Computers and logic
Computers are logical, or at least that’s what we hope. It is a relief to know that the receivers of so much attention, from so many people, and for such long hours are dependable systems, with no inclinations, temperament, or minds of their own.
People, on the other hand, are crazy, or so we often suspect. They buy lottery tickets aware of the odds, smoke despite being literate, and believe that black cats could seriously damage their health. This is perhaps why we use computers to try to inculcate some logic in their heads. There is, however, a catch. You would not use a washing machine to teach your nephew how to clean his t-shirt. Likewise, our computers do very weird things in order to see that 5 + 7 = 12. So how can we rely on weird machines to teach logic to crazy minds?
Although not exactly worded in this way, computer-based logic teaching was one of the themes addressed by several papers presented at two conferences recently organised by the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (www.ia-cap.org) at Indiana University and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
The debate is far from new. Forms of e-Learning are almost as old as the first computers. The animosity between supporters and detractors is equally well-known. A perceivable difference between the two conferences was the sense of relaxed interest expressed in Barcelona, as opposed to the pragmatic urgency felt in Bloomington. It is the three digits syndrome. Force people to teach and mark baby logic to hundreds of students every year, and they will soon start looking for some mechanical way of saving time. The risk is that, after a while, one may be adapting the teaching to what can be delivered electronically. So, after a longer while, the question arises: are we computationally pampering our students, teaching them something that hardly resembles the real activities of logicians and mathematicians when they are trying to solve problems and prove theorems?
The question soon leads to a more radical doubt: isn’t any introduction to logic so far from the actual practices to be utterly useless to any serious philosophy student? The question has two answers, none of which attracted much attention during the meetings.
First, we teach logic because this is the language spoken by a large portion of contemporary philosophy. You cannot understand the Tractatus if you have no idea of what a truth table is. This has nothing to do with what logicians and mathematicians write on their blackboards. As in any language learning process, however, computers can be of some help only insofar as they are running seriously interactive programs. Ultimately, conversations with native speakers remain essential.
Second, some teachers seem to think that we teach logic because the formal training will help to regiment the aforementioned crazy minds. This is a mistake that was elegantly made by Gilbert Ryle in his Tarner Lectures (published with the title Dilemmas, 1953). There we find the analogy between formal logic and military drill: “It is not the stereotyped motions of drill, but its standards of perfection of control which are transmitted from the parade-ground to the battlefield... To know how to go through completely stereotyped movements in artificial parade-ground conditions with perfect correctness is to have learned not indeed how to conduct oneself in battle but how rigorously to apply standards of soldierly efficiency even to unrehearsed actions and decisions in novel and nasty situations and in irregular and unfamiliar country.” Apply this to e-Learning and you will have computers training robots.
All this is more dangerous than merely silly. One of the quotes from All Quiet on the Western Front, the film on the horrors of the First World War based on Remarque’s classic novel, tells a different story: “They never taught us anything really useful, like how to light a cigarette in the wind, or make a fire out of wet wood, or bayonet a man in the belly instead of the ribs where it gets jammed”. In this case too, interaction is essential. So the second answer is not brainless drills, but intelligent simulations. But interactions and simulations lead us to the last difficulty: money. Governments easily spend millions of dollars to develop combat interactive scenarios, but they will never finance a logic simulator. Crazy isn’t it?
People, on the other hand, are crazy, or so we often suspect. They buy lottery tickets aware of the odds, smoke despite being literate, and believe that black cats could seriously damage their health. This is perhaps why we use computers to try to inculcate some logic in their heads. There is, however, a catch. You would not use a washing machine to teach your nephew how to clean his t-shirt. Likewise, our computers do very weird things in order to see that 5 + 7 = 12. So how can we rely on weird machines to teach logic to crazy minds?
Although not exactly worded in this way, computer-based logic teaching was one of the themes addressed by several papers presented at two conferences recently organised by the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (www.ia-cap.org) at Indiana University and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
The debate is far from new. Forms of e-Learning are almost as old as the first computers. The animosity between supporters and detractors is equally well-known. A perceivable difference between the two conferences was the sense of relaxed interest expressed in Barcelona, as opposed to the pragmatic urgency felt in Bloomington. It is the three digits syndrome. Force people to teach and mark baby logic to hundreds of students every year, and they will soon start looking for some mechanical way of saving time. The risk is that, after a while, one may be adapting the teaching to what can be delivered electronically. So, after a longer while, the question arises: are we computationally pampering our students, teaching them something that hardly resembles the real activities of logicians and mathematicians when they are trying to solve problems and prove theorems?
The question soon leads to a more radical doubt: isn’t any introduction to logic so far from the actual practices to be utterly useless to any serious philosophy student? The question has two answers, none of which attracted much attention during the meetings.
First, we teach logic because this is the language spoken by a large portion of contemporary philosophy. You cannot understand the Tractatus if you have no idea of what a truth table is. This has nothing to do with what logicians and mathematicians write on their blackboards. As in any language learning process, however, computers can be of some help only insofar as they are running seriously interactive programs. Ultimately, conversations with native speakers remain essential.
Second, some teachers seem to think that we teach logic because the formal training will help to regiment the aforementioned crazy minds. This is a mistake that was elegantly made by Gilbert Ryle in his Tarner Lectures (published with the title Dilemmas, 1953). There we find the analogy between formal logic and military drill: “It is not the stereotyped motions of drill, but its standards of perfection of control which are transmitted from the parade-ground to the battlefield... To know how to go through completely stereotyped movements in artificial parade-ground conditions with perfect correctness is to have learned not indeed how to conduct oneself in battle but how rigorously to apply standards of soldierly efficiency even to unrehearsed actions and decisions in novel and nasty situations and in irregular and unfamiliar country.” Apply this to e-Learning and you will have computers training robots.
All this is more dangerous than merely silly. One of the quotes from All Quiet on the Western Front, the film on the horrors of the First World War based on Remarque’s classic novel, tells a different story: “They never taught us anything really useful, like how to light a cigarette in the wind, or make a fire out of wet wood, or bayonet a man in the belly instead of the ribs where it gets jammed”. In this case too, interaction is essential. So the second answer is not brainless drills, but intelligent simulations. But interactions and simulations lead us to the last difficulty: money. Governments easily spend millions of dollars to develop combat interactive scenarios, but they will never finance a logic simulator. Crazy isn’t it?
Crazy indeed...
ReplyDeleteGood point, nicely worded. Thanks.
ReplyDelete