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CSLI Calendar, April 7, 3:23


       C S L I   C A L E N D A R   O F   P U B L I C   E V E N T S
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7 April 1988                       Stanford                    Vol. 3, No. 23
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     A weekly publication of The Center for the Study of Language and
     Information, Ventura Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
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	     CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR THIS THURSDAY, 7 April 1988

   12 noon		TINLunch
     Ventura Hall       Reading: "The Formal Semantics Point of View"
     Seminar Room  	by Jonathan E. Mitchell
			Discussion led by Syun Tutiya
			(tutiya@russell.stanford.edu)
			Abstract in last week's Calendar

   2:15 p.m.		CSLI Seminar
     Cordura		The Texture of Intelligence
     Conference Room	Alexis Manaster-Ramer
   			(amr@csli.stanford.edu)
			Abstract below
			
   3:30 p.m.		Tea
     Cordura
     Courtyard			
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	    CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR NEXT THURSDAY, 14 April 1988

   12 noon		TINLunch
     Ventura Hall       Reading: "Language and Interpretation:
     Seminar Room  	Philosophical Reflections and Empirical Inquiry."
			by Noam Chomsky
			Discussion led by Sylvain Bromberger
			(sylvain@csli.stanford.edu)
			Abstract below

   2:15 p.m.		CSLI Seminar
     Cordura		On Acting Together:  Joint Intentions for
     Conference Room	Intelligent Agents 
			Phil Cohen
   			(pcohen@ai.sri.com)
			Abstract below
			
   3:30 p.m.		Tea
     Cordura
     Courtyard			
                             --------------
			THIS WEEK'S CSLI SEMINAR
		       The Texture of Intelligence
			  Alexis Manaster-Ramer
			 (amr@csli.stanford.edu)
				 April 7

   A and B engage in conversation in French with a group of Frenchmen.
   However, while A speaks passable French, he does not understand spoken
   French well, and B understands colloquial French reasonably well, but
   does not speak it.  So, A does the listening and B does the talking,
   communicating with each other in English when necessary.  As far as
   the French interlocutors are concerned, A+B "knows" French.  What I
   want to argue is that theories of intelligent human behavior should
   adopt the Frenchmen's point of view.
 
      Intelligence exists in culture.  What seems to make human beings an
   intelligent species, biologically, is that we have evolved the
   ability--and the necessity--of living in a culture. In general, the
   subject of the study of human intelligence must then be interaction of
   groups of people. As a result, a proper explanatory theory of
   intelligent behavior must be HISTORICAL in nature (much as biology and
   physics are historical sciences).  While we need to understand how an
   individual represents knowledge, reasons, speaks, etc., our theories
   must also capture the fact that no individual is capable of
   creating English or developing French cuisine, say, from scratch.
   Whether we want cognitive science or AI, we should think of simulating
   cultures evolving through time rather than individuals.
 
      Obviously, many of the processes we need to model do take place
   within individual human beings.  These must be understood in terms of
   the interaction of the different mechanisms, which are postulated to
   account for specific patterns in the data rather than in terms of a
   priori mental faculties such as "grammar," "world knowledge,"
   "commonsense reasoning," etc.  In studying the individual, we must
   again develop theories that are historical (ontogenetic) in nature,
   since people's reasoning and language use, for example, both seem to
   depend to a large extent on how and when various skills and
   information happen to be learned.  Moreover, the components of the
   theory of individuals cannot all be qualitatively alike.  Some are
   physical, others cognitive, and others in between (as in my theory of
   TACTICS, the lowest level of language).
 
      The theories of the individual, as well as those of the cultural,
   phenomena can--and should--be formal (symbolic) without our having to
   assume that the object being studied is symbolic and represented in
   individual minds in symbols.  The usual kinds of formalisms (say,
   automata) can be used to model interactions among individuals or
   cultural evolution or the states of a physical system such as the
   vocal tract, for example, just as easily as they can to represent the
   alleged cognitive faculties of individual people (like "grammar").
   This approach seems to close the gap between the two main positions on
   the nature and definition--as well as the possibility of artificial
   simulation--of intelligence.  We accept the "pessimistic" view on the
   scope of the subject to be modeled but adopt the "optimistic" view on
   the symbolic representation of the models (NOT of the objects of
   study).  Results in different areas emerge immediately from this
   perspective, such as my work on tactics.

			     --------------
			NEXT WEEK'S CSLI TINLUNCH
		 Reading: "Language and Interpretation:
	    Philosophical Reflections and Empirical Inquiry"
			    by Noam Chomsky
		  Discussion led by Sylvain Bromberger
		       (sylvain@csli.stanford.edu)
				April 14

   Once upon a time there were serious people who tried to figure out
   what the heavenly spheres are made of. They never succeeded.  There
   are no heavenly spheres. Quine, Davidson, Dummett, and Putnam hold
   views about language and its study that imply that much of what passes
   for serious linguistics---at least at MIT---should be dismissed like
   celestial sphereology, as based on delusion.  These are prominent
   philosophers. They should be right. Chomsky does not think that they
   are. In this paper he tries to prove that they are mistaken.  Are
   they?

			     --------------
			NEXT WEEK'S CSLI SEMINAR
       On Acting Together: Joint Intentions for Intelligent Agents
			       Phil Cohen
			   (pcohen@ai.sri.com)
				April 14

   No one wants to build just one lonely autonomous agent.  If we are
   successful, we will want our creations to be available to help each
   other, and us.  In short, they should be able to act jointly with
   other agents.  Obvious examples of joint action in human society
   include pushing a car, playing a duet, executing a pass play, engaging
   in a dialogue, and doing research (for example, this research was done
   jointly with Hector Levesque, Department of Computer Science,
   University of Toronto).  Analogues of such "team play" can easily be
   created for any task requiring more than one agent for its
   accomplishment, and for those in which agents need to divide up the
   work.

      In a recent paper, we argued that intention is a derived concept,
   founded on the idea of an internal commitment, or "persistent goal,"
   i.e., goals kept through time. In this talk, we develop an analogous
   concept, that of a "joint commitment," that can serve as the basis of
   a concept of joint intention.  We show how joint commitments lead to
   synchronization, agreements to commence action and to terminate,
   individual actions by the collaborators, and communication.  Finally,
   we show how the analysis compares with recent proposals by Searle and
   by Grosz and Sidner for describing joint intentionality.