Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!munnari.oz.au!bruce!monu0.cc.monash.edu.au!monu6!typ125m
From: typ125m@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (John Wilkins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: What does intentionality have that AI doesn't.....
Message-ID: <1991Mar15.025719.1612@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au>
Date: 15 Mar 91 02:57:19 GMT
References: <13503@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
Organization: Caulfield Campus, Monash University, Melb., Australia.
Lines: 48

petersja@debussy.cs.colostate.edu (james peterson) writes:

>What it is about "intentionality" the lack of which would impede the 
>implementation of intelligent behavior artificially is related to the
>problem of "relevance."  How is it that intelligent creatures are capable
>of selecting from their manifold inputs that portion which will be considered 
>as important, and that which is to be ignored?  How is it, moreover, that
>intelligent creatures are able to assign relative values to parts of
>the environment related to importance, and readjust these relative values
>as they procede?

>Frames and scripts, it seems to me, gloss over this difficulty by assigning
>relevance in advance.  The hard problem is to account for how relevance
>comes about in the first place, and how it develops...

>What makes assignments of relevance possible on an ongoing basis is 
>*motivation* --- things, parts of the environment, are relevant, important, or
>interesting precisely in the context of some *purpose* (if my purposes change,
>so does what is relevant); relevance is thus a function of our
>reasons (or motives) for acting...  Humans act for reasons, but for 
>reasons which do not compel or necessitate (reasons are not causes); being
>free to act according to one's own plans, plans of one's own authorship,
>and to change those plans on an on-going and flexible manner is what
>I believe intentionality has that is needed to implement intelligence.  Searle
>says that intentionality and intelligence are tied to "causal powers" --
>and this is what I take him to mean -- the ability to cause actions for
>reasons independent of nature's causal nexus, in a word, motivation.

>Excuse me if I have been less than clear, I did not have much time to
>trot this out......

I'm no AI expert, but surely humans also have frames and scripts
that determine what is relevant: sensory filters, biological "drives",
social imperatives, personal traits, etc, that are all "pre-programmed"
as it were, limiting the range of inputs and the nature of the responses?
What determines these is surely the evolution of transmitted frames/
scripts in biological and social terms. Those that are not successful
are eliminated -- biologically through the failure of the population
in which the traits reside, culturally through the failure of the
tradition in which the traits are transmitted.

Disclaimer: IMHO intelligence is a generic name given to a class
of mechanisms evinced by sufficiently complex systems that interact
with their environment.
-- 
John Wilkins, Manager, Publishing & Advertising, Monash University
Melbourne, Australia - Internet: john@publications.ccc.monash.edu.au
Nobody's views but mine own -- who'd want them?