Fundamental Compressionist Philosophy.

[Gerry Wolff]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Stanworth" <andrew.stanworth at bigfoot.com>
To: "casc mail list" <casc at sanna.com>
Sent: 23 May 2001 08:27
Subject: Re: Fundamental Compressionist Philosophy.


> I understand that much of academic computing, especially artificial
> intelligence, has come from a linguistic standpoint (which I feel is too
> restrictive a landscape - but that's my view),

I am not sure about linguistics figuring very large in computing and AI.
Originally, research into computing was driven by mathematics and it was
only relatively late that people realised that computers could be used for
non-mathematical applications. Computational linguistics is only a part of
AI and there are huge areas dealing with things like computer vision,
pattern recognition, experts systems, computer chess (and other games),
planning and problem solving etc.

> consequently it seems
> reasonable to view language elements are carrying a symbolic 'meaning'
> (i.e., a public standard/consensus) whereas neural nets use a private set
of
> symbolic relationships.  Maybe it would be better to describe these
> relationships as 'publicly symbolic' and 'privately symbolic'?  Does my
> definition seem more precise to you?

That's an interesting distinction that is probably an improvement on the
current imprecise terms. There may be a case for avoiding the word
'symbolic' altogether because it seems to lead to confusion.

Regards,

Gerry