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From: lammens@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU (Joe Lammens)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: AI & Derrida (was: Re: Speech Act Interpretation:... (Unisys AI Seminar))
Message-ID: <11597@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 10 Oct 89 15:12:31 GMT
References: <11627@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> <10714@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <10744@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <11577@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <10780@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
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Reply-To: lammens@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU.UUCP (Joe Lammens)
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In article <10780@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes:
>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. 
>

Now how can I be wrong in stating something like that, given that your
own paradigm states that you cannot infer/abduct (nice lingo :-)) any
singular meaning from what I wrote, let alone what I intended to
write? Saying that I'm wrong implies (or presupposes, if you like
fancier terms) that you inferred a propositional meaning from what I
wrote, and then decided on the truth value of it, the outcome being
"false". Now that is exactly what I meant: even you, a proponent of
deconstructionism I suppose, do not apply your theory in practice,
since that makes everything meaningless and/or communication
impossible. I think deconstructionism should be confined to the area
of literary theory/criticism; it has no value outside of that, as its
proponents continually demonstrate, perhaps unwittingly. It's
certainly not going to provide a basis for NL understanding work in
AI. Please explain yourself if you think it does, I really would like
to know. And forgive me if I sounded a bit unrespectful.

Joe Lammens

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