To build a little on my last post … what exactly is the issue with #PropositionalAttitudes such as the #belief#that the #icecream will #melt on this beautiful sunny day?
I refer you to one of my favourite books on #AI and #cognitivescience, which is called “Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design (Language and Being)” by the Authors #TerryWinograd and #FernandoFloresfrom way back in 1986, based on #phenomenology
The book was reviewed by another of my favourite authors #lucysuchman … then of the #XeroxPaloAltoResearchCenter … who said, and I quote “On the other hand, there are those books, which tend to come along less often, that aim to challenge the basic soundness of received ideas, and to propose radical alternatives. Understanding Computers and Cognition aims to be this second kind; namely a radical book, which should be read as such.” My favourite kind, and indeed to be the theme of my posts on #JabeOnAI
So, here is a theme that I will develop further in future posts, that is the debate between what you might wish to call the “rationalist” school of thought, and the “phenomenological” or “hermeneutic” school of thought, popularised by the likes of #Heidegger, #Gadamer, and #Habermass.
A quote from the original text to start you off. From page 17: ”The rationalistic tradition regards language as a system of symbols that are composed of patterns that stand for things in the world. Sentences can represent the world truly or falsely, coherently or incoherently, but there ultimate grounding is in their correspondence with the states of affairs they represent.” Which relates to the #correspondencetheoryoflanguage i.e. deciding what exists (#ontology) and how words refer to it.
See also the book review by #AndreVellino from which I am drawing on in this summary.
Anyhow, getting to my point here, this is described as the “language / action perspective” which posits that information is communication and the means by which people interact i.e. it is action rather than something abstract and fixed; and context is key.
Much of this view resulted from some of the early #symbolicAI work of #winograd, undertaken as part of his #SHRDLU project, which sought to explore how to operate in a #closed#blocksworld.
In coming posts I will explore more of these #SymbolicAI approaches or as they are known “Good Old Fashioned AI” #GOFAI for short. These approaches still have value. For example you can view the work on #AlphaGO as incorporating a little of this approach with the use of the #GamePlaying#MonteCarloAlgorithm, and many more of these are likely to be used in #AugmentedLanguageModels or #ALMs as we “move forward”.
So, we come back to the question … is it correct to say #ABrickIsRed and under what context? 1980s Rock? #Pixies ?
More soon.