Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Reasoning Paradigms Message-ID: <18@tdatirv.UUCP> Date: 9 Oct 90 15:35:00 GMT References: <9963@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine Lines: 23 In article jmc@Gang-of-Four.usenet (John McCarthy) writes: >Peters writes > >"This is Smolensky's chicken and egg problem: Does "hard," logical, >rule-based reasoning ground all reasoning, or does "soft," evaluative, >inductive, rough, pattern recognizing, fuzzy, kinds of reasoning >ground all our thought processes, including "hard" scientific >thinking? Or are they independent? Smolensky suggests that soft >reasoning grounds the hard, while Minsky (and Fodor) appear to believe >that hard thinking grounds any soft thinking." If Minsky thinks this he is full of BS! The basic components of fuzzy, soft reasoning are wired into the very fabric of our brain - that is how neural networks work! [And our brain is an NN par excellence]. At most the hard and soft resoning systems in our minds are independent. But I see little evidence for this, humans that have not recieved intensive training in logic or other forms of hard reasoning seem totally incapable of it. We are a poor sample, since by virtue of being programmers we have all recieved much training in hard logic. [Often indirectly, through experimentation and playing, but still training]. -- --------------- uunet!tdatirv!sarima (Stanley Friesen)