Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!ai-lab!miken
From: miken@wheaties.ai.mit.edu (Michael N. Nitabach)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: intrinsic vs. extrinsic rules (Was: the baby bootstrap)
Message-ID: <7417@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 22 Mar 90 16:23:44 GMT
References: <744@telesoft.com> <1990Mar8.125506.11913@newcastle.ac.uk> <725@berlioz.nsc.com> <7181@gelatinosa.ai.mit.edu> <5423@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
Reply-To: miken@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu (Michael N. Nitabach)
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Lines: 31

d231782@longs.LANCE.ColoState.EDU (Lawrence Detweiler) says in article
<5423@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>:

>>>In short, it may be possible to have intelligence with nothing but
>>           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>>simple rules like Hebb's that depend only on input.  This is a hopeful
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>>sentiment for the future of machine thought.
>>
>>I find it a depressing "sentiment" that workers in the area of AI can still
>>maintain such absolutely behavioristic positions.

>(I find it depressing that these views could be misconstrued to be
>associated with behaviorism and furthermore that conventional wisdom has
>proclaimed behaviorism dead.  I have no personal affinity for nor
>adherence to this ideology, but I see a distressing trend and tendency
>in conventional thought to ridicule any innocent prod to think by
>identifying it with some other supposedly manifestly erroneous view.)

Why can't you see the historical roots of your point of view?  It is
clear that the essence of your claim--that intelligence can arise in an
organism that is born with nothing but some associative rule--is identical
with the major claim of behaviorism.  I think it is very sad that many
of today's intellectuals have neither knowledge of nor interest in the
historical antecedents of their work.  It is folly to think that because
an old idea has been clothed in some new terminology or adopted by some
new discipline, it will not retain all of its already well understood
limitations.  And we already know that "nothing but simple rules like
Hebb's" will not suffice to explain the behavior of even the simplest
organisms.
--Mike Nitabach