Mike, On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 3:16 PM, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Abram:There is one common feature to all chairs: They are for the purpose of > sitting on. I think it is important that this is *not* a visual > characteristic. There are several objections that you could raise, but I > think that > all of them will follow from the fuzziness of language, not the > fuzziness of the actual concepts. > > Your bottom is "for the purpose of sitting on". How will your set of verbal > definitions be able to tell the difference between a "bottom" and a "chair?
I'm not arguing against grounded AI, just fuzzy concepts. So, I can say that you are invoking a verbal ambiguity when you say "sitting on" in the above sentence, not a conceptual one. > How will it know that if "Abram sits on a table", it isn't also a chair? > (And how will it know that, actually, it *could* be a chair?) I was very careful in my wording. I said "they are for the purpose of sitting on" rather than "they are sat on". Objects that get sat on are not necessarily for that purpose, and objects that are made for the purpose are not necessarily ever used. > > And if "John hit Jack with a chair" , will your set of verbal definitions > not exclude this as truthful, if it has nothing about a chair being "for the > purpose of hitting people"? This causes no problem; a thing can have additional purposes and still be a chair, and more relevantly, something can be used in a way that does not match its purpose. > > Not only can a chair, like any other concept of an object , take an infinity > of forms, but it can be used for an infinity of functions and purposes. > Here's S. Kauffman on the purposes of screwdrivers [or chairs] - > "Do we think we can prestate all possible tasks in all possible environments > and problem situations such that we can construct a bounded frame for > screwdrivers? Do we think we could write an algorithm, an effective > procedure, to generate a possibly infinite list of all possible uses ... > some of which do not yet exist? I don't think we could get started." But the definition doesn't need to do this. It just needs to set up a working criteria for something being a screwdriver. There is no need to list all possible additional purposes a screwdriver could have. > > Out of interest, is there one single domain, one area however small and > bounded, like, say, understanding sentences about "boxes" or "geometrical > objects", where ungrounded, purely symbolic reasoning has ever worked/ "got > started" at general intelligence level - i.e. been able to understand all > the permutations of a limited set of words? Just one. Again, I am not arguing for ungrounded concepts, I'm jsut arguing against fuzzy ones. YKY, A broken chair is still for the *purpose* of sitting on, it just doesn't work. (I was careful with my definition!) Miniature/toy/paper chairs are not real chairs; you simply use the same word (because it is a good way of getting the idea across, and besides, those things are *supposed* to look like chairs). A chair with a spike in the seat is just cruel. :) OK, ok, so the spiked chair is actually a tough one... I could say that the chair had a purpose until someone stuck the spike in it, but you would say maybe it was constructed with the spike. I could then claim that we are calling it a chair just because we're used to calling such objects chairs, but that is a cop-out. I admit that I actually think of it as a chair. Then again, I can think of a barrel as a chair... so maybe it is better to call that one a "potential chair", like a barrel; we could use it if we could get the spike out... But the fact that I am rambling on like this is totally defeating my point :). So, I concede the point, and propose the following solution: What I am actually doing is pretending that there is a real, physical property of "chairness". When I say "pretending", I mean that this variable is actually a part of my probabilistic model of the world, but if pressed I would admit that it didn't exist (but wouldn't actually remove it from my model, even then). Yet, I still want to hold on to the idea that "chair" can be factually defined, too. I am convinced that the "fuzziness" idea (as it exists in AI) is a result of the attempt to get simple representations of complex things. The fact that the concept of chair is multifaceted and takes a while to properly explain is not just a result of trying to fit hard logic to a soft concept, it is the result of the actual complexity of the concept! Or, in cases such as "chairness", simply applying fuzziness would obscure details about the way the concept is ill-defined. A concept could be fuzzy because it is physically probabilistic, or it could be fuzzy because we are uncertain of its actual properties, or it could be fuzzy because actual continuous variables are involved. -Abram On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 2:35 PM, YKY (Yan King Yin) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 8/6/08, Abram Demski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> There is one common feature to all chairs: They are for the purpose of >> sitting on. I think it is important that this is *not* a visual >> characteristic. > > It is possible to recognize chairs that cannot be sat on -- for > example, a broken chair, a miniature chair, a toy chair, a paper > chair, a chair with a long sharp spike on the seat, etc. =) > > YKY > > > ------------------------------------------- > agi > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ > Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
