# Cariani on AI

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/cariani-on-ai/2332>\
**Category:** CSG1993\
**Created:** [September 22, 1993, 3:13am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/cariani-on-ai/2332 "1993-09-22T03:13:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![William\_T\_Powers2](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/c67d28/32.png) [@William\_T\_Powers2](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/William_T_Powers2)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 1993, 3:13am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/cariani-on-ai/2332/1 "1993-09-22T03:13:49Z")

</div>

[From Bill Powers (930921.2030 MDT)]

Ed Ford (direct post) --

Sure, go ahead and send me the materials. I'll be happy to look  
them over.

> **···**
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------  
> Peter Cariani (930921) --
> 
> > I just wanted to second (with a rant of my own) Ray Allis'  
> > remarks (9/9) on the symbolic logic straitjacket that has  
> > enveloped most "AI" since the 1956 Dartmouth conference. It was  
> > at this conference that it was decided (erroneously, in my  
> > opinion) by the proto-AI community that all processes are  
> > amenable to digital, rule-governed description, and that  
> > therefore the route to artificial intelligence would necessarily  
> > and solely involve logic-based problem-solving.
> 
> BBS, Sept. 1993, has two segments that are germane to your point.  
> The first is a target article by Shastri and Ajjanagadde, all  
> about a "connectionist representation of rules, variables, and  
> dynamic bindings using temporal synchrony," and the second  
> consists of some continuing commentary and a reply on Roger  
> Penrose's \_Emperor's new mind\_.
> 
> The first is an example of an approach that is probably just as  
> much a mistake as the early AI mistake, although the mistake is  
> hidden in pseudo-circuitry instead of logic. It's the idea that  
> "reflexive reasoning" rests on a vast knowledge base, expressed  
> by the authors as propositions that relate to other propositions  
> according to rules. They diagram the propositions as  
> connectionist circuits, but basically assume that every statement  
> to which the knowledge base may lead is stored somewhere in the  
> knowledge base, in some form.
> 
> The best commentary on this article is by Stanley Munsat (p.  
> 466). He sets up a thought problem in which a detective asks you  
> questions about two masked men who have just held up the  
> restaurant where you were eating.
> 
> &nbsp;&nbsp;The detective asks, "How tall was the one with the green ski  
> &nbsp;&nbsp;mask?" I hestitate. He says, "Was he taller than the cashier?"  
> &nbsp;&nbsp;I immediately reply "yes." Was that fact already encoded in the  
> &nbsp;&nbsp;LTKB?" [LTKB = Long-Term Knowledge Base].
> 
> Munsat offers the alternative that what we know is not stored as  
> (propositional) facts, but as experiences holistically stored,  
> from which we can generate statements of fact "when the need  
> arises." This is what I've been trying to say in referring to an  
> underlying continuum of analog experience even at the highest  
> levels, with statements or propositions simply representing our  
> attempt to describe these underlying experiences in a symbolic  
> language. We answer the detective's question not by searching  
> through a linked knowledge base of statements, but by looking at  
> the memory of the experience and, paying attention to the  
> relationship suggested by the detective, creating a description  
> (or seeing the validity of one) on the spot. The levels of  
> organization that give us the ability to generate propositions  
> are not themselves run by propositions; propositions are their  
> \_product\_, not their mechanism. A description is a product of  
> something that can perceive and then employ methods of symbol-  
> generation to represent the perception in a conventional way.
> 
> To my surprise, Penrose seems to be on the same track. Some of  
> the delayed comments on his book focused on his treatment of  
> Godel's Theorem, which Penrose had characterized as not being  
> provable algorithmically. He explained further what he meant by  
> that. For example, he says (in one long sentence)
> 
> &nbsp;&nbsp;But the insight I intended to express, which comes from Godel's  
> &nbsp;&nbsp;theorem, appears to get somewhat lost if one simply phrases it  
> &nbsp;&nbsp;as the formal theorem that Davis refers to, because the  
> &nbsp;&nbsp;"insight" involves not just a piece of \_formal\_ mathematics --  
> &nbsp;&nbsp;that is, a succession of strings of symbols correctly obeying  
> &nbsp;&nbsp;the rules of some formal system -- but also the \_understanding\_  
> &nbsp;&nbsp;of the underlying \_meanings\_ that the symbolisms of the  
> &nbsp;&nbsp;formalism encode (such as the fact that the actual meaning of  
> &nbsp;&nbsp;the symbol [inverted A] is to be "for all natural numbers" etc.  
> &nbsp;&nbsp;(p.616-617)
> 
> If he had carried this one or two steps further he would have  
> been saying just what I am saying. The meaning that is referred  
> to by the phrase "for all natural numbers" does not consist of  
> the words "for", "all", "natural", and "numbers," but of the  
> \_meanings\_ of those terms and their arrangement, which are not  
> words but the perceptions to which the words refer (at some high  
> level). The ability to perceive things like sequence, program,  
> principle, and system concept does not deliver up strings of  
> words, but the perceptions themselves, directly. The words and  
> other symbols point to those perceptions, but are empty unless  
> the person seeing or hearing the words and symbols already has  
> experienced the right kinds of wordless symbol-less perceptions  
> (or, through reorganizing in the attempt to make sense of the  
> strings of symbols, comes to find perceptions that seem to fit  
> the symbolic description). A proposition is not itself a fact,  
> but a \_description\_ of a (putative) fact.
> 
> If you read Penrose's full remarks, I think you might agree that  
> he is looking for something along these same lines.
> 
> What you say is, for my money, right on the mark and worth  
> repeating:
> 
> > To any practicing scientist, it is inconceivable that we could  
> > do away with making measurements, and to any practicing engineer  
> > (besides computer scientists) it would be inconceivable that we  
> > could do away with effectors that act on the world, but this is  
> > exactly what the AI community did by excluding real perception  
> > and action.
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------  
> Best to all,
> 
> Bill P.