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From: dhw@itivax.UUCP (David H. West)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Message-ID: <392@itivax.UUCP>
Date: 17 Nov 88 18:20:47 GMT
References: <484@soleil.UUCP> <88Nov15.170837est.707@neat.ai.toronto.edu>
Organization: Industrial Technology Institute
Lines: 37

In article <88Nov15.170837est.707@neat.ai.toronto.edu> bradb@ai.toronto.edu (Brad Brown) writes:
>Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is a more general result
>stating that any axiomatic system of sufficient power will
>be fundimentally incomplete.  (NB  Systems that are not of
>'sufficient power' are also not of sufficient interest to
>consider for the purpose of AI)

That's by no means obvious.  Formal reasoning is a relatively recent
addition to the human behavioral repertoire; people do it neither
naturally (it takes them until well into adolescence to become
halfway competent, whereas they walk and talk adequately ten years
earlier) nor well (look at all the incorrect 'proofs' that get 
published), and most people manage perfectly well most of the time 
without using it at all (see the work of Kahneman and Tversky).  Let's 
not get too logicocentric when talking about intelligence.  It's at
least plausible that nature wouldn't produce complete implementations 
of computationally problematic paradigms if there were a cheaper but
adequate alternative. (Cf. Simon's satisficing, optical illusions
etc.) 

>[...] Godel
>shows that there will exist theorems which are true within
>a system that the system will not be able to prove true.
[...]

>a belief in a "magic" component to the brain that defies
>rational explanation.  Sorry, but I just don't buy that.

Eh?  You have to admit the possibility, because you've just declared
your belief in theorems which are true-but-unprovable in a system.
If that isn't "defying rational explanation" (within the system), I
don't know what is.

-David West            dhw%iti@umix.cc.umich.edu
		       {uunet,rutgers,ames}!umix!itivax!dhw
CDSL, Industrial Technology Institute, PO Box 1485, 
Ann Arbor, MI 48106