Re: Recursive Defs
Ramesh Patil <RAMESH@vaxa.isi.edu>
Date: Mon 30 Jul 90 10:57:51-PDT
From: Ramesh Patil <RAMESH@vaxa.isi.edu>
Subject: Re: Recursive Defs
To: nebel@cs.uni-sb.de
Cc: RAMESH@vaxa.isi.edu, INTERLINGUA@vaxa.isi.edu
Message-id: <649360671.0.RAMESH@VAXA.ISI.EDU>
In-reply-to: <9007301428.AA24473@fb14vax.cs.uni-sb.de>
Mail-System-Version: <VAX-MM(217)+TOPSLIB(128)@VAXA.ISI.EDU>
Bernhard, I agree with most of what you have said. I however still find the
example definition of human in your book less than convincing for the
arguments you make (the arguments are real, but the example is contrived.).
As for recognition vs definition, I believe that most of the discussion has
focused on definitional aspects. If one has to deal with recognition, then
one must take a very different approach, one must define the notion of
description that are adequate for recognition. In this context necessary
conditions for definition may not be necessary anymore. I cannot say that
having a human parent is a necessary condition for me to recognize a human
being. Furthermore, features used for recognition may be very different from
the facts about such object that we may wish to reason wit.
- ramesh
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