On blurring the gap between NN and AI

[Elizabeth Preston]

   Date: Thu, 20 Dec 90 11:56:52 PST
   From: Dave Rumelhart <der%psych%Forsythe.Stanford.EDU at uga.cc.uga.edu>

   The
   question of whether there is a great divide between the symbolic and
   "sub-symbolic" approaches is one that I would rather leave to the
   philosophers.

This is kind of you, and of course many of us are in the position of
having to take any work we can get, but...

The point I was trying to make in my reply to Worth's original message
is prescisely that it is doubtful whether this question of a Great
Divide is PHILOSOPHICALLY interesting in the first place, and this for
the simple reason that it is too early in the development of these
approaches to tell.  This does not mean that comparative philosophical
analysis of them is impossible or unhelpful at this point, but merely
that the Big Picture is not to be had at the moment, and that anyone
who thinks they have it is deceiving themselves.  As Hegel so
charmingly put it, the owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.

   In any case, it has nothing to do with wether or not
   connectionist AI is a kind of AI.  I simply can't think of any
   reasonable definition of AI that would exclude it.

I agree completely.  But could someone please tell me then why it is
so common, both in the academic and the popular literature, to talk
about AI and connectionism as if they were two separate fields?

Beth Preston