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C00002 00002	Dormitive Power
C00004 00003	This page moved to motiva[ess,jmc] here and back to SAIL
C00006 00004	Schank's 14 actions
C00008 00005	Visualization
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Dormitive Power

	Let us try to justify the statement of Moliere's? anti-hero
that the sleeping powder put him to sleep because it had "dormitive
power".  Suppose a search for dormitive power were undertaken
and it were found to be conserved as matter was transformed.  Suppose
that "wakefulness" in food was also conserved as the food was
transformed, but decayed with time once eaten.  Suppose further
that dormitive power counteracted wakefulness in a fixed ratio,
i.e. the person would go to sleep if the dormitive power of the
sleeping powder exceeded the wakefulness remaining, but the
ratio was different for men and women though fixed within a sex.
This would be quite an elegant and useful theory were it true.
Other equally elegant theories could be devised.  The original
statement that the "dormitive power" of the sleeping powder put
the man to sleep might be taken as a belief that some such theory
would eventually be found.  In this case the statement would be
sensible, even though it eventually turned out that there was no
suitable theory.

	As Dennett puts it, using the term "dormitive power" is like
taking out a loan.  It must eventually be paid back by devising a
suitable theory, or else.
This page moved to motiva[ess,jmc] here and back to SAIL
Schank's 14 actions

	The reason Schank thinks he can get by with 14 is that
he is fooled by metaphor.  It is  like Basic English.  You don't
need the word "pass" as in "pass a course" if you can say "get by",
but it requires acquaintance with the subject matter to understand
what it means and especially to know how to establish that
someone "got by" or to draw conclusions from that fact.
In translating a narrative, such words can be used, because there
is a human understander at the other end.  Admittedly "get by"
is somewhat extreme; "get up" and "get down" are more moderate, but
the meaning of "get up in the morning" is special.
Visualization

	One can visualize things that are not physically possible.
For example, suppose that your arms could interpenetrate each other
and imagine driving a car.  Suppose that the steering wheel had two
knobs, one for each hand, and that when one turned the wheel the
arms interpenetrated so that one could rotate the wheel an
arbitrary number of turns without taking one's hands off the knobs.