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From: andrew@trlamct.OZ.AU (Andrew Jennings)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Re: AI, science, and pseudo-science
Message-ID: <367@trlamct.oz>
Date: Sat, 15-Aug-87 08:29:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: trlamct.367
Posted: Sat Aug 15 08:29:41 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Aug-87 00:48:33 EDT
References: <8707270710.AA05885@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <108@glenlivet.hci.hw.ac.uk>
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In article <108@glenlivet.hci.hw.ac.uk>, gilbert@hci.hw.ac.UK
(Gilbert Cockton) writes:
> 
> My criticism of AI is that most of the workers I meet are pretty
> ignorant of the CRITICAL TRADITIONS of ESTABLISHED disciplines which
> can say much  about AI's supposed object of study. When AI folk do stop
> hacking (LISP, algebra or logic - it makes no difference, logic finger
> and algebra wrist are just as bad as the well known 'computer-bum'),
> they may do so only to raid a few concepts and 'facts' from some
> discipline, and then go and abuse them out of sight of the folk who
> originally developed them and understand their context and deductive
> limitations.  What some of them do to English is even worse :-)
> -- 

I am afraid I cannot let this pass. It almost appears as if you view
programming as charlatan in itself ! Suffice it to say that if we
view AI as an empirical search then we have some definite criteria : either the
program works or it does not. 

Sure I'm in favour of CRITICAL thought and CRITICAL appraisal of work in AI :
its just that I don't want to get buried in a pile of useless Lemmas (no doubt
generated by you and your accomplices).

Why can't you realise the simple truth : a discipline goes through STAGES of
development. First the empirical paradigm dominates, then the engineering 
paradigm and last of all the theoreticians replete with armchairs.




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Andrew Jennings                             Telecom Australia Research Labs