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From: bnevin@CCH.BBN.COM ("Bruce E. Nevin")
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Re: Epistemology of Common Sense
Message-ID: <8812191750.AA03769@BLOOM-BEACON.MIT.EDU>
Date: 28 Nov 88 13:41:36 GMT
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Subject:  Re:  Epistemology of Common Sense

In AIList Digest for Wednesday, 23 Nov 1988 (Volume 8, Issue 131), we
see a message submitted Wed, 16 Nov 88 19:47 EDT by Stephen Dourson
(Dourson <"DPK100::DOURSON_SE%gmr.com"@RELAY.CS.NET>) in response to
mine in #125, Mon, 7 Nov 88 11:21:08 EST), responding to
McCarthy (#121, 31 Oct 88  2154 PST).

Dourson presents a reductionist view that there are only physical facts,
and that

SD> "social 'facts'", "social
  | conventions", and so-called "higher values", all . . . are a
  | lot of floating fuzzy abstractions that signify nothing.

Unfortunately, I can't understand his message.  Nor can I respond to it.
Nor can it constitute a response to mine.  They cannot even be said to
constitute messages.  The physical facts are that there are oddly shaped
icons projected in luminous phosphor on a rectangular surface in front
of me, but the means to recognize them as letters, words, sentences,
assumptions, conclusions, and so on are only fuzzy abstractions that
have no bearing on their interpretation and their value.  :-)

Sure, my (hypothetical) robot can recognize physical facts.  For
example, it has sensors to distinguish colors, among them red, yellow,
and green.  But it also has to know that red in a certain context means
to stop the car.  That is a social fact, a matter of convention and law.

SD> Knowledge of physical facts is an essential condition for knowing the
  | value of things.

Perhaps you thought I was denying this?  Social facts and physical facts
are not in some kind of competition.

Social facts are >>constituted of<< physical facts.  This means that an
identifiable configuration of physical facts `counts as' a given social
fact.  That hooded box hanging up there on the wire constitutes a
traffic signal.  The box is a physical fact, the fact that it
constitutes a traffic signal is a social fact.  The fact that I ought to
govern my behavior in accord with the color of the light it has turned
on is also a social fact.  If I fail to do so, and a crossing truck
wrecks my car, that is a physical fact.  But it constitutes a range of
social facts eventually involving liability, payment of damages, loss of
privilege, and so on.

Human behavior is rule governed (more accurately, rule oriented [Labov]).
What this means is that these constitutive relationships may be
formulated as rules.  The literature to which I referred you
investigates these regularities of human behavior.

Language is an obvious example of social fact.  Sounds and inscribed or
projected shapes are physical facts.  As soon as you start talking about
phonemes (phonological contrasts of a language) and letters
(graphological contrasts), you have involved yourself in social facts
shared by the users of the given language.  The contrast represented by
l vs r is a fact in English, but not in Japanese.  The physical facts
are the same, but in one language they constitute a contrast that
distinguishes words from one another, in the other language they do not.

Sentences are not constituted directly of the sounds that form the
physical basis of speech, they are constituted of words, which are
constituted of morphemes, which are constituted of phonemes, which
finally are constituted of physical sounds.  (Substitute your favorite
linguistic terminology, the principle holds.)  This is entirely
characteristic of social facts:  most social facts are constituted of
more primitive social facts by which the relation to physical facts is
mediated.

It is not simple.  There is much ambiguity:  a given behavior counts as
a persistent reminder for one person, as nagging for another.  The fact
that these conventions are not ordinarily matters of conscious
introspection does not make their investigation easier.  It even makes
is possible for people to deny that they exist.  :-)

It is even crucial that some social facts be deniable or at least out of
conscious awareness:  their inaccessibility is our only assurance of
sincerity.  We assume that body language, for instance, does not lie.
Hence, our profound distrust of salesmen and actors.

Finally, this is not a matter of being a conformist, an individualist,
or what have you.  Unless you are a hermit in a cave somewhere your
survival very much depends upon your facility with the social facts of
your life.  And even the hermit probably talks to himself.

Bruce Nevin
bn@bbn.com
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