Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!eliot From: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) Newsgroups: comp.music Subject: Reply to Laske (was: Re: Music Research Digest Vol. 5, #14) Message-ID: <14095@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Date: 25 Feb 90 21:55:05 GMT References: <132035@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Reply-To: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) Organization: Princeton University, NJ Lines: 190 In article <132035@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> music-research writes: ;Music-Research Digest Sat, 17 Feb 90 Volume 5 : Issue 14 ; ;Date: Mon, 12 Feb 90 09:43:48 EST ;From: Otto Laske ;Subject: Reply Regarding Knowledge Acquisition ;To: music-research ; I start from the idea that musicology is a discipline of knowledge engin ;eering, The Otto Laske definition of musicology, at odds with everyone else in the field. One may as well say that the study of history is really the study of the military expertise of Napolean Bonaparte. ; I add the experience that knowledge engineering requires knowledge ;elicitation, knowledge analysis, and knowledge modeling, and that one ;cannot engineer knowledge without modeling it "Nice neutral term that says nothing." -- OTTO LASKE, in Music Research Digest. The word "knowledge" is definitely overworked, one might suggest. ; I proceed from the observation that traditional musicology was a ;hermeneutic science practicing "knowledge engineering in reverse", ;viz., starting from products of musical thinking, Is Otto Laske aware that the ETA Hoffman's prose analysis of the 5th Symphony of Beethoven had a decisive impact on the compositional ideology of Robert Schumann? Perhaps "traditional musicology" (a nice neutral term that says nothing) has implications for the study of the compositional process that Laske has not been able to forsee. Let his criticisms therefore apply to his own narrow understanding of history. ;and that contemporary ;computer music research practices "ad hoc knowledge engineering" starting ;from presumptions of what might be musical knowledge, but having no ;empirical theories to support the (implicit) claim. Meaningless assertion in the absence of any concrete example. What research? ;Most of this ad hoc knowledg ;e is public knowledge taken from text books,some of it is shared ;(collegial) knowledge, little or none of it is personal, idiosyncratic ;knowledge. Who is Laske talking about? Is it, as I suspect, the Scarecrow of Oz? Which textbooks? Laske, as the scientist he professes to be, leaves us all in the dark as to the motivations of this resounding (though neutral, hence meaningless) critique. ; I conclude that we need a theory of musical action (or activity), ;and that,therefore, cognitive musicology is probably not a "mainstream" ;(newtonian) science but an "action science" that gears its solutions ;to a "community of practice" instead of working with the distinction ;between "theoretical and applied" sciences ;which is a ;somewhat esoteric topic, but should be emphasized. Here's the solution to all of Laske's big problems: the "community of practice" consists of all those unnamed people who practice "ad hoc knowledge engineering." How's about that? ;THE PREDICAMENT (if they only knew it) It's hard being a visionary, Otto. ; The predicament of getting stuck in public knowledge--which is ;verbal, not action knowledge--is shared by the computer music and expert ;system community, except that the latter is aware of the predicament, ;and the former is not. (This is a crucial difference which colors ;everything happening in "computer music", an anachronistic term anyway). Just who are these people? I want to see instances of research cited that demonstrates that the computer music COMMUNITY -- not just one or two isolated instances of practice -- is "stuck in this predicament." Because I don't see that "knowledge engineering" is even an issue to begin with in the computer music community, let alone that the community is being held up by the fact that "knowledge" is transmitted verbally. ;PRECOMP, implemented by Don Cantor ;and called K ;AIMU by him, Since he wrote the code, I say let's all call this thing KAIMU. I wouldn't want Laske renaming my programs. ;It is both a "precompositional tool" (therefore PREC ;OMP) helping a composer prepare a definitive score for instruments and/or tape, ;and an (element ;ary) knowledge acquisition tool, in that it monitors, in an original and interes ;ting way, the expert's deliberations about how to find structure ;in, and segment, an "event list" (produced by the generator), in order ;to define a definitive score. Hold on a second. Acoording to Otto Laske, KAIMU is "original and interesting." According to Otto Laske, this is knowledge and that isn't. According to Otto Laske this is empirical and everything else ain't. Maybe Otto Laske is going too far as an arbiter or interestingness, knowldege and empricism? How's about, Otto, we submit to the community and see whether anyone agrees? ; Don Cantor's originality lies in having designed pictures of ;the analytic structure of event lists, and having thought up and ;implemented the "segmentation advisor" as a set of rules whose slots ;are set by the expert, who is being monitored when doing so. See ;his dissertation. Yes Otto. Who is Don Cantor, what does he know about composition, and why should his pictures count as anything more than his pictures? What makes them empirical, for example? Does anyone who has drawn pictures of the analytic structure of event lists qualify as a knowledge engineer? Does Schenker, for example? ; There are many limitations to PRECOMP in its present form. Its rule ;set is primitive; its protocol generation is passable; it does ;nothing about how to evaluate protocols, manually or automatically; ;it is concerned only with a single event list (score section), while ;the composer/designer is concerned with many such sections at the ;same time; in many instances it repeats insights that can be gleaned ;from pictures of event list analyses; etc. Laske, this doesn't sound like "knowledge engineering" at all. Sounds more like "data acquistion." Might be easier to use something like the sort of history mechanism used in emacs, that way you can look at "what the expert did next." Good luck. ; (1) that to capture music knowledge means to capture action ; knowledge You haven't demonstrated that. You don't actually have "knowledge" on your hands. You have a bunch of data that you can't figure out how to analyze. So let's not call this "capturing knowledge." Let's call it "recording keystrokes." ; (3) that we need a theory of knowledge representation for music ; knowledge -- a major concern of the annual A.I. and Music ; Workshop (1990: ECAI, Stockholm,Sweden) Chairman: Otto Laske. ; (4) that we cannot afford ad hoc stipulations of what is musical ; knowledge but need empirical theories, Maybe it's time to get down off your empiricist high horse, Laske. Composition is not an empirical process, nor have you succeeded in showing that it's even an observable process. In any case I wonder how useful empiricism is in modelling cognitive processes. One wants to incorporate facts if there are any, but composition is such a high level activity, intrinsically molded by one's own conception of what it is, that it's hard to see if there is even such a thing as one compositional FACT that empirically obtains, let alone a whole theory of what the thing necessarily must be. Laske's aiming far too high, partly, I think, because his view of composition is too narrow. Equivalently, one might try to find the facts concerning the process of writing novels. ; (6) that composers are experts as others, inspite of the romantic ; Western European tradition treating them as special, geniuses, ; and the interest of most composers to hide their knowledge, in ; order to seem more unique and mysterious; that they are designers; ; and that without their cooperation, as that of living musicians ; generally, musicology is a dead field. Laske lets off another resounding and odious fart. Laske says this is so, ergo it is so. Laske's concept of composers as "designers" completely overlooks the entire sociological history of music, that music evidently has an importance that goes far beyond whatever aesthetic niceties it may have to offer. Music can incite to rage and violence, it can tranquilize, it is the most powerful instrument of propaganda and worship known, it was thought in the 19th C to be the unique vehicle of the sublime, it is an activity powerfully charged with its own history and accomplishment, of its influence and influences, its acheivement whether explicit or merely ideological. All this Laske reduces to a simple behavioristic formula: it is "design." Composers should not be regarded as spacial or geniuses, though there can be no doubt that those composers who count are obviously special, and are obviously able to do something that others are unable to do. If they would only hand their knowledge over to Laske, he would de-mystify the entire consciousness of mankind, show that composers are merely experts in design, and that programs written for the Mac are able to capture this expertise. But they won't, because then they won't be regarded as special any lonmger. This is about the most twisted and stupid version of mankind that I've ever come across. In comparison to this, L. Ron Hubbard could almost be called interesting. His picture of the mind is a little bit more realistic. --E. Handelman Princeton U., Dept of Music