Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 53.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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[1] From: Tim Smithers <tim.smithers@cantab.net>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.29: repetition vs intelligence (141)
[2] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: repetition and intelligence (14)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2025-06-12 09:22:35+00:00
From: Tim Smithers <tim.smithers@cantab.net>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.29: repetition vs intelligence
Dear Willard and David,
Thank you, David, for your useful pointers from Cameroon. As
you suggested, with a little digging I found the Gallie piece
and your "Arguments for humility." This latter I like a lot
for your expansive treatment of humility in the practice of
doing research, and not as some kind of decoration to add to
the outside. I have now put your "Arguments for humility" on
the Needed Further Reading list for the PhD course I do on
designing and preparing a research publication, in which
humility figures. I hope you won't mind. (Your "An argument
for sparsity" is already there.)
Willard, I like too Lloyd's "semantic stretch" idea, which,
having now read Gallie' "essentially contested concepts," I
see as being what's needed to make room for contested uses of
concepts. And, I agree with you in your suggestion that
notions like intelligence should be allowed to have multiple
uses. And, we should expect intelligence to have plural
modes.
This is what I think AI research, when it's practiced as a
well functioning discipline, should be doing, contributing to
our elaborations of how we might usefully know and understand
what intelligence is. And, we should expect some of these
different elaborations to be contested, and perhaps remain
contested. Neighbouring research disciplines such as
Cognitive Science, Cognitive Psychology, Neuroscience, Animal
Behaviour, Philosophy of Mind and Epistemology contribute to
this elaborating too, and, of course, not always with
agreement. AI studies intelligent behaviour by building and
investigating it in the artificial, which can be done in
different ways, as we see. These other disciplines study
intelligence behaviour in the Natural, but in different ways,
and focusing on different aspects. It is a mistake, I think,
to expect, let alone demand, that all this studying of
intelligence will bring us all to the same knowing and
understanding. It's more useful if it doesn't. If we all
agree on something, we are less able to see how we are
mistaken in this. A lot less able.
I think we have a similar situation with other associated
concepts such as knowing, understanding, and reasoning. So,
we are each, with our different notions for these concepts,
obliged to present and explain our elaborations of them when
we use them. In my view, Symbol Processing AI does this, and
did so since its earlier days, with Newell's and Simon's
Physical Symbol System hypothesis, Newell's Knowledge Level
argument, Brian Smith's Knowledge Representation hypothesis.
These may well not survive good empirical investigation, and
they are contested by other AI researchers, but they are
explicit attempts to be clear what we mean by these terms and
concepts. I would say Behaviour based Robotics, a la Rod
Books, also presents explicit, but rather different ways of
understanding these concepts which have proved useful in
understanding how to build machines that can get around and do
things in the real world, like domestic floor cleaning, for
example.
The Connectionists, on the other hand, I think don't do this.
They seem to operate under a dogma: brains are the cause of
intelligence; brains are made of big networks of neurones; we
build [artificial] neural networks like the ones in brains;
thus we make intelligence systems. [Whatever you say
intelligence is.] The current, and on going, debate about
what "reasoning" means, and doesn't mean, in the context of
Generative AI these days, illustrates, I think, what happens
when people uses unelaborated concepts in this empty way. We
can't even contest them. There's nothing there to contest,
not really. It just sounds good talking about these
Generative AI systems this way. It's what I call Speech Act
research: we say it reasons, therefore it reasons. There's
nothing to contest. Explanations and elaborations, are not
needed.
Semantic stretching, I'd say, is good exercise. It helps to
keep us fit. Fit to do good research.
-- Tim
> On 27 May 2025, at 10:47, Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:
>
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 29.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
> [1] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
> Subject: intelligences (16)
>
> [2] From: David Zeitlyn <david.zeitlyn@anthro.ox.ac.uk>
> Subject: 39.4: repetition vs intelligence? (13)
<snip>
>
> --[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2025-05-27 08:30:07+00:00
> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
> Subject: intelligences
>
> What's the problem, I wonder, with plural kinds or modes of
> intelligence? Why be defensive over other kinds or modes? Are we worried?
>
> I rather like Geoffrey Lloyd's "semantic stretch", for which see
> The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of
> Ancient Greek Science. Sather Classical Lectures, Vol. 52. (University of
> California Press, 1987), pp. 175-176. The idea is applied and developed
> throughout his many books and papers.
>
> Best,
> WM
> --
> Willard McCarty,
> Professor emeritus, King's College London;
> Editor, Humanist
> www.mccarty.org.uk
>
> --[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2025-05-26 18:46:41+00:00
> From: David Zeitlyn <david.zeitlyn@anthro.ox.ac.uk>
> Subject: 39.4: repetition vs intelligence?
>
>
> Hello from Cameroon
> I’ve never tried to contribute to humanist from here before
> But Tim Smithers talk of “ The word 'intelligence' is what I call an
> ice-hockey-puck word.” Prompts me to remind humanist readers of Gallie’s
> 1956 paper on “essentially contested concepts”. Intelligence is a case
> in point. I discuss this and give citations in a 2022 or 2023 article on
> humility in JASO Journal of the anthropological society off Oxford. (Oh
> the irony of citing myself on humility). This should be easy to find
> online if you have good access to tinterweb which I do not from here.
> David en brousse
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
<snip>
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2025-06-12 06:35:51+00:00
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: repetition and intelligence
For a very different take on this topic, from a musician, see Sylvère
Lotringer's interview of Philip Glass, "Phil Glass interview", in
Schizo-Culture, Semiotext(e) 3.2 (1978), 178-191, downloadable at:
<https://monoskop.org/images/f/f9/Semiotexte_Vol_3_No_2_Schizo-Culture.pdf>.
It helps a lot if you've spent flexible time listening to Glass' music.
That issue of Semiotext(e) is quite a find.
All best,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk
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