queries (86)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA)
Mon, 20 Mar 89 20:57:05 EST


Humanist Mailing List, Vol. 2, No. 743. Monday, 20 Mar 1989.


(1) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 89 08:19 MDT (6 lines)
From: "DOV - DR. ART ST. GEORGE" <STGEORGE@UNMB>
Subject: Translation Program

(2) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 89 12:28 EDT (13 lines)
From: Peter D. Junger <JUNGER@CWRU>
Subject: Query re: "artificial intelligensia"

(3) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 89 15:09 EDT (42 lines)
From: Peter D. Junger <JUNGER@CWRU>
Subject: A List Taken from Borges

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 89 08:19 MDT
From: "DOV - DR. ART ST. GEORGE" <STGEORGE@UNMB>
Subject: Translation Program

I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has knowledge of a Spanish to
English translation program. Thanks.
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------17----
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 89 12:28 EDT
From: Peter D. Junger <JUNGER@CWRU>
Subject: Query re: "artificial intelligensia"


As I recall Seymour Papert uses the phrase "artificial
intelligentsia" in one of his books and credits that happy construction
to another author. Can someone either correct my recollection or--better--
give me the citation to where this appears in Papert or the other author?

Thank you.

Peter D. Junger--CWRU Law School--Cleveland, OH--bitnet: JUNGER@CWRU
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------46----
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 89 15:09 EDT
From: Peter D. Junger <JUNGER@CWRU>
Subject: A List Taken from Borges

The following message was posted in PHILRELSOC ISSUE #33
_________________________COPIED MESSAGE____________________________________
FROM: AL ESSA <ESSA@YALEVM.BITNET>
SUBJECT: ONTOLOGY

My suggestion of what there is (following Borges): (a) belonging to the
emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous,
(g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j)
innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m)
having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like
flies.'

The point is this: it's one thing to enumerate a list of categories, it's
quite another to show how they derive and how they cohere. Take
Aristotle: he doesn't simply give a list in arbitrary fashion, but suggests
a principle according to which his categories are to be derived. He also
has an elaborate theory of how the various senses of being are to be related.

______________________END OF COPIED MESSAGE__________________________________

I asked Al Essa, but he did not know where in the works of Borges
this story can be found, saying 'I found it in the preface of *The Order of
Things* by Michel Foucault...it begins "This book first arose out of a passage
in Borges..." Foucault goes on to say that "This passage quotes a 'certain
Chinese encylopaedia' in which it is written that 'animals are divided into.."
The list that I wrote matches exactly the one given by Foucault.'

I would be most grateful if anyone could point me toward the place
in Borges's works where this passage occurs. I have seen references to it
before. Since any computer program that can deal with "legal reasoning"--
or with the recognition of allusions, to mention a topic discussed on this
list--will have to deal with problems of categorization, I suspect that
it raises, in a backhanded way, one of the critical problems in humanities
computing: How can .... or, better: Can a computer recognize when
a human being would say that a certain instance belongs to a certain
category?

Peter D. Junger--CWRU Law School--Cleveland, OH--bitnet: JUNGER@CWRU