Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!eliot
From: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: AI & Derrida (was: Re: Speech Act Interpretation:... (Unisys AI Seminar))
Message-ID: <10780@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 10 Oct 89 04:09:05 GMT
References: <11627@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> <10714@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <10744@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <11577@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Reply-To: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman)
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 30

In article <11577@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> lammens@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU.UUCP (Joe Lammens) writes:

;Even the people who are going on and on about not being able to
;deduce the writer's intentions from a text, how a text is a world in
;itself with a million meanings and how it is full of contradictions,
;do not apply their own `theories' to their own writings on the
;subject, since that would imply that their writings are meaningless or
;at least not usable as vehicles for talking about their beloved
;subject.

As a matter of fact you're wrong, which is why deconstruction offers no
reading method, at least one that can be couched in propositional terms. 
The implications of this idea would, of course, be disasterous for
those factions of AI that do feel that the discernment of meaning and
intention is subject to rule decomposition, if it were to be taken
seriously. Eventually, I strongly suspect, it will be. 

;They very much want their readers to deduce the writer's
;intentions from the text, though they'd probably rather drop dead than
;admit it :-).

If "they" were justified in wanting "their readers" to "deduce"
"their intentions" we or they would be living in a different world altogether,
possibly one called shrdlu, certainly not one called earth. First of all,
intentions are inferred or abducted, certainly not "deduced." Second of
all I assume that you exclude yourself from this class, otherwise you would
say, "They want me to deduce their intentions," or "They wanted me to deduce
their intentions and I have" which you don't because you're unable to and 
merely infer that there are others who can. And thirdly your statement is 
literally false, in that no text is readable in isolation.