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From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Where might CR understanding come from (if it exists)
Message-ID: <3689@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 7 Apr 89 19:20:47 GMT
References: <322@edai.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 16

From article <322@edai.ed.ac.uk>, by cam@edai.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.edai   031 667 1011 x2550):
" ...
" This idea that you have to understand something properly before
" being able to make it is a delusion of armchair scientists who have
" swallowed the rational reconstruction of science usually taught in
" schools, and corresponds ...   It also corresponds to the notion
" that one can translate one language into another by purely syntactic
" processing, a notion that AI disabused itself of some time ago after
" contemplating its early experimental failure to do just that.

What you say seems to assume that the syntax of natural languages was or
is understood.  That is not the case.  It's very far from being the
case.  The failure you mention, consequently, does not suggest that
translation cannot be achieved by syntactic processing.

		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu