Bacon and Kepler

“One of the deepest problems in cognitive science is that of understanding how people make sense of the vast amount of raw data constantly bombarding them from their environment. The essence of human perception lies in the ability of the mind to hew order from this chaos, whether this means simply detecting movement in the visual field, recognizing sadness in a tone of voice, perceiving a threat on a chessboard, or coming to understand the Iran-Contra affair in terms of Watergate.”(169,Chambers,French,Hofstadter)

The above quote is exactly what I was referring too in my previous blog, that is, the ability of the computer, machine, or etc, to recognize, perceive, or otherwise ‘know’ what to make of all the data that floods it. One of the more interesting concepts that Hofstadter mentions is for a program or a computer to distinguish between truth and falsehood and also the ability to discern what is important and what is not important to a given problem. This is best illustrated when Hofstadter .et al describe the example of Bacon solving Kepler’s Third Law of Planetary Motion. This example explains in a nutshell what I believe to be one of the most important concepts within the field of AI. If a computer has the ability to discern between truth and fallacy and the ability to discern between the relevant and irrelevant, then the computer or machine could begin to solve problems in a more human like way.

I also liked reading about the different programs such as Bacon and SME. Hofstadter does a great job in detailing the reasons that these programs lack in the way of human perception and the ability to solve problems, mainly as a result of the programs being fed only the relative data that it needs, such as is the case with Bacon and ‘its’ discovery of Kepler’s Third Law of Planetary Motion. But having said this I also believe that at times it felt that Hofstadter was doing more than just critiquing these programs, by not giving the programs the proper respect that they deserve for the job that they do and the advances that the give to the field of artificial intelligence and cognitive science.