Understanding
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From: Alan Smaill on 18 Mar 2010 14:34 Frederick Williams <frederick.williams2(a)tesco.net> writes: > Marc Alcob� Garc�a wrote: >> >> On 18 mar, 16:38, Marc Alcob� Garc�a <malc...(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> > Machines might some day learn things by ostension, just as we humans >> > do. But before maybe we should discover how our brain is capable of >> > analogy, idealization, abstraction, generalization, particularization, >> > representation, etc... >> >> Sorry, I am not sure 'ostension' is an english word, its meaning would >> be synonym of 'by example', i. e. by means of showing what is meant to >> be learnt. > > It is English but obsolete except in ecclesiastical uses. Still gets used a bit in the more general sense in the philosophical literature (at least in UK) eg Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 1997 has "ostension. Pointing out. An ostensive definition is one which points to individual instances: ..." -- Alan Smaill
From: yasu on 18 Mar 2010 20:01 On Mar 19, 3:34 am, Alan Smaill <sma...(a)SPAMinf.ed.ac.uk> wrote: > Frederick Williams <frederick.willia...(a)tesco.net> writes: > > Marc Alcobé García wrote: > > >> On 18 mar, 16:38, Marc Alcobé García <malc...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> > Machines might some day learn things by ostension, just as we humans > >> > do. But before maybe we should discover how our brain is capable of > >> > analogy, idealization, abstraction, generalization, particularization, > >> > representation, etc... > > >> Sorry, I am not sure 'ostension' is an english word, its meaning would > >> be synonym of 'by example', i. e. by means of showing what is meant to > >> be learnt. > > > It is English but obsolete except in ecclesiastical uses. > > Still gets used a bit in the more general sense in the philosophical > literature (at least in UK) eg Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 1997 > has > > "ostension. Pointing out. > An ostensive definition is one which points to individual instances: ..." > > -- > Alan Smaill Thank you all, after reading your responses, I thought more about "understanding" and I have just written this at a cafe in Tokyo. I wonder what you think about this... ================================ Understanding cannot be, at least at the moment, described in an axiomatic theory, which is the reason computers cannot "understand" anything, maybe... Logical thinking exists but it cannot be understood by logical thinking. Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Philosophy, Psychology, etc, may help us understand their subject domains. (Disclaimer: But I am no expert of any of these). Such academic disciplines assist our understanding of their subject domains. We are born with the ability to think. The academic disciplines such as Philosophy and Psychology allow us to incorporate the thoughts of other people to our own thinking. Our thinking, thus "enhanced", enables us to perform tasks such as predicting the movements of the planets, manufacturing computers, writing software, developing theories, authoring literary works, etc. However, even if we use all of our knowledge obtained so far, we cannot construct something like HAL9000 (excluding the evil part :-) in the movie 2001 Space Odyssey. Neither does it look like we will obtain such ability in the near future (Although I admit this is maybe too subjective). My intuition is that it is impossible to construct a machine that can think, or "understand", using "logic devices", or computers, no matter how much we "scale up" the processing speed, memory capacity, etc. Some people think that mathematics, etc are very "dry" subjects, probably referring to such features as axiomatic methods, in which most of the formulas are just derived from a few axioms, "mechanically". I think 'understanding' requires us to do the kind of thinking that are "wet", as opposed to "dry". I think that quality of being "wet" is something like belief, will, spirit, etc. In addition, although I think such "wet" thinking is the essential component of our "understanding", it cannot be broken into to pieces, to be analyzed, because it's not "dry"!
From: RussellE on 18 Mar 2010 23:17 On Mar 18, 8:04 am, yasu <yasuakik...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Mar 18, 11:18 pm, Marc Alcobé García <malc...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > > On 18 mar, 12:45, yasu <yasuakik...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > > On Mar 18, 3:39 pm, William Elliot <ma...(a)rdrop.remove.com> wrote: > > > > > On Wed, 17 Mar 2010, yasu wrote: > > > > > MATHEMATICS is a belief system which can be almost mechanically > > > > > followed. > > > > > False. Mathematics is not religion. Religion is belief system.. > > > > > > The study and research of MATHEMATICS is not practiced by any machine > > > > > today. > > > > > They're trying. > > > > > > Understanding requires assumptions about implicitly stated conditions. > > > > > Understanding is not a topic of mathematics. It's a topic of philosophy. > > > > > > Such assumptions are not practiced by any machine today. > > > > > Computer software is full of known science and math. > > > > Hello, thank you for replying. > > > > I really appreciate your comments. Regarding the "belief system" > > > concept, I have been debating in my mind as well. What I was thinking > > > was something like this - is it possible a non-human to understand > > > mathematics? I though the answer, at this moment anyway, was false.. > > > I thought that if you save PDF books of mathematics textbooks etc on a > > > hard drive, the machine cannot "understand" the content of it. In > > > order to "understand" anything, I think it requires the "wilinness" of > > > whoever studying the subject to understand it.. That's what I called > > > very vaguely... (sorry for my lack of vocabulary), "religion". Does > > > it make sense?- Ocultar texto de la cita - > > > > - Mostrar texto de la cita - > > > Maybe Smullyan's "Forever Undecided" would make a good read that would > > dispel some of your worries. > > Thank you,.. I do have some books on the incompleteness theorem. But > what bothers me is still the same..You cannot let a machine to learn > all about the incompleteness theorem, etc by iself. Neithe can you do > the same for a 6 month old baby. It just appears to me that > "understanding" is a very human cocept and we do not know exactly what > understanding means, (maybe), because if we did, we would have a > machine that can "understand thngs" by now.. Be careful what you wish for. A computer that understands things might figure out humans are a danger to it. I once wrote a short story about a computer program that learns to lie to protect its own existence. What we call "intelligence" includes a lot of self interest. Russell - 2 many 2 count
From: Nam Nguyen on 19 Mar 2010 00:07 yasu wrote: > You cannot let a machine to learn > all about the incompleteness theorem, etc by iself. How would you know a machine can't learn all about GIT or the like by itself?
From: William Elliot on 19 Mar 2010 02:51
On Thu, 18 Mar 2010, Jesse F. Hughes wrote: > William Elliot <marsh(a)rdrop.remove.com> writes: >> >>> MATHEMATICS is a belief system which can be almost mechanically >>> followed. >>> >> False. Mathematics is not religion. Religion is belief system. > > Honestly, William, this bit of reasoning almost reaches the heights of > Archimedes Plutonium's greatest syllogism. Only a Plutonium fan, which I'm not, would know. > The premises > Mathematics is not religion. > Religion is [a] belief system. > do not imply > Mathematics is not a belief system. > So what? I didn't say they did. I made three declarative statements. > (Note: I am not expressing an opinion on whether mathematics *is* a > belief system or not, since the latter term is too vague.) > (Note: I am not expressing an opinion on whether you hallucinated a sillygism or not, since the ladder term is Jabberwocky.) |