Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!venera!vaxa.isi.edu!smoliar From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Chess, Reductionism, Probablistic Determinism. Keywords: rules, causes, consciousness Message-ID: <12547@venera.UUCP> Date: 23 Mar 90 01:07:12 GMT References: <491fffd5.1a4d7@cicada.engin.umich.edu> <2080@aipna.ed.ac.uk> <351@ntpdvp1.UUCP> <8eQP02EX94Fn01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> Sender: news@venera.UUCP Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute Lines: 54 In article <8eQP02EX94Fn01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> kp@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting) writes: > >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*) > We have discussed the problems involved in playing fast and loose with words like "understand" and "intelligent." Now I find myself ready to approach "rational" with a similar degree of caution. Unless I'm mistaken, however, this is a situation in which epistemology has also tried to take the bull by the horns. What I have read certainly indicates that a lot of thought has gone into the issue, but I'm not convinced that it has been resolved satisfactorily. Let me try to pick on both of Ken's premises for the usual sake of argument. Let's take the patella reflex first. Why can't I give a RATIONAL account? At one level, I can sketch out a trace of activations of nerve and muscle cells; and I have every reason to believe that a nerophysiologist could essentially do the same much more thoroughly. On the other hand, I can provide ethological evidence as to why selection has favored phenotypes which have this reflex (having to do with the way it breaks one's fall). Thus, I can account for it at both the level of the behavior of the organism in the world and at the level of the internal functions of that organism. Is the argument that the reflex is not RATIONAL a consequence of the fact that it is a REFLEX, rather than a conscious act? If so, do we really want such a close coupling between rationality and consciousness? Now let's go back to chess. Here, I admit, I may be a bit more OUTRE; so let me attribute my reaction to reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez. To refresh the memories of our readers, there is a scene in ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE in which a new priest tries to teach chess to Jose Arcadio Buendia (who is tied to a tree in the public square). Buendia responds that he cannot see the point of playing a game in which both sides have agreed to the rules in advance. Why should we assume either that it is rational for a game to have rules or for the players to follow them? When all is said and done, I see more rationality in the patella reflex, since I can observe that individuals who have it survive better than those who don't, whereas I cannot make any similar statements about chess. ========================================================================= USPS: Stephen Smoliar USC Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way Suite 1001 Marina del Rey, California 90292-6695 Internet: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu "Only a schoolteacher innocent of how literature is made could have written such a line."--Gore Vidal