Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!pprg.unm.edu!hc!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert From: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Where might CR understanding come from (if it exists) Message-ID: <2722@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Date: 4 Apr 89 11:41:13 GMT References: <2691@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <813@htsa.uucp> <2705@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <3684@mit-amt> Reply-To: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland Lines: 46 In article <3684@mit-amt> trevor@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Trevor Darrell) writes: > >Excuse me, but exactly how does one determine when an activity can or >cannot improve understanding? And have you published your test >of what can, and cannot, count as knowledge? ``References?'' > I'm utterly derivative :-) Go mug up on epistemology and philosophy of science, then characterise the activities of the various branches of AI (they are not birds of a feather, until you reach the strong AI stuff, like real-world semantics),and then decide to what extent any of them have a coherent view of what it is to promote convincement. >Would you have had all intellectual explorations throughout the >ages constrained by these tests? All the artistic explorations? Would you >perscribe them as an absolute guide to your child's education? Of course not, but we aren't talking about individual exploration, or private enlightenment. We are talking about institutionalised creation of knowledge in the post-war academic culture. This eats resources and shapes people's images of the future. Democracy demands quality control. I know of no incident in the history of science where continued romantic mucking about got anywhere. As A.N. Whitehead argued, all learning must begin with a stage of Romance, otherwise there will be no motivation, no drive to learn, no fascination. But it must be followed by a stage of analysis, a specialisation based on proper discipline, for "where one destroys specialism, one destroys life." With specialism, the mind is "a disciplined regiment" not a "rabble". For Whitehead, a final stage of Generalisation which applies specialised analysis into common sense, real-world context is essential. (A.N. Whitehead, (as in Russel & _) The Aims of Education, 1929) As for children's education, I designed and implemented curricula based on what Whitehead called his 'Rhythm of Education'. AI rarely gets beyond the first beat of the rhythm. Sometimes it dodges it and goes straight into logic etc, but never gets to generalisation, since it was never grounded in anything sensible in the first place. I note that Trevor works in AI vision, which has not got to where it is by romantic sci-fi, but by proper analysis of psychophysical and physiological knowledge. Once reasoning is needed, all this good work goes becomes diluted with the shifting sands of basic AI. -- Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs !ukc!glasgow!gilbert