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Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!ames!mailrus!iuvax!ndcheg!uceng!dmocsny
From: dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Summary: Puzzling out Holism
Keywords: Synthetic Reasoning
Message-ID: <568@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 11 Jan 89 03:25:46 GMT
References: <558@soleil.UUCP> <43472@linus.UUCP> <331@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
Organization: Univ. of Cincinnati, College of Engg.
Lines: 57

In article <331@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>, markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:
> In article <43472@linus.UUCP> bwk@mbunix (Barry Kort) writes:
> >If I give you a large, assembled jigsaw puzzle, and you examine
> >it piece by piece, you will end up with a pile of carefully
> >examined pieces.
> I don't know about that.  I solve most of my puzzles by classifying pieces
> on the basis of their shape and printed color, with little or no regard
> for the place where they fit in the "big" picture.
> 
> Yet, I also claim that I'm solving the puzzle holistically in the process.
> The "big" picture always emerges out of the jumble of pieces near the end.

How about those irritating puzzles with large washes of featureless
background (sky, ocean, forest). Even with our terrific holistic
pattern-matching power, the best we can often do is try every
combination of pieces to see which ones fit together (the problem gets
worse when a malicious jigsaw operator makes similar cuts that permit
close but erroneous fits). Assembling a solid-color puzzle reduces us
to the level of a slow, awkward serial computer, with perhaps some
advantage in avoiding certain obvious misfits. Is the solid-color
puzzle problem NP-complete?

Then again, I don't know anyone who has spent enough time assembling
solid-color puzzles to perform at an expert level. Perhaps subtle
cues exist that would allow our holistic power to get its foot in
the door and fetch the complexity monster a swift kick.

A portion of the puzzle with more information content provides
suitable grist for our holistic mill. Fixing the position of a piece
is "only" a matter of spotting when the pattern on it corresponds
uniquely to a detail on the puzzle box (if the puzzle came in a plain
box, toss it in the incinerator), or to a partially-assembled
structure. The holistic pattern-matcher must work in the face of
rotations, and know when to ignore or exploit the shape of a
particular puzzle piece.

But I think I am subverting Barry's original comment. He seemed to
be saying that the way the puzzle happens to divide into pieces
has _nothing_at_all_to_do_ with the picture that appears on the
puzzle. The "obvious" reductionist approach to "understanding" or
"explaining" the picture on the puzzle is doomed from the start.

However, I think the futility of the reductionist approach here
follows from the nature of the puzzle. I.e., the puzzle is an
artifact, and as such its decomposition is arbitrary. Do we in fact
see such "arbitrary" or misleading decomposition in nature, or do we
explain our failure to explain as due to nothing more than our limited
knowledge and bookkeeping ability?

Cheers,

Dan Mocsny
dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu

"God is subtle, but He is not malicious." -- A. Einstein
"Stop telling God what to do." -- P.A.M. Dirac (?) (Sorry, science historians,
if I botched this one)