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From: petersja@debussy.cs.colostate.edu (james peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Reasoning Paradigms
Message-ID: <9963@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
Date: 5 Oct 90 20:51:27 GMT
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Recent postings (taking a slow detour from the original discussion of
"emergent properties") have raised the issue of what the paradigmatic
"reasoning" might be.  Minsky's postings have (not surprisingly) suggested
that rule-based, logico-mathematical, reasoning is the basis of all other
types of reasoning (or is perhaps the only true reasoning) -- Others have
suggested that there are more "natural" types of reasoning which cannot be
reduced to inferential logical reasoning (the example given was
in the realm of interpersonal decision-making).

Minsky, and others, have a lot bet on the idea that *all* mental processes
are ultimately (or fundamentally) calculative formal manipulations (though
we are of course not always aware that these underlying calculations are taking
place), thus formal operations ground *all* thought processes, and therefore,
all reasoning, regardless of whether any "reasoning" *seems* non-formal
(appearances can be deceiving).

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.

I believe many people have a harder time seeing how rigid mathematical
thinking could ever be based upon something less rigid, than to
conceive of fuzzy reasoning being based upon more rigid underlying principles.
Of course, this does not make the easier path so.....

I would be interested in any succinct account of how it might be possible
for "natural," non-formal, processes (e.g., pattern recognition, or
reasoning by analogy, assuming them to be non-formal) to provide the basis
for supervenient formal thought.


-- 
james lee peterson				petersja@handel.cs.colostate.edu
dept. of computer science                       
colorado state university		"Some ignorance is invincible."
ft. collins, colorado 80523