XPost: comp.ai.fuzzy, sci.logic, sci.cognitive   
   From: gmsizemore2@yahoo.com   
      
   "David Kinny"  wrote in message   
   news:4533453d$1@news.unimelb.edu.au...   
   > "Glen M. Sizemore"  writes:   
   >   
   >>"PeiWang"  wrote in message   
   >>news:45317299$1@news.unimelb.edu.au...   
   >>> New Book Announcement [apologies for cross-posting]   
   >>>   
   >>> Rigid Flexibility: The Logic of Intelligence   
   >>> by Pei Wang   
   >>> Springer, October 2006, ISBN: 1402050445   
   >>>   
   >>> This book provides the blueprint of a thinking machine.   
   >>>   
   >>> While most of the current works in Artificial Intelligence   
   >>> (AI) focus on individual aspects of intelligence and   
   >>> cognition, the project described in this book, Non-Axiomatic   
   >>> Reasoning System (NARS), is designed and developed to attack   
   >>> the AI problem as a whole.   
   >>>   
   >>> This project is based on the belief that what we call   
   >>> "intelligence" can be understood and reproduced as "the   
   >>> capability of a system to adapt to its environment while   
   >>> working with insufficient knowledge and resources". According   
   >>> to this idea, a novel reasoning system is designed, which   
   >>> challenges all the dominating theories in how such a system   
   >>> should be built. The system carries out reasoning, learning,   
   >>> categorizing, planning, decision making, etc., as different   
   >>> facets of the same underlying process.   
   >   
   >>Sorry, but this unification has already been suggested by a philosophy   
   >>known   
   >>as radical behaviorism. See Skinner (1938, 1945, 1953, 1957, 1960, etc.   
   >>etc.   
   >>etc. etc. etc.).   
   >   
   > So what?  Perhaps Wang takes Skinner as one of his inspirations :)   
   >   
   > When described at a high-level, quite different approaches can sound   
   > very similar. But a quick glance at the TOC shows that much of the book   
   > content is some kind of logic and an associated reasoning system,   
   > i.e. fairly GOFAI, so whatever the value of Wang's contribution, its   
   > intersection with Skinner's contribution is likely to be very small.   
      
   I wasn't clear. What I was objecting to was the implication that the   
   approach Wang was talking about, whatever it is, is not unique in attempting   
   to cover what appear to be diverse behavioral phenomena under one, small set   
   of mechanisms.   
      
      
      
      
   >   
   > David   
      
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