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From: geb@dsl.pitt.edu (Gordon E. Banks)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What AI is exactly.
Message-ID: <1990Sep10.140437.19913@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu>
Date: 10 Sep 90 14:04:37 GMT
References: <25392@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <3797@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <3543@gara.une.oz.au> <3815@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
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In article <3815@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> jim@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Jim Ruehlin, Cognitologist domesticus) writes:
>
>Umm, a cat can't reason, or learn in any human sense.  You can train it
>(not very well - dogs are easier), but the kind of cognition requried by
>the animal for this I think is different from "learning".

If by reason you mean use of formal logic, you are probably correct.
But your definition of learning would seem to be idiosyncratic, perhaps
confined to a population of 1 (yourself).  I can't think of any
animal that has been well studied that does not demonstrate some
ability to learn, even simple worms.  Learning simply means that
the animal is able to modify its behavior according to its past
experience with the environment.  Anyone who has observed cats
recognizes that they do this quite readily.  The abilty to train them
to perform tricks is not necessarily a good gauge of learning ability.
The main difference between humans and other animals is the number of
neurons in the neocortex, which is the programmable part of the brain.

In addition, what gives you the idea that cats and dolphins don't
communicate?  Of course they do.  Even ants communicate.  Maybe
you meant they don't talk or they don't use language.

Much of human behavior that we consider quite intelligent does not
involve the use of "reasoning", including language.