perm filename CONCEP.SUP[E76,JMC]1 blob sn#232934 filedate 1976-08-20 generic text, type C, neo UTF8
COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	.bb PHILOSOPHICAL REMARKS
C00005 ENDMK
C⊗;
.bb PHILOSOPHICAL REMARKS


	My motivation for introducing concepts as objects comes from
artificial intelligence.  Namely, I want computer programs that can
reason intelligently about who wants what or who knows what.
This leads to considering examples like that of the previous section
and seems to have the following philosophical consequences:
.item←0

	#. Since we can't immediately make programs capable of understanding
the whole world, we are interested in formalizations that
allow programs to act intelligently in a limited domains.

	#. We are not especially attached to the usages of natural
language except in so far as they suggest useful formalizations.

	#. There is no harm in introducing lots of abstract entities
like concepts and no inclination to restrict ourselves to entities
that can be defined finitistically.  This is because we aren't interested
in making our own knowledge more secure (as philosophers sometimes define
their task) but
rather want to make a computer program act effectively even at the cost
of having it reason naively.  In designing such programs, we take for
granted our own common sense views of the world.

	I must confess, however, to finding this attitude philosophically
attractive, i.e. first find a formal system that allows expressing common
sense reasoning - naively if necessary, and then try to make it
secure.
.SKIP 1
.bb NOTES
.PORTION NOTES
.RECEIVE;

.ITEM←NOTE;
.skip 1