Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!oberon!cit-vax!ucla-cs!zen!ucbvax!hci.hw.ac.UK!gilbert From: gilbert@hci.hw.ac.UK (Gilbert Cockton) Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: Natural kinds Message-ID: <119@glenlivet.hci.hw.ac.uk> Date: Mon, 14-Sep-87 11:03:19 EDT Article-I.D.: glenlive.119 Posted: Mon Sep 14 11:03:19 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 20-Sep-87 13:04:53 EDT References: <"870828113435.1.rjz@JASPER"@UBIK.Palladian.COM> Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Gilbert Cockton Organization: Scottish HCI Centre Lines: 72 Approved: ailist@stripe.sri.com In article <"870828113435.1.rjz@JASPER"@UBIK.Palladian.COM> rjz%JASPER@LIVE-OAK.LCS.MIT.EDU writes: >In McCarthy's message of Jul 10, he talks of the need for AI >systems to be able to learn and use "natural kinds", I'd like to continue the sociological perspective on this debate. Rule number 1 in sociology is forget about "naturalness" - only sociobiologists are really into "nature" now, and look at the foul images of man that they've tried to pass off as science (e.g. Dworkin). > McCarthy's original point is the more crucial: that people seem to be able > to classify objects in the absence of precise information. Psychologists cram a lot under the heading of "ability". The learner is often assumed to have an active, conscious problem solving role. When dealing with formal problems and knowledge, such a characterisation seems valid. With social constructs such as informal categories, "ability" is not the result of an active learning process. Rather the ability follows automatically from cultural immersion. >This is important if individuals are to "make sense" of their world, >meaning they are able to induce any significant >generalizations about how the world works. Artifacts of civilization are only induced once. Thereafter, if they fulfil social needs, they remain unchanged. Rather than induce what a chair is, children learn what it is as part of their sociolinguistic development. They come to know what a chair is without ever actively and consciously inducing a formal definition. >Perhaps we could call this expanded notion an "empirical kind". "Empirical" is about as helpful as "natural" when it comes to reasoning about social phenomena. >Third: Such "kinds" are especially important for communicating with other >individuals. Being based on individual experience, no two persons' > conceptions of a given concept can be assumed to correspond _exactly_. At last, some social reasoning :-)! However, surface differences in statements about meaning do not imply deep differences over the real concept. The problem is one of language, not thought. Note also that where beliefs about a concept are heavily controlled within a society, public expression about a concept can be almost identical. See under ideology or theocracy. Once again, the reason why so much AI research is just one big turn-off is that much of it is a very amateur and jargon-ridden sophomore attempt at formalising phenomena which are well understood and much studied in other real disciplines. Anthropological studies of the category systems of societies abound. Levi-Strauss for one has explored the reoccurance of binary oppositions in many category systems. The difference between the humanities and AI is mainly that the former are happy to write, as elegantly as possible, in natural language, whereas in the latter there is a fetish for writing in a mixture of LISP, cut-down algebra and folk-psychology without an ounce of scholarship. There is rigour no doubt, but without scholarship it is worthless. Artificial ignorance is an apt characterisation. The debate on natual kinds appears to have emerged from a discussion of where AI needs to go next. Perhaps AI folk should drop the hill-climbing and take their valuable techniques back into the disciplines which can make use of them in a sensible and balanced way. Then perhaps only programmes worth writing will be implemented and this nonsense about tidying up poorly expressed ideas on a dumb machine can be interred once and for all. -- Gilbert Cockton, Scottish HCI Centre, Ben Line Building, Edinburgh, EH1 1TN JANET: gilbert@uk.ac.hw.hci ARPA: gilbert%hci.hw.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk UUCP: ..{backbone}!mcvax!ukc!hwcs!hci!gilbert