Richard, Thanks for the detailed comments!
If you spend some time in my semantic theory, you will see that I never believe any concept can get any kind of "objective meaning" or "true definition". All meanings depend on an observer, with its observation ability and limitation. The so called "objective meaning" is just "commonly agreed meaning" in a community of observers, which is not as "subjective" as one observer's own idea. Therefore, I agree with your analysis that "percepts," "actions" and "states" cannot be "objectively measurable or identifiable" concepts --- actually no concept can be. However, it doesn't mean that "everything goes" and we cannot make any meaningful analysis to any situation. Especially, it doesn't mean "intelligence" as a concept cannot have a stable working definition, as the goal of a research project, since our current understanding on the topic is clearly limited. In my paper, I do assume we can meaningfully use words like "percepts," "actions", and "states" according to our intuitive understanding of them --- we have to start from somewhere. To me, these concepts, though have no "objective meaning", are still much less complicated than the concept of "intelligence", and different understanding about them won't have too big a impact to the conclusion of the paper. By the way, the word "percepts", borrowed from Russell&Norvig, doesn't mean "perception", which is much more "subjective". I uses a conceptual framework consists of "percepts," "actions", and "states", not because I think these concepts are "objective", but because they can help us to show the difference among various understandings of "intelligence". Even for the concept of "intelligence", I'm not trying to "find its true meaning", but to show where different understandings will lead the research. Of course, all of these opinions are based on my biased experience, and restricted by my insufficient resources in processing them, so therefore is neither objective nor fully formalized. However, I don't believe those properties are the most important ones for defining intelligence at the current time. Pei On Jan 14, 2008 11:20 AM, Richard Loosemore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Pei, > > I have a few thoughts about your paper. > > Your classification scheme for different types of intelligence > definition seems to require that the concepts of "percepts," "actions" > and "states" be objectively measurable or identifiable in some way. > > I see this as a problem, because the concept of a "percept" (say) may > well be so intimately connected with what intelligent systems do that we > could never say what counts as a percept without making reference to an > intelligent system. > > For example, would it count if an intelligent human "perceived" an > example of a very abstract concept like (e.g.) "hegemony"? Would > [hegemony] be a percept, or would you only allow primitive percepts that > are directly picked up by an intelligence, like oriented line segments? > > More precisely, I think that "percepts" like [hegemony] are indeed bona > fide percepts, but they are very unlikely to be defined without making > reference to the systems that developed the concept. So [hegemony] does > not have a closed-form definition and the best we can do is to say that > among a large population of human intelligences, there is a point in > concept-space that is given the word-label "hegemony" but if you were to > look inside each individual mind you would find that the same name is > actually a unique cluster of connections to other concepts (each of > which, in turn, has its own subtle differences among all the different > individuals). > > The same story can be told about "actions", and internal "states". > > But if there is only a loose correspondence (across individuals) between > terms labelled with the same name, then how can we even begin to think > that the act of comparing states, percepts and actions between computers > and humas (as you do in your paper) would be a good way to dissect the > different meanings of "intelligence"? > > The only way out of this problem would be to define some normative > central tendency of the Ps, Ss and As across the population of actual > intelligent agents (i.e. human minds, at this time in history) and then > move on from there. But of course, that would be tantamount to > declaring that intelligence is basically defined by what human minds do. > > My point here is not to ask questions about how percepts map onto one > another (across individuals), but to say that the very question of which > things count as percepts cannot be answered without looking at the > chunks that have actually been formed by human beings. To put this in > stark relief: suppose we came across an alien intelligence that did not > use oriented line segments at a very low level of its visual system, but > instead used pairs of blobs, separated by different distances across the > retina. Eveything it perceived above this level would then be various > abstractions of that basic visual building block. This alien mind would > be carving nature along different joints - parsing it very differently - > and it might well be that it simply never constructs high level concepts > that map onto our own concepts, so the two sets of percepts (ours and > theirs) are just not comparable. They might never "perceive" an example > of hegemony, and we might never be able to "perceive" an instance of one > of their concepts either. How would we then - even in principle - start > talking about whether the "same" percepts give rise to the same iternal > states in the two systems? The "percepts" would depend too much on the > actual structure of the two different minds. The 'percepts" would not > be objective things. > > I see no way out of this, because I cannot see any way that the abstract > notion of *objective* percepts, states and actions can be justified. > The validity of any proposed objective scheme can be challenged, and so > long as it can be challenged, the notion of percepts, states and actions > cannot be used as a starting point for a discussion of what > "intelligence" actually is. > > What do you think? > > > > > Richard Loosemore > > > ----- > This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email > To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: > http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; > ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=85665868-e3c5ba
