Re: (biassed) summary of the argument so far.
phayes@cs.uiuc.edu
Message-id: <199306021930.AA23254@dante.cs.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: cg@cs.umn.edu
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 14:33:50 +0000
To: interlingua@ISI.EDU, sowa <sowa@turing.pacss.binghamton.edu>
From: phayes@cs.uiuc.edu
X-Sender: phayes@dante.cs.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: (biassed) summary of the argument so far.
Cc: cg@cs.umn.edu, cmenzel@kbssun1.tamu.edu, sowa@turing.pacss.binghamton.edu,
phayes@cs.uiuc.edu
John - sorry about the line length, I will try to be shorter in
future. Just a quick couple of comments.
I see why, given your views on the difference between pure and
applied mathematics, you would object to my saying that model
theory can refer to relations between symbols and the world. But
I do not share those views, as I have now explained carefully
twice. So please don't go through them again like a patient teacher.
This recalcitrant student understands you perfectly, but doesn't
agree with you. If you would like to argue about them, I am quite
willing to do so, but only if you are willing to take part
in a philosophical debate rather than simply assume your views are
correct and explain them again and again.
One little point, however, from your message:
>And when we are trying to implement our theories in a robot, which
>has no built-in commonsense, we have to extremely careful about
>making distinctions between the lexical object types that are
>representable inside the computer and the nonlexical things that
>must be recognized by complex pattern recognition techniques.
Oh, I entirely agree, and would add all the nonlexical things
that can't be recognised by any 'pattern recognition techniques'
[curious anachorism!] such as ideas, forces, countries,
integers, political agendas, etc. etc..
Did you mean, by your didactic tone in stating this platitude,
to imply that my views somehow lead to a confusion of such
distinctions? On the contrary, I find your insistence that
lexical representations must refer only via a computational
'simalcrum' of something real, which itself is only related
vaguely to the actual world, to be alarmingly confusing on
precisely this issue. Your casual way with quotation
might well be a symptom of this.
Pat Hayes
PS did you find the 'summary' accurate, by the way? I tried to
give an honest account of what I thought your positions were.
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