Spring 2022 Computer Science 458


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Video of the Day

Winter Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

Lecture: 2/9/2022

Administrivia

  • Recorded lectures are in the Canvas media library.

  • Due Monday: hw 1 Also, a draft of the paper assignment is available.

  • Wizards of Odds Discussion of blackjack odds. May give you some insight into the problem in hw1.

    AI and Intentionality: The Chinese Room

    See Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence John Searle, talk at Google. See 9 minutes in for discussion of cognitive science and Sloan talks at Yale.

    See Minds, brains, and programs John R. Searle, The Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1980). Complete Searle MBP with all the commentary.

    See Searle and Wittgenstein. Remember Ludwig Wittgenstein from lecture 1? Searle came out of the Wittgenstein tradition. Wittgenstein might have refuted the Chinese Room with a language game argument.

    Wittgenstein was awarded a Ph.D. from Cambridge based on his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. One of his advisors's, G.E. Moore, was opposed to the idea of the Ph.D. degree. The first Cambridge PhD in mathematics was awarded in 1924. In his actual examiner’s report for Wittgenstein in 1929, Moore wrote ‘It is my personal opinion that Mr. Wittgenstein’s thesis is a work of genius; but, be that as it may, it is certainly well up to the standard required for the Cambridge degree of Doctor of Philosophy’.

    Moore is also remembered for drawing attention to the peculiar inconsistency involved in uttering a sentence such as "It is raining, but I do not believe it is raining", a puzzle now commonly called "Moore's paradox". The puzzle arises because it seems impossible for anyone to consistently assert such a sentence; but there doesn't seem to be any logical contradiction between "It is raining" and "I don't believe that it is raining", because the former is a statement about the weather and the latter a statement about a person's belief about the weather, and it is perfectly logically possible that it may rain whilst a person does not believe that it is raining.

    In addition to Moore's own work on the paradox, the puzzle also inspired a great deal of work by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who described the paradox as the most impressive philosophical insight that Moore had ever introduced. It is said that when Wittgenstein first heard this paradox one evening (which Moore had earlier stated in a lecture), he rushed round to Moore's lodgings, got him out of bed and insisted that Moore repeat the entire lecture to him.

    Russell and Moore belonged to the Cambridge Apostles. They got Wittgenstein to join, but he quit as it was not serious enough. (Yale has a senior society called the Apostles.)

    The Yale AI Project: Cognitive Modelling

    See The Yale Artificial Intelligence Project: A Brief History Stephen Slade, AI Magazine, 1987.

    See Conceptual Dependency and Its Descendants Steven Lytinen, 1992.

    The Realm of Decisions

  • For discussion in today's class: draft reasons for and against each of the following: We assume that you have relationships with a variety of people: family, friends, colleagues, classmates, etc. Also discuss who among them will be affected by your choice, either positively or negatively.
  • Go to Canvas vaccine discussion
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