Abstract
This paper continues a strain of intellectual complaint against the presumptions of certain kinds of formal semantics (the qualification is important) and their bad effects on those areas of artificial intelligence concerned with machine understanding of human language. After some discussion of the use of the term ‘epistemology’ in artificial intelligence, the paper takes as a case study the various positions held by McDermott on these issues and concludes, reluctantly, that, although he has reversed himself on the issue, there was no time at which he was right.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Botvinnik, M.: 1971, Computers, Chess and Long-Range Planning, Longman, London.
Charniak, E. and Y. Wilks (eds.): 1976, Computational Semantics, North Holland, Amsterdam.
Charniak, E.: 1989, ‘Connectionism and Explanation’, in Y. Wilks (ed.), Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, New Jersey.
Chomsky, N.: 1965, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Dreyfus, H.: 1979, What Computers Can't Do, 2nd ed., Harper & Row, New York.
Hayes, P.: 1985, ‘Some Problems and Non-Problems in Representation Theory’, in R. Brachman and H. Levesque (eds.), Readings in Knowledge Representation, Morgan Kaufmann, Los Altos, California.
Hutchins, J.: 1979, ‘Linguistic Models in Machine Translation’, in UEA Papers in Linguistics, Norwich, England.
Israel, D.: 1989, ‘On Formal versus Commonsense Semantics’, in Y. Wilks (ed.), Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, New Jersey.
Lawson, V. (ed.): 1982, Practical Experience of Machine Translation, North Holland, Amsterdam.
Lifschitz, V.: 1987, ‘The Logic Approach to AI’, Stanford Computer Science Video Journal, Morgan Kaufmann, Los Altos, California.
McCarthy, J.: 1977, ‘Epistemological Problems of Artificial Intelligence’, in Proc. IJCAI77, pp. 1038–44.
McCarthy, J. and P. Hayes: 1969, ‘Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence’, in B. Meltzer and D. Mitchie (eds.), Machine Intelligence 4, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
McDermott, D.: 1976, ‘Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity’, in SIGART Newsletter No. 57, pp. 4–9. Reprinted in J. Haugheland, Mind Design, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 143–60.
McDermott, D.: 1978, ‘Tarskian Semantics, or No Notation without Denotation’, Cognitive Science 2, 277–82.
McDermott, D. and commentators: 1987, ‘A Critique of Pure Reason’, Computational Intelligence 3, 1–24.
Michalski, R.: 1976, ‘Learning by Inductive Inference’, in J.-C. Simon (ed.), Computer Oriented Learning Processes, Noordhof, Amsterdam.
Montague, R.: 1974, Formal Philosophy: Selected Papers of Richard Montague, R. Thomason (ed.), Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.
Neurath, O.: 1932, ‘Protocol Sentences’, Erkenntnis 3.
Ritchie, G. and K. Hanna: 1990, ‘AM: A Case Study in AI Methodology’, in D. Partridge and Y. Wilks (eds.), The Foundations of Artificial Intelligence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Schapiro, S.: 1976, ‘The Relevance of Relevance’, Indiana University Computer Science Department, March 1976.
Schiffer, S.: 1987, Remnants of Meaning, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Scott, D. and C. Strachey: 1971, ‘Toward a Mathematical Semantics for Computer Languages’, Proceedings of the Symposium on Computers and Automata, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.
Smolensky, P.: 1988, ‘On the Proper Treatment of Connectionism’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 11, 1–23.
Sparck-Jones, K.: 1989, ‘They say It's a New Engine but It's Still the Same SUMP’, in Y. Wilks (ed.), Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, New Jersey.
Waltz, D. and J. Pollack: 1985, ‘Massively Parallel Parsing: A Strongly Interactive Model of Natural Language Interpretation’, Cognitive Science 9.
Wilks, Y.: 1971, ‘Decidability and Natural Language’, Mind 70.
Wilks, Y.: 1973, ‘Understanding without Proofs’, Proceeding of the International Joint Conference on AI, Stanford, California.
Wilks, Y.: 1979, ‘Comparative Translation Quality Analysis’, Report to AFOSR, F33657-77-C-0695.
Wilks, Y.: 1981, ‘Some Thoughts on Procedural Semantics’, in M. Ringle and W. Lehnert (eds.), Strategies for Natural Language Processing, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, New Jersey.
Wilks, Y.: 1984a, ‘Consciousness and Machines’, in C. Hookway (ed.), Minds, Machines & Evolution, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Wilks, Y.: 1984b, ‘Is Frege's Principle Trivial or False?’, Proc. Linguistic Assn. of GB, Annual Conference, University of Essex.
Wilks, Y.: 1989, Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, New Jersey.
Wittgenstein, L.: 1953, Philosophical Investigations, Blackwells, Oxford.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wilks, Y. Form and content in semantics. Synthese 82, 329–351 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413880
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413880