Insight and Reason - Natural and Artificial Reasoning - page 1

Chapter 1
Insight and Reason

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him
L. Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations IIxi.

1.1 Introduction

One way of understanding a natural process or mechanism is to build a working
model and then see if the model has some of the behavior or features of the observed
phenomenon. In this topic I will describe an attempt at understand the nature of
people through computer modeling. It is hoped that this understanding will lead to
the possibility of increasing our abilities through artificial mechanisms.
This endeavor to construct artificial people is not new. The earliest recorded effort
was in about 270 BC by a Greek engineer named Ctesibus who made musical organs
and water clocks with movable figures 1 . Ctesibus discovered that the problem of
constructing a machine that even approximates a complete working human body is
not easy, since it requires engineering involving sensors combined with a complex
control system that is still beyond our ability to emulate completely. However, prac-
tical machines have been made that copy some aspects of the body. One example is
the power shovel shown in Fig. 1.1 .
As with the power shovel as a representative of a limb, I intend to emulate only cer-
tain useful aspects of human thinking, and the result will not always be recognizably
human. We may note that with the advent of the modern computer it is easier to model
just human intelligence—the problem solving aspect of human thought processes—
than a complete person's intellect. After all, intelligence might be considered a
significant feature of being human. A test for intelligence would only require a simple
means of communication, such as a computer screen and keyboard, in order to display
its usefulness. I have chosen this basic approach since communication via speech
recognition and synthesis is difficult and still limited to a specified context. Further,
the mode of communication is not really my main concern here (see Addis 1972 ).
Nevertheless we should not ignore this essential mode of human interaction, for it
might also be a significant part of the human thought processes.