00100	JMC 5 MARCH ON BRUCE 27 NOVEMBER
00200		Bruce  asks,  "Would  a  working  robot, that is with natural
00300	language input etc. have any effect on  the  practitioners  of  X?  A
00400	robot that came from Mars without blueprints or program or permission
00500	to be taken apart would merely be a seven day wonder  except  perhaps
00600	for a few philosophers who would be surprised.  If the blueprints and
00700	program were available, but incomprehensible  because  of  size,  the
00800	situation  wouldn't  be  much  different.  If the robot had "evolved"
00900	from a simple system in a simulated environment and the simple system
01000	and   the   environment  were  understandable,  this  would  be  more
01100	informative  even  if  the  final  form  of  the  program  were   not
01200	understood.  If the robot had been designed by someone who understood
01300	what world-view to give it and how  to  program  the  relation  among
01400	language,  observation, goal structure and heuristic procedures, then
01500	all the fields would be decisively affected by the ideas involved.
01600	
01700	
01800	JMC 5 MARCH ON YORICK 4 DECEMBER
01900		Weizenbaum didn't satisfy Turing's criterion, because  I  can
02000	tell  anyone  how to tell the behavior of current programs from human
02100	behavior.  The fact that psychiatrists and random members of the  ACM
02200	were  fooled  by PARRY shows that people are more careless than might
02300	have been imagined and also that they don't  realize  how  incredibly
02400	bad  current  programs are. Example: If the questionee says the Mafia
02500	is after him and when asked how he knows replies that  he  noticed  a
02600	strange  car parked by his house that is a human; none of the present
02700	programs are capable of  that  much  reasoning.   If  you  think  the
02800	programmer  might  specifically have anticipated being asked what the
02900	evidence is, ask a few questions like when, how often what color, did
03000	you  get  the  license  number,  and the program's incomprehension of
03100	these matters will be clear. Bruce: there is no need to ask it  about
03200	its  mental  states;  its incomprehension of elementary causality and
03300	purpose will be enough; of course, it won't be able to do the  mental
03400	state questions either.
03500	
03600	JMC 5 MARCH ON YORICK 5 DECEMBER
03700		The "paradox" of a prediction of your behavior  affecting  it
03800	is  just  as  powerful  for a much simpler system.  Suppose we have a
03900	little box with two switches and two  lights.   One  switch  has  the
04000	label "the red light will go on" and is connected to the green light,
04100	etc.  I claim that this system is just as paradoxical as a human with
04200	regard to the effect of telling it a prediction of its behavior.
04300	
04400	The  problem  of  "I dropoed the bottle on the table and broke it" is
04500	only peripherally a linguistics problem.  The linguistic part of  the
04600	problem  is  solved once we have decided to settle the referent of it
04700	on the basis of whether it is more likely that the bottle  be  broken
04800	rather  than  the table.  The question of under what circumstances it
04900	may be presumed that the bottle is more likely to be the object meant
05000	is  a  problem  in knowledge of the world.  This is most clear if the
05100	sentence was actually uttered and we are in a real context.   If  the
05200	sentence   is  being  considered  in  isolation  which  is  perfectly
05300	legitimate, more linguistic considerations are relevant.   I  suppose
05400	considerations  of  "would  the  speaker  have  said  this  if  under
05500	such-and-such circumstances" are relevant  even  in  the  real  world
05600	case.
05700	
05800	In  my opinion, TP needs some new gimmicks in order to cope with this
05900	problem.  I have some ideas, but they are not definite yet.
06000	
06100	JMC 5 MAR ON MEANINGS IN YORICK 8 JAN
06200		The  concept  of  meaning in mathematical logic starting with
06300	Frege should be used whenever possible, because it is the easiest  to
06400	handle,   but   unfortunately  it  is  not  always  possible  as  the
06500	philosophers  have  taken  pleasure  in  pointing  out.   Under  this
06600	concept,  the  meaning  of  "the person I am answering" is one Yorick
06700	Wilks.  Here we rely on a  convenient  association  of  his  physical
06800	body,  his  ideas, and his appearance, and a coincidence of the ideas
06900	of  these  matters  shared  by  all  the  discussants.   When   these
07000	associations  and coincidences are not so clear, there is difficulty.
07100	Perhaps some concepts can only be defined in "logical  context".   By
07200	this  I mean rules that help you determine whether a phrase refers to
07300	Yorick and what consequences  a  sentence  containing  "Yorick"  will
07400	have.  Since  Yorick is unproblematical, the first meaning is simpler
07500	and contains the second.  A phrase like "identity crisis" has at best
07600	the second kind of meaning.
07700	
07800	
07900	JMC 5 MAR ON BRUCE 15 FEB
08000		Indeed  the  discussion was spiralling inwards.  The solution
08100	to the difficulty is to try to extend the range of one's formalism  a
08200	bit at a time in the direction of expressing the information involved
08300	in the solving of  more  complex  problems.   This  means  using  toy
08400	problems in spite of the danger that the sequence of toy problems may
08500	not terminate in  the  ability  to  solve  real  world  problems.   A
08600	criticism  specific toy problems is good, but should be distinguished
08700	from a criticism of the use of toy problems in general.
08800	
08900	
09000	JMC 5 MAR ON YORICK 24 FEB
09100		I agree with Bruce that philosophy has been imprecise, but  I
09200	am  not  sure I can make the point precisely.  Consider the fact that
09300	if  I  know  someone's  telephone  I  can  call  him.   In  all   the
09400	philosophical  discussion  of  knowledge,  there is no sense given of
09500	knowledge that will permit making that simple statement.  There is an
09600	approach  to it in Hayes' and my paper (unsatisfactory, I now think),
09700	but it really is a first step to understanding knowledge to demand  a
09800	formalism that can express such facts and which can be used to derive
09900	their consequences such as that looking in the  telephone  book  will
10000	help.