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From: gilbert@hci.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The Success of AI
Message-ID: <137@glenlivet.hci.hw.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 30-Oct-87 13:00:42 EST
Article-I.D.: glenlive.137
Posted: Fri Oct 30 13:00:42 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 3-Nov-87 01:54:40 EST
References: <1922@gryphon.CTS.COM> <131@glenlivet.hci.hw.ac.uk> <4171@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Reply-To: gilbert@hci.hw.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Organization: Scottish HCI Centre
Lines: 67

In article <4171@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> todd@net1.UUCP (Todd Goodman) writes:
>>"Better" concepts related to mind than those found in cog. sci.
>>already exist. There are many monumental works of scholarship which unify
>> the phenomena grouped into well-defined subfields.
>
>Please, please, please give us a bibliography of these works. 

Impossible at short notice. Obvious examples are Lyons' work on
semantics (1977?, 2 vols, Cambridge University Press). My answer to
anyone in AI about relevant scholarship is go and see your local
experts for a reading list and an orientation.

By "concepts related to mind", I intend all work concerned with
language, thought and action. That is, I mean an awful lot of work. My
first degree is in Education, which coupled with my earlier work in
History (especially social and intellectual history), brought me into
contact with a wide range of disciplines, and forced me to use each to
the satisfaction of those supervising me. However, I am now probably
out of date, as I've spent the last four years working in
Human-Computer Interaction.

Any work in linguistics under the heading of 'Semantics' should be of
great interest to people working in Knowledge Representation. There is
a substantial body of philosophical work under the heading of
"Philosophy of Mind". Unlike Cognitive Psychology (especially memory
and problem solving), this work has not become fixated on information
processing models. Anthropolgists are doing very interesting work on
category systems; the work of the "New" or "Cognitive" archaeologists
at Cambridge University (nearly all published by Cambridge University
Press) is drawing on much recent continental work on social action.
Any anthropologist should be able to direct you to the older work on
such cultures as the Subanum and the Trobriand Islanders - most of this
work was done by Americans and is more accessible, as it does not
require acquaintance with recent Structuralist and post-Structuralist
concepts, which can be very dense and esoteric.

>the reasons that you find them to be better than any current models.

This work is inherently superior to most work in AI because non of the
writers are encumbered by the need to produce computational models.
They are thus free to draw on richer theoretical orientations which
draw on concepts which are clearly motivated by everyday observations
of human activity. The work therefore results in images of man which
are far more humanist than mechanical computational models. Workers in
AI may be scornful of such values, but in reality they should realise
that adherents to a mechanistic view of human behaviour are very
isolated and in the minority, both now and throughout history. The
persistence of humanism as the dominant approach to the wider studies
of man, even after years of zealous attack from self-proclaimed
'Scientists', should be taken as a warning against the acceptability of
crude models of human behaviour. Furthermore, the common test of any
concept of mind is "can you really imagine your mind working this way?"
Many of the pillars of human societies, like the freedom and dignity of
democracy and moral values, are at odds with the so called 'Scientific'
models of human behaviour; indeed the work of misanthropes like Skinner
actively promote the connection between impoversihed models of man and
immoral totalitarian socities (B.F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity).

In short, mechanical concepts of mind and the values of a civilised
society are at odds with each other. It is for this reason that modes
of representation such as the novel, poetry, sculpture and fine art
will continue to dominate the most comprehensive accounts of the human
condition.
-- 
   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
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