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From: robert@epistemi.UUCP (Robert Inder)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: definition of AI
Message-ID: <399@epistemi.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Jan-86 14:20:06 EST
Article-I.D.: epistemi.399
Posted: Mon Jan  6 14:20:06 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Jan-86 06:04:56 EST
References: <33103@lanl.ARPA> <289@quest.UUCP> <2555@sunybcs.UUCP> <606@kitty.UUCP> <409@tekchips.UUCP> <2401@flame.warwick.UUCP>
Reply-To: robert@epistemi.UUCP (Robert Inder)
Organization: Epistemics, Edinburgh U., Scotland
Lines: 30
Xpath: ukc eagle

In article <2401@flame.warwick.UUCP> kay@flame.UUCP (Kay Dekker) replies
to Wm.  Leler's suggestion that "A side benefit of AI is that it helps
us learn how intelligences solve these problems, and thus how natural
intelligence works", saying:
>I'm not sure that this reasoning is totally sound.  Sure, we may find
>*solutions* to problems, but I don't see that because we produce models
>that fit experimental evidence, the models will *necessarily* help us to
>understand how the problems are solved "in the flesh".  Just because I have
>two black boxes that produce the same combinations of outputs for the same
>combinations of inputs (for example) doesn't permit me to reason "They
>behave identically from the outside, therefore their interior natures are
>similar."

The emphasised "necessarily" is crucial here.  Certainly getting "models
that fit experimental evidence" does not mean we KNOW (absolutely, for sure)
that the model is behaving in the same way as the original.  However, 
as the early chapters of Chomsky's "Rules and Representations" are basically
arguing,  this is true, but uninterestitng.  Every theory is
underdetermined by evidence, and science is always a matter of believing
(working with) the best model that you have got.  If the model does fit the
available evidence better than any other account, then (meta-theoretical 
considerations being equal) it deserves consideration as an account 
of how the "real" system behaves.

Robert Inder.   University of Edinburgh, Centre for Cognitive Science,
                2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9LW, Scotland.
 ...!ukc!cstvax!epistemi!robert

I wish I could come up with a good signature...