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@make(letterhead,Phone"497-4430",Who"John McCarthy",Logo Old,Department CSD)
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Professor Bernard Meltzer
Via Uzzarini 483
Rossola, ZOCCA(MO)
ITALY
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@greeting(Dear Bernard,)
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I just got back from a trip and had a chance to respond to your letter of
March 13.  I find one clear area of disagreement.  You refer to the robot
with different perceptual mechanisms and say "The world model....would contain
objects like....lattices of atoms, not telephones or Pat or trees or London."

If it is to avoid tripping over telephones, it must perceive them; if it is 
to avoid being dismantled by its enemy, Pat, it must recognize him and that he
immobilizes his enemies by making trees fall on them, and can be avoided by 
staying out of London and Paris.

More realistically, the blind live in the same world of material objects
as we do, i.e., they can move them, avoid them, build them, destroy them and
talk about them with sight people and with each other.  They can refer to their
colors just as we can refer to the infra red false colors of areas photographed
from space.

Thanks for the paper by Airenti, Bara and Colombetti.  If I have comments,
I'll write further.
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Best regards,




John McCarthy