Comments | sacundim: One form of insanity

sacundim

One form of insanity

Sep 11, 2005 21:46

I was once at a "talk" by Artificial Intelligence pioneer John McCarthy which consisted of him reading to us, in a completely earnest manner, his short story The Robot and the BabyFrom the general insanity of the whole thing, there is one moment where he briefly was talking about common sense knowledge and emotions, and mentioned some AI person's " ( Read more... )

Comments 3

midnightglobe September 12 2005, 07:48:14 UTC

i dont know... that seems like a reasonable definition.

i mean, maybe that was stated in an absurd context, but as an isolated quote, it is a better definition of hatred than you proffer. because you havent.

sacundim September 12 2005, 08:36:09 UTC

What is a "definition"? How does one go about justifying definitions? Are such justifications ever absolutely principled, or is there some degree of arbitrariness to the process? Are such justifications ever independent of people's practical interests and projects? If not so, then, doesn't that mean that we should not be bound to them beyond their concrete application to those interests and projects? Is the ancient Greek notion of sufficient and necessary conditions really that good of a semantic theory? Have you ever considered the possibility that there may be no such thing as the acontextual set of necessary and sufficient conditions for some circumstance to fall under the concept of "hating"? Have you read Wittgenstein's late works? Did you understand them? Did you at least come across the concept of "family resemblance"? Would you take up Wittgenstein's (implicit) challenge, and try to offer necessary and sufficient conditions for something to fall under the concept of the word "game"?

in reverse midnightglobe September 12 2005, 09:03:26 UTC

wittgenstein's _investigations_ interest me. i intend on dealing with them, soon. i havent yet, so i dont know whether i want to use the "necessary and sufficient" scheme for dealing with any word, much less such a loaded one such as 'game' or 'set' or 'love.'

yes, i have considered the possibility that there is only contextual meaning. check it out here. i dont claim to have reinvented the wheel, but i do feel comfortable saying that i have considered (and embraced) an idea of meaning (noun) which requires someone to do some meaning (verb ( ... )