Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert From: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness Keywords: Look, this is basic scientific method we're on about Message-ID: <1173@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Date: 17 May 88 09:49:03 GMT References: <1029@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <4134@super.upenn.edu> <3200014@uiucdcsm> <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <5100@pucc.Princeton.EDU> <1099@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <5474@venera.isi.edu> Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert From: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness Keywords: Look, this is basic scientific method we're on about Message-ID: <1173@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Date: 17 May 88 09:49:03 GMT References: <1029@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <4134@super.upenn.edu> <3200014@uiucdcsm> <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <5100@pucc.Princeton.EDU> <1099@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <5474@venera.isi.edu> Lines: 71 > Just WHOSE ideals of humanity did you have in mind? [Which do you know of?] > Back when I was a callow freshman, I was taught to identify Socrates > with the maxim, "Know thyself." As an individual who has always been > concerned with matters of the mind, I can think of no higher ideal to > which I might aspire than to know what it is that allows myself to know; Plato never had to apologise for Socrates requesting discs of self-knowledge from Athenian youth. Self-knowledge requires no semantic networks. > I regard artificial intelligence as an excellent scientific approach to the > pursuit of this ideal . . . one which enables me to test flights of my > imagination with concrete experimentation. I don't think a Physicist or an experimental psychologist would agree with you. AI is DUBIOUS, because so many DOUBT that anyone in AI has a elaborated view of truth and falsehood in AI research. So tell me, as a scientist, how we should judge AI research? In established sciences, the grounds are clear. Certainly, nothing in AI to date counts as a controlled experiment, using a representative population, with all irrelevant variables under control. Given the way AI programs are written, there is no way of even knowing what the independent variable is, and how it is being driven. I don't think you know what experimental method is, or what a clearly formulated hypothesis is either. You lose your science badge. > let us know what it is that he sees in artificial intelligence research that > does not square with his personal ideals of humanity. I have. Don't you appreciate that free will (some degree of choice) is essential to humanist ideals. Read about the Renaissance which spawned the Science on whose shirt tails AI rides. Perhaps then you will understand your intellectual heritage. Do you believe that an artificial AI researcher is possible? Can a machine of its own volition and with its own imagination push back the frontiers of AI knowledge? The true Turing test is whether an AI researcher can be fooled that another machine is an AI researcher! [Nah, far too easy :-)] > I have about as much respect for such tastes as I have for anyone who'd > classify AI research as "a distasteful and dubious activity." Then think again. It IS dubious - look how many academics regard the area as lacking any concern for methodology, being cavalier with the truth and evasive about short-term hypotheses under test. No-one in AI seems to be concerned with the truth question, and that's serious where academic study is concerned. I'm not saying AI researchers are to BLAME, but they certainly are easy TO blame. The lack of concern is DISTASTEFUL. As is the pursuit of areas of enquiry in arrogant self-imposed ignorance of other relevant and available knowledge. As far as academic values are concerned, it is distasteful to ignore established bodies of knowledge, techniques, concepts and arguments. It is distasteful in its lack of humility and the arrogance that a mathematically or technically trained person can wade in, uninformed and hope to have any insight about problems when their understanding is so obviously inadequate when compared to the best traditions available in real disciplines. I cite 4 years reading of comp.ai.digest seminar abstracts as evidence. > Gilbert Cockton still has not made it clear, on scientific grounds at any > rate, why AI does not deserve this so-called "legitimacy." I do not know how to argue this on "scientific grounds". I take it that you do have some hold on the truth question. Please elaborate. If you tell me your rules of certainty, I will be better placed to force my arguments into the epistemological harness of your choice. > fall back on what I ... call the what-a-piece-of-work-is-man line of argument What are you calling this? > Unfortunately, this approach is emotional, not scientific. Emotive, not emotional. You cannot judge my emotional state from where you are. Again, not the mark of observational science. > must only be because he cannot muster scientific arguments to make his case. Can you? What do you understand by a scientific argument? Who's thundering! > We can devote our attention to the progress we make in our laboratories. Now that's what started this whole debate. You see, it's hard to see what progress is being made, how progress will be made (methodological foundations) and what anyone is doing. Never once have I seen anything that goes beyond some bright fantasising with mathematical semantics in comp.ai.digest seminar announcements. This is not science, and there can be no progress in this methodological idealism. Facts man, find some.