Re: Aaron Sloman's "The Irrelevance of Turing Machines to AI" article
From: David Longley (David_at_longley.demon.co.uk)
Date: 08/08/04
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Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 23:17:25 +0100
In article <fa69ae35.0408071826.2b27c23@posting.google.com>, Eray
Ozkural exa <erayo@bilkent.edu.tr> writes
>"Allan C Cybulskie" <allan.c.cybulskie@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
>news:<mq5Rc.49744$Vm1.1250884@news20.bellglobal.com>...
>> "David Longley" <David@longley.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>> news:hWUjKmGE2PEBFwro@longley.demon.co.uk...
>> > Pointing out that you don't see how silly such behaviour is invariably
>> > tends to be a waste of time, as *if* you could see it for what it is
>> > (something which would require you to be held accountable for your
>> > behaviour in the way that Wolf says he is),
>>
>> David, we are accountable for our behaviour every day. We LIVE it. And for
>> most of us, the folk psychological view WORKS.
>
>It does, because it is subject to public scrutiny, somewhat like
>science. We have reason to think it contains some objective knowledge,
>definitely not the complete truth, but a bit of knowledge about the
>way our brains work. It does not offer us detailed mechanisms, but it
>gives us a high-level description of the mind which allows us to
>predict the behavior of others to some extent.
>
>Regards,
>
>--
>Eray Ozkural
Note the vague use of quantifiers in both of the above posts. You're on
the right track though, just let down by intensional sleight-of-hand -
ie you confabulate and end up deluding yourselves. Of course there are
the seeds of science in our folk psychology - we use yes and no (cf.
semantic ascent). Conditioned by environmental contingencies our folk
psychology just serves as an entering wedge, a modus vivendi. In our
distant past, that's all we had. For some people, that's still all they
basically have. However, if this way of behaving sufficed, we would
never have developed the languages of logic, formal number systems (for
accounting) and science (collectively, the Extensional Stance).
Categorisation is basically classification. This allows us to extend the
range of our behaviour.
Our *natural* languages are full of vestigial "scruffy" (analogue)
intensional locutions which like metaphors basically render large parts
of natural languages non-truth-functional. This is the nebulous domain
where the Intentional Stance rather adventitiously operates and where
nobody is ever really sure what one another are talking about (the later
Wittgenstein suggested we looked carefully at the tyrannical hold which
our natural language exerts on how we think).
Once we began working with marks, ie ordering, and recording them in
relation to our public behaviour, we established a means whereby we
could manage our behaviour more reliably. In response to the biases
inherent in our intensional heuristics (analogue computers aren't good
for counting remember), we gradually evolved neat (logical/numeric)
classification schemes or languages based on yes/no, allowing us to
establish more rigorously controlled rule governed behaviours and token
economies. In time these languages have been refined as extensional or
truth-functional specialist languages (such as statistics, physics,
biology (programming languages are just a refined form). We call this
"science" and it's out there in our environments where it can be used to
regulate our behaviours more reliably. It has nothing to do with arcane
notions such as "mind", although we can and do go to great lengths to
select and sort ourselves into groups on the basis of how able we are to
*use* these languages (cf IQ) and other normative selection procedures
(behaviours).
Despite appearances to the contrary Cognitive "Science" isn't really a
science at all, given that it explicitly makes out that it studies what
science actually eschews - ie the intensional. The latter is what
science leaves behind, or more accurately, repudiates! That is, there
are no intensional "entities" amenable to scientific analysis because
such notions have no identity. Where it doesn't try to traffic in such
locutions, "Cognitive Science" comes out as a sexed up, re-badged, (or
plagiarised) behavioural science (as I've tried to illustrate with a few
examples).
"AI" is therefore a misnomer. All of our science and technology (broadly
conceived) is our "AI". It's most salient as engineering, but it isn't
limited to that.
-- David Longley
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