Re: Short Circuiting Artificial Intelligence

On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 02:25:40 GMT, "Phil Roberts, Jr."
<philrob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

>Lester Zick wrote:
>
>
>>>
>>> All forms of reasoning are nothing but comparing (David Hume).
>>
>>
>> Well there is a smattering of truth in most analogies. Problem is no
>> one can quite be sure where. The critical path is analytical
>
>I could use a little elaboration here.

Analogical reasoning doesn't contain explicit middle terms so its
explanations aren't clear or analytically exact. There is presumably a
moral to the tale but who can say exactly what? Socrates' cave men
analogy had some point but I couldn't tell you what it was. It just
ran on and on without ever coming to an explicit conclusion. That's
the problem with all analogies. The author or his critics say what the
moral is supposed to be but nothing in the analogy itself says what
the moral is. That's what science does. It shows exact sequences of
reasoning through explicit middle terms. Analogies are just like
shaggy dog stories; you can make most anything of them you want.
That's why analogical reasoning is so prevalent in philosophy; it
allows philosophers to say something is kinda like this or a little
like that without having to say exactly what anything is or isn't.

>> and not
>> analogical reasoning. Analogical reasoning is just a happenstantial
>> descriptive approximation of something but no one can be sure what.
>>
>
>You certainly can't do it all with analogy, if that's what you
>mean.

You can't do any of it with analogical reasoning as far as science is
concerned. If you provide explicit middle terms you don't have an
analogy and if you don't you don't have science.

> Sooner or later you are going to have to go back and
>check your hunches, and that's going to entail a bit of deduction,
>for sure. But most of the advances in our understanding were from
>analogical thinking, IMHO. Here's why.

So here goes another analogy.

>Over 250 years ago, the venerable Hume, who had no qualms whatsoever
>about observing his own mind as a basis for formulating scientific
>theories, noticed that there are only three types of association,
>those based on similarity (and difference), those based on contiguity,
>and those based on cause and effect.

And what made the venerable Hume assume these were exhaustive? That
he noticed them and could notice no others? Scarcely compelling. And
what the hell exactly is contiguity supposed to mean? I can see some
vague merit to similarity and difference but nothing with contiguity.

> I have already argued that
>postulated physical causes are extrapolations from our experiences
>with the minds affectations and effectations,

This is all very interesting but hardly scientific because all these
terms flying around just don't make much reductive sense unless you
want to throw in some other comparably ambiguous qualifiers which
will undoubtedly make even less sense.It's kinda like a physical cause
or an extrapolation from our experiences? More likely it's kinda like
extrapolations, affectations, and effectations from your experiences.

> so that one is based
>on analogy (similarity and difference) right off the bat. The only
>one left is contiguity,

So you say but I'm still chewing on this idea of analogy (similarity
and difference) thingie. At this rate I might get around to contiguity
in a hundred years or so.

>but most contiguity is more a matter of remembering than a matter
>of figuring something out such as occurres in an aha or eureka
>experience.

Yeah well when you get around to saying what any of these things mean
in exhaustive terms, let me know. If you want to know what scientific
reductions really mean in this context, check out the root post to my
thread Epistemology 201: The Science of Science 1/24/5.

>Let me have a go from another angle.
>
>Nah! Its too tedious. :)

Of course it's too tedious. Analogical reasoning always is. I got so
bored with Socrates' cave men story that I quit reading before I got
to what he considered the moral of his tale that may or may not have
been the moral because he didn't give us any explicit middle terms.
Scientific reductions are short and to the point. Analogical reasoning
is a tale full of sound and fury signifying very little except the
promise of more sound and fury coming to further elaborate the sound
and fury we already have without explaining it in exhaustive terms.

~v~~

.

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