Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!seismo!mcvax!ukc!its63b!hwcs!aimmi!gilbert
From: gilbert@aimmi.UUCP (Gilbert Cockton)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Searle, AI, NLP, understanding, ducks
Message-ID: <816@aimmi.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-Oct-86 07:16:26 EST
Article-I.D.: aimmi.816
Posted: Tue Oct 28 07:16:26 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Nov-86 03:39:33 EST
References: <1933@well.UUCP> <13571@kestrel.ARPA>
Reply-To: gilbert@aimmi.UUCP (Gilbert Cockton)
Distribution: world
Organization: Heriot-Watt/Strathclyde Alvey MMI Unit, Scotland
Lines: 24

In article <1933@well.UUCP>, jjacobs@well.UUCP (Jeffrey Jacobs) writes:
> (or to describe the transformations, etc).  It is much more rigorous
> and well defined (aka understood) than other realms of human
> endeavor (such as psychology, or even physics).

`well-defined' and `understood' are not synonyms where I come from.
As an Englishman, and thus an ancestor of the folk who invented the
language, can I ask you transatlantic chappies to stop messing around with it.
English was very nice until you got your hands on it!

Seriously, science tends to generate very well-defined theories, which,
more often than not, turn out to be wrong. Under your silly synonymy,
this means that falsehood and understanding are equivalent. There is a
school of philosophy (and thus unread by the philistine (amateur?) element in
AI), which holds that `verstehen' or understanding, is wholly subjective,
a personal experience with no linguistic form. Any attempt to define
it must therefore fail. Outside of AI with its dated (Platonic?) epistemologies
and theories of mind, the logocentrism of tight definitions is
becoming something of a joke, although an unpleasant one for anyone
who has suffered at the hands of someone else's small print definitions.
-- 
   Gilbert Cockton, Scottish HCI Centre, Ben Line Building, Edinburgh, EH1 1TN
   JANET:  gilbert@uk.ac.hw.aimmi    ARPA:   gilbert%aimmi.hw.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
		UUCP:	..!{backbone}!aimmi.hw.ac.uk!gilbert