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From: gerry@zds-ux.UUCP (Gerry Gleason)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai
Subject: Re: Understanding is not a function of behaviour
Keywords: New Argument
Message-ID: <264@zds-ux.UUCP>
Date: 11 Apr 90 19:36:29 GMT
References: <1990Apr10.130006.6780@maths.tcd.ie>
Reply-To: gerry@zds-ux.UUCP (Gerry Gleason)
Followup-To: talk.philosophy.misc
Organization: Zenith Data Systems
Lines: 40

In article <1990Apr10.130006.6780@maths.tcd.ie> ftoomey@maths.tcd.ie (Fergal Toomey) writes:
>position leads you to. For example, a plane can fly, I cannot. Does
>this mean that a plane understands aerodynamics better than I do?

No, it means it flies better.  Understanding aerodymanics is like the
"understanding understanding" you speak of below.

>Now, as human beings, we understand things, I think we can all agree
 . . .
>Hence there is no doubt that understanding is a part of human
>behaviour.

Ok, I can accept that.

> . . . . But this isn't true. We do not understand how to understand.

But neither does this imply that we know nothing about how to understand.
Obviously not since education is at least partially successful.

>So if we assume from our behaviour that we can understand how to
>understand, then we are faced with the contradiction that, from our
>behaviour, it is clear that we do not understand how to understand.
>So we must reject our hypothesis, and state that behaviour does not
>neccessarily imply understanding.

Just one question though: Is understanding necessary for intellegence?
When you are talking about understanding, you are talking about a particular
capability requiring intellegence.  Intellegence is not a generic capacity
that can be applied in any domain when you have it, it is rather a continuous
field of attributes without any clear dimensions or limits.  With this in
mind, now consider various animals; clearly at least some of them display
capacities we cannot match with present AI, but understanding?

Also, I claim that domains such as understanding in general, or understanding
the possible relationships on a chess board in particular are "open" domains
in the sense that there is no unique, complete description of the domain.  In
this case we can only talk of degrees of understanding since complete
understanding does not exist.

Gerry Gleason