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From: jane@latcs1.lat.oz.au (Jane Philcox)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,comp.ai
Subject: Re: A "working definition" of intelligence.
Keywords: intelligance, ai, reasoning
Message-ID: <1991Jun28.061202.12485@latcs1.lat.oz.au>
Date: 28 Jun 91 06:12:02 GMT
References: <7135@gara.une.oz.au> <-hclt6l@rpi.edu>
Organization: Comp Sci, La Trobe Uni, Australia
Lines: 34

I am aware that this whole question involves subtleties of which I know
nothing, and that there are some formal studies in this subject of which I
also know nothing.  However, I think I have something to say from the
empirical point of view on this one:

In article <-hclt6l@rpi.edu> jamesm@gemma.cs.rpi.edu (Michael James) writes:
>5) (Oh boy)  What does it mean to reason?  I still am pretty clueless on this
>   one.  Do we 'learn' how to 'reason?'

Without wishing to get into an argument about what it means to reason, on a
normal day-to-day level I would say it means reasoning from cause to effect
(however you wish to define those terms!).  Yes we do have to learn how to do
it - a small child who is learning to talk is unable to connect the two.  A
couple of years later, the child is starting to be able to connect things like
"I just tripped the baby up and fell over him, and now my shoulder hurts," with
"If I hadn't tripped the baby up, my shoulder probably wouldn't be hurting."
At an earlier stage, the connection was to "If I hadn't fallen over the baby,
my shoulder probably wouldn't be hurting," so it was the baby's fault.  Now it
is the child's fault.  There is an obvious development in ability to follow
a chain of causality (is that the right term?) here, particularly as the
conclusion the older child is reaching is actually _less_ palatable than the
one s/he would have reached earlier.

I would _guess_ that later development in formal reasoning would probably
follow along the same lines. Of course, in both cases, the quality of the
teaching, from the parents in the first instance, and the instructor in the
second, must be crucial.  I suspect it would be a rare person indeed who
could make the jump unassisted.

Regards, Jane.

-- 

           A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.