Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!yale!cs.yale.edu!blenko-tom From: blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Cog Sci Fi (was: STRONG AND WEAK AI) Message-ID: <8093@cs.yale.edu> Date: 10 Dec 89 23:54:11 GMT References: <11870@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <16033@megaron.cs.arizona.edu> <1989Dec9.200649.28014@cs.rochester.edu> Sender: news@cs.yale.edu Reply-To: blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko) Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven CT 06520-2158 Lines: 42 In article harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad) writes: |... |Here is the other side of the coin, what I have called the "hermeneutic |hall of mirrors" created by projecting our interpretations onto |meaningless symbols. As long as you allow yourself to interpret |ungrounded symbols you'll keep coming up with "virtual reality." |The only trouble is, what we're after is real reality (and that |distinction is being lost in the wash). There's nobody home in |a symbol cruncher, and it's not because they're on a virtual |flight to Istanbul! This is what I call "Cog Sci Fi." You appear to be arguing both with the assumption that there simply is no escape from this situation, and the related proposal that no escape is necessary. If you wish to argue that there is any such thing as a symbol grounding problem, I think you have to address both of these views (which I understand to be widely accepted). The argument that there is no escape goes like this: even if all information from the environment were in principal available to a putative intelligent entity (it makes no difference whether it is artificial or not), there are necessarily limitations on what information the entity could extract. So the fact that some information may not be available in principal is at most a different facet of a existing fundamental limitation. I believe that recognition of this property was first expressed in Herb Simon's Principle of Bounded Rationality. Why isn't escape necessary? All sorts of entities (corporations, the roach species, you and I, etc.) make imperfect use of incomplete information in order to survive and reproduce. Certainly the validity of these entities as predictors of their own, real-world futures plays a role in their survival -- but there are a host of other important strategies they use that are very far divorced from anything we would term "intelligence" (e.g., genetic recombination, reproductive strategies, role specialization). So some "virtual realities" are good enough, and (in the case or roaches) may be strikingly simpler than "real reality". So the conclusion is that "real reality" is neither attainable nor necessary for any phenomenon termed "intelligence" to be realized. Tom