having argued the latter. Jerry Fodor has severely criticized Putnam's position. I hate to be so blunt and I hope this won't be construed as a flame but it is important to get these terms straight before engaging in any further debate on this topic. (Incedentally, a similar discussion is going on over in sci.philosophy.tech. I wonder how much overlap in readership there is between these two. Perhaps we can link the two discussions up?) -- Christopher D. Green Psychology Department e-mail: University of Toronto christo@psych.toronto.edu Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1 cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
greenba@gambia.crd.ge.com (ben a green) (03/15/91)
I suggest that the term "intension" or "intention" is hopelessly ambiguous and should be replaced by other terms according to what is intended: 1) "John intentionally bumped the vase to see Marsha's reaction." The common meaning. 2) "The intension of 'vase' comprises the attributes of 'can contain flowers and water' and 'is relatively tall and slender'." The meaning in logic, according to dictionaries. 3) "'The Hulk is so named because of his size' uses 'The Hulk' intensionally because the phrase cannot be replaced with the name of the wrestler and preserve meaning." Failure of substitutional transparency, as used by Quine. 4) "Intentionality is by definition that feature of certain mental states by which they are directed at or about objects and states of affairs in the world." -- John Searle, quoted by Stephen Smoliar. Problematical in that it is defined as an attribute of "mental states," a concept itself in need of definition. A "state" can be "directed at" an object, for example, or be "about" an object. Much too vague for my taste. In (1), intention is possessed by a person. In (2), intension is possessed by a term. In (3), intension is possessed by a sentence. In (4), intension is possessed by mental state. TAKE ME OUT, COACH! -- Ben A. Green, Jr. greenba@crd.ge.com Speaking only for myself, of course.
cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley) (03/15/91)
In article <1991Mar14.191814.26802@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes: [...] >I really don't like the tone of what I'm about to say but you've got this >entirely wrong. IntenTionality, in philosophy, indicates the capacity of >some entity to point to or refer to something else. Thoughts (inasmuch >as they're propositional attitudes) refer in this way. So do sentences >and, sometimes, pictures, although their intentionality seems to be >derived from ours -- we use them that way. Intent, as the term is used >colloquially (e.g., "I intend to go to the movies") is not at issue. It >is only a species of the tehcnical form of IntenTionality and not priveledged >in any particular way. > >IntenSion is an entirely different matter. To put things crudely, the >IntenSion of a mental act (Brentano's term) is its representation (or >'mental picture', sometimes) 'in your head'. This is to be contrasted >with the extension of the act, the thing in the world which is being >represented. There has long been a debate in philosophy over which >(the intension or the extension) is the MEANING. Hilary Putnam is >particularly notable for having argued the latter. Jerry Fodor has >severely criticized Putnam's position. > I'll admit I was using entirely the "wrong" vocabulary, hoping to circumvent the philosphical dispute you mention. Particularly, I wished to avoid priveledging philosophy (to borrow your phrasing) since we are not necessarily talking about "artificial philosophy" when "artificial intelligence" is the subject. At any rate, the philosophical notions regarding intension/extension are notoriosly static, and thus ill-suited to talk of how useful they are for implemenation (which is how I had interpreted the thread to that point). Also, I've just been reading over work in text planning in which intenTion is represented as plan goals, so perhaps I am mixing myself up ... >I hate to be so blunt and I hope this won't be construed as a flame but >it is important to get these terms straight before engaging in any further >debate on this topic. No problem here. I promise to take my philosophy more seriously in future. -- Cameron Shelley | "Belladonna, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu| in English a deadly poison. A striking example Davis Centre Rm 2136 | of the essential identity of the two tongues." Phone (519) 885-1211 x3390 | Ambrose Bierce
typ125m@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (John Wilkins) (03/15/91)
petersja@debussy.cs.colostate.edu (james peterson) writes: >What it is about "intentionality" the lack of which would impede the >implementation of intelligent behavior artificially is related to the >problem of "relevance." How is it that intelligent creatures are capable >of selecting from their manifold inputs that portion which will be considered >as important, and that which is to be ignored? How is it, moreover, that >intelligent creatures are able to assign relative values to parts of >the environment related to importance, and readjust these relative values >as they procede? >Frames and scripts, it seems to me, gloss over this difficulty by assigning >relevance in advance. The hard problem is to account for how relevance >comes about in the first place, and how it develops... >What makes assignments of relevance possible on an ongoing basis is >*motivation* --- things, parts of the environment, are relevant, important, or >interesting precisely in the context of some *purpose* (if my purposes change, >so does what is relevant); relevance is thus a function of our >reasons (or motives) for acting... Humans act for reasons, but for >reasons which do not compel or necessitate (reasons are not causes); being >free to act according to one's own plans, plans of one's own authorship, >and to change those plans on an on-going and flexible manner is what >I believe intentionality has that is needed to implement intelligence. Searle >says that intentionality and intelligence are tied to "causal powers" -- >and this is what I take him to mean -- the ability to cause actions for >reasons independent of nature's causal nexus, in a word, motivation. >Excuse me if I have been less than clear, I did not have much time to >trot this out...... I'm no AI expert, but surely humans also have frames and scripts that determine what is relevant: sensory filters, biological "drives", social imperatives, personal traits, etc, that are all "pre-programmed" as it were, limiting the range of inputs and the nature of the responses? What determines these is surely the evolution of transmitted frames/ scripts in biological and social terms. Those that are not successful are eliminated -- biologically through the failure of the population in which the traits reside, culturally through the failure of the tradition in which the traits are transmitted. Disclaimer: IMHO intelligence is a generic name given to a class of mechanisms evinced by sufficiently complex systems that interact with their environment. -- John Wilkins, Manager, Publishing & Advertising, Monash University Melbourne, Australia - Internet: john@publications.ccc.monash.edu.au Nobody's views but mine own -- who'd want them?
christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) (03/16/91)
In article <GREENBA.91Mar14160439@gambia.crd.ge.com> greenba@gambia.crd.ge.com (ben a green) writes: >I suggest that the term "intension" or "intention" is hopelessly >ambiguous and should be replaced by other terms according to what >is intended: > >In (1), intention is possessed by a person. >In (2), intension is possessed by a term. >In (3), intension is possessed by a sentence. >In (4), intension is possessed by mental state. > You've got this dead right (except that you haven't included the technical meaning of intenTion) and there's no ambiguity at all. The reason three things have are associated with intenSion is that ther's a long standing debate over whether the word or the sentence is the 'unit' of meaning and that mental states (many of them, anyway) are widely taken to be propositional attitidues. If so they're relations to propositions, propositions have meaning, and meaning just might be the intenSion of the proposition. -- Christopher D. Green Psychology Department e-mail: University of Toronto christo@psych.toronto.edu Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1 cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca