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From: kp@uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai
Subject: Re: Chess, Reductionism, Probablistic Determinism.
Summary: Rules are normative, causation is not
Keywords: rules, causes, consciousness
Message-ID: <8eQP02EX94Fn01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com>
Date: 21 Mar 90 21:02:31 GMT
References: <491fffd5.1a4d7@cicada.engin.umich.edu> <2080@aipna.ed.ac.uk> <ddbx02xv92LK01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <351@ntpdvp1.UUCP>
Reply-To: kp@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting)
Followup-To: comp.ai
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 36

In article <351@ntpdvp1.UUCP> sandyz@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Sandy Zinn) writes:
>> Ken Presting writes:
>> What we don't know is how to implement a machine that
>> can learn all the rules human beings can learn, or even how much of
>> human behavior is based on rules and how much is based on causes.
> 
>Rules vs. Causes??  I'm curious; please elaborate.

When you play a game of chess, if someone asks you why you move the knight
in that funny way, or why the pawn doesn't capture the piece ahead of it,
the rational explanation is based on the rules of the game.  No such
explanation would be available if someone asked you why you jerk your
foot when the tendon of your kneecap is tapped (even if you know a whole
lot more about neurophysiology than I do, you couldn't give an account
of why jerking your foot was *rational*)

One thing that makes rules interesting is that they seem to be closely
related to conscious thought, abstract thinking and learning, and overt
behavior, all at the same time.  A *very* controversial issue revolves
around the rules of grammar.  A large number of bright people are
prepared to argue to the death that knowledge of grammar is knowledge
of certain rules, and that this knowledge is innate in every infant.
A similar number of equally bright people think this position is absurd.

Confusion over this and related issues (such as explicit representation
of symbolic data vs. "implementation" of symbolic process in hardware)
seems to me to infect much of the debate over the foundations of AI.
Implementationism and normative properties are my attempt to sort things
out.  Whether a certain process (natural or artificial) follows a certain
rule is a normative question - the rule states a "norm", and some
interpretation of our observations of the process may be required before
we can understand the relation between the process and the rule.

I know this is rather vague, but it may be enough for a start.

Ken Presting