Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Types of AI thought
Message-ID: <160@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 27 Sep 90 23:42:41 GMT
References: <mLZ2P7w163w@bluemoon.UUCP>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 16

In article <mLZ2P7w163w@bluemoon.UUCP> feedback (Bryan Bankhead) writes:
>Syntacticists:  Those who think that AI is basically a matter of sovling 
>the stucture behind how information elements are relatet to each other.]
...
>Semanticists:  Those who think AI is based on the question of 'meaning'.
...
>Of the members of this newgroup; are you a sytactici or a semanticist?

I am a semanticist.  In fact this is the pilosophical basis for my objection
to the reliance on Generative Grammars in describing human languages.  I feel
that any adequate treatment of linguistics must treat meaning and structure
together, almost as a single entity.  And since I see language as one of the
most profoundly 'intelligent' things that humans do, this extends directly
into AI and Cognitive Science.  (That is, the internal mechanisms we use
to speak and understand language are essentially the same as those we use
to design a car or plan a painting).