Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!comp.vuw.ac.nz!steve From: steve@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Steve Cassidy) Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: metaepistemology and unknowability Message-ID: <19880726054335.6.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> Date: 26 Jul 88 05:43:00 GMT Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 57 Approved: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu To: uunet!comp-ai-digest@uunet.UU.NET Path: vuwcomp!steve From: Steve Cassidy Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: metaepistemology and unknowability Summary: What do these definitions tell us? Date: Mon, 25 Jul 88 00:26 EDT References: <19880724060148.1.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> Reply-To: Steve Cassidy Organization: Comp Sci, Victoria Univ, Wellington, New Zealand Lines: 49 In a previous article YLIKOSKI@FINFUN.BITNET (Andy Ylikoski) writes: >I would say that the actual world is unknowable to us because we have >only descriptions of it, and not any kind of absolutely correct, >totally reliable information involving it. This seems like a totally useless definition of Knowing; what have you gained by saying that I do not *know* about chairs because I only have representations of them. This seems to be a problem people have in making definitions of concepts in cognition. Dan Dennet tries, in Brainstorms, to provide a useful definition of something like what we mean by "intelligence". To avoid the problems of emotional attatchment to words he uses the less emotive "intentionality". He develops a definition that could be useful in deciding how to make systems act like intelligent actors by restricting that definition to accurate concepts. (As yet I don't claim to understand what he means, but I think I get his drift.) Now, we can argue whether Dennet's 'intentionality' corresponds to 'intelligence' if we like, but what will it gain us? It depends on what your goals as an AI researcher are. I'm interested in building models of cognitive processes - in particular, reading - my premise in doing this is that cognitive processes can be modelled computationally, and that by building computational models we can learn some more about the real processes. I am not interested in whether, at the end of the day I have an intelligent system, a simulation of an intelligent system or just a dumb computer program. I will judge my performance on results -- does it behave in a similar way to humans, if so my model, and the theory it is based upon, is good. Is there anyone out there who's work will be judged good or bad depending on whether it can be ascribed `intelligence'? It seems to me that it is only useful to make definitions to some end, rather than for the sake of making definitions; we are, after all, Applied Epistomologists and not Philosophers (:-) Steve Cassidy domain: steve@comp.vuw.ac.nz| Victoria University, PO Box 600, -------------------------------------| Wellington, New Zealand path: ...seismo!uunet!vuwcomp!steve| "If God had meant us to be perfect, He would have made us that way" - Winston Niles Roomford III