[xtm-wg] Re: Inquiry Into Inquiry

["John F. Sowa" <sowa@bestweb.net>]

Paul Stephen Prueitt wrote:

> I ask John Sowa to make a comment about the fact that Tulving has declared
> his former views, regarding the distinction between semantic and episodic
> memory, as being a distinction that has been found to be lacking.  Are we
> simply to ignore this history?

I never regarded it as a crucial distinction upon which everything
else stands or falls.  In AI, the distinction between the definitional
networks and the assertional networks has been a useful way of dividing
up the task and organizing the various pieces of the puzzle.

And in fact, the approach that I have been developing in recent years
can be interpreted in different ways, some of which could be viewed
as supporting either position.

> If science cannot walk away from an establish paradigm, when evidence sets
> it aside, then why have a notion of falsification at all?

There were never any claims that could be or have been falsified.
The AI systems use both definitions and assertions.  Any particular
proposition that follows from the conjunction of both would still
be derived whether the two kinds of information were stored separately
or together.

There are several distinct fields:

 1. Neuropsychology:  How do human and animal brains work?

 2. AI science:  What are the logical foundations of learning
    and reasoning?

 3. AI engineering:  How does one build intelligent machines that
    learn and reason effectively?

Each of these fields has had some influence on each of the others,
but no particular result from any one of them necessarily contradicts
any result of any of the others.  For example, you may have logical
theories that are inefficient in any neural or silicon implementation.
Or you could find others that are very good candidates for one, but not
the other.

John Sowa

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