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Is Leibniz a Precursor of Artificial Intelligence?

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Is Leibniz a Precursor of Artificial Intelligence? Sybille Kramer Sybille Kdimer is professor for phi­ Freie Universitat Berlin, FE Philosophic losophy (epistemology, themy of mind) at the Institute for Philoso­ phy, Free University of Berlin. Her publications arc on rationalism, his­ Mind, Symbolism, Formalism: tory of formalization, philosophical aspects of Artificial Intelligence, Is Leibniz a Precursor of consciousness, metaphors, theory of melancholy, computer as a medium Artificial Intelligence? and media-theory. Kramer, S.: Mind, symbolism, formalism: Is Leibniz a computer is transferable to the human mind. What hap­ precursor of Artificial Intelligence'! pens within our mind is the unconscious working of a Knowl.Org. 23(1996)No.2, p.84-87, 31 refs. computer-like mechanism. Thus the computer is an ex­ The assumption that Gottfried Wilhelm Lcibniz is a precursor planative model of the human mind: the mind is a kind of of the idea of Artificial Intelligence is misleading. The argu­ computer. ment is to distinguish between epistcmc and mind, recognition But the idea of a functional analogy between the and cognition. Leibniz interpreted forma! symbolic operations as a mere epistemological instrument, but not as a description machine and the human mind, is not a rationalistic one. of what actually happens within the mind: Leibniz denied that More over: This assumption is inconsistent with the a machine can be used as an explanative model of cognition. rationalistic concept of the mind: Leibniz (II) - as before (Author) him Descartes (12) - explicitly excluded that a machine is of use as a model of the mind. If the association ofLeibniz with Artificial Intelligence is based on the assumption 1. The Relation between Artificial Intelligence and that a machine gives us an explanative model of the Leibniz: a Common Misunderstanding human mind, then this assumption is wrong. There is a broadly shared opinion within contemporary But we have a more modest version of what Artificial theories of mind: Rationalism in 17th century and espe­ Intelligence is about: Artificial Intelligence creates real cially Gottiiied Wilhelm Leibniz' version, is a precursor machines which are capable of executing virtual symbolic of the fundamental ideas of Artificial Intelligence and machines. Computational Thcory of Mind (1,2,3). Rene Descartes' The history of the human mind comprises the evolu­ "mathesis universalis" interpreted as the project of a tion of the exterior instruments of human reasoning, universal artificial language for producing and represent­ particularly artificiallycreated symbolic systems. If such ing quantifiable knowledge (4); Gottfried Wilhelm a symbolic system is organized in form of an interpreted Leibniz' "characteristica universalis" interpreted as an calculus, it can be characterized as a "symbolic machine" instrument to derive and to demonstrate all true sentences (13). Symbolic machines are culturally created epistemie automatically (5): Are these ideas not the early versions technologies. They rationalize the process of problem­ of a research program which the pioneers of Artificial solving by means of external algorithmic processes of Intelligence, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon claimed symbol manipUlation. Interpreted in the context of this with their dictum (6): That a mechanized physical symbol non-connectionistic symbolic technologies, Artificial system is the necessary and sufficient condition for intel­ Intelligence creates automatized symbolic machines. ligent behavior? And which the Computational Theory of Leibniz was an upholder of the epistemological useful­ Mind (7, 8) condensed to the thesis that cognition is ness of symbolic machines. He developed the idea of a nothing but the computational manipUlation of mental formal system as a general instrument of knowledge representations (9, p.II)? procedures and he discovered the possibility of transform­ But to claim ArtificialIntelligence as a successor ofthe ing a virtual formal system into a real machine. Thus rationalistic philosophy in the 17th century is much to there is a relationship between the Leibnitian theory of sweeping a statement (10). It is - in a certain _sense - knowledge and the Artificial Intelligence program exte­ misleading and wrong. riorizing and mechanizing human intellectual activity. To get this sense, wc have to introduce a distinction. But to interprete Leibniz as the pioneer of Artificial­ What ArtificialIntelligence is about can be interpreted in Intelligence-as-a-model-of-the-mind constmcts a conti­ a double way: we can sketch a quite excessive or a more nuity where we actually finda significantgap. It is the gap prosaic picture. between a certain external epistemical technique and its Here is the excessive version: Artificial Intelligence is internalization into internal mental processes (14). In this a kind of operative research on the human mind. Insofar view, mechanized symbolic operations function for Leibniz as human cognition can be described as an algorithmic as a methodological prescription and not as an explana­ formal operation, and insofar the computer is a machine tive model: A formal system establishes a norm how we to execute formal procedures, the functioning of the should think if we want to get hue knowledge, but it is by Knowl. Org. 23(l996)No.2 83 Sybille Kramer: Mind, Symbolism, Formalism no means a description of what we actually do if we are was only possible in the context of a media-invention: The thinking. invention of a non-linguistic art of writing. To be aware of this difference, may be a way to make Normally we interpret alphabetic writing as the spatial us more subtle and sensitive for the question what is a image of the temporal sequence of spoken discourse. But promising aim and what is a dead end in Artificial with the rise of written reckoning in the 15th century and Intelligence research. with the invention of the symbolic algebra in the 16th centmy, a kind of writing emerges, which was not a transition from spoken into written language any longer. 2. Reducing Truth to Correctness by Symbolic Ma­ This writing - it is well known under the label "formal chines language" - functions as a pure graphical construction, a Letme first demonstrate that calculization is for Leibniz genuine writing system: We may spell out a formalistic an exterior technique of reasoning. expression, but we cannot communicate within a formal­ Besides the experiment in natural science, the inven­ istic system. tion of the calculus is the most momentous scientific The rise of operative symbolism in the premodernera innovation of the early modern era. "Calculus" is under­ was possible only in the context of the discovery offormal stood not only in the restricted sense of the infinitesimal writing systems as a medium for knowledge acquisition calculus but as a general technique of reasonIng and and demonstration. demonstrating. Leibniz is - as far as I can see it - the first to get the idea ofthe general epistemic benefits of calculized operations. A benefit which is connected with the ration­ 2.2 Leibniz' Contributions to Operative Symbolism alistic project of reducing truth to correctness. But before Refering to the shift from ontological symbolism to we reconstruct this idea, we have to sketch an epochal operative symbolism Leibniz is a - perhaps the - dominant change, the threshold of which is marked by the work of figure. And it is just his insight into the functioning of a Leibniz. This change may be described as the transition formal system, that gives him the idea that reasoning and from an "ontological symbolismH to an "operative sym­ consciousness may be separated if thinking can be bolism" (15). calculized. Descartes in his "Regulae ad direction em ingellii"still 2.1 From "Ontological" to "Operative Symbolism" supported, that to operate with intellectual symbols pre­ supposes a permanent awareness of the symbolized ob­ "Ontological symbolism" means that a symbol refers to jects (4). But Leibniz discharged this awareness with the an object which exists independent of its symbolic repre­ following arguments: sentation. If our intellect operates symbolically, it really operates with the "things" the symbols stand for. Under (a) All our reasoning is based on sign processes: this condition the idea of rules to manipulate symbolic "ratiocinatio omnis in usu characterum constitit" (16). expressions which arc independent of its interpretation The reason for the indispensible semiotic nature of the cannot arise. Within ontological symbolism formalism is human intellect is, that the finite human mind is insuffi­ excluded. cient for grasping the infinitely many attributes which things possess. Thus instead of having an unmediated This changes, however, with "operative symbolism". experience with the objects of knowledge, we build sym­ Here the interpretation of symbolic systems is detached bolic stmctures to represent these objects (17). But this from its construction; the rules of forming and transform­ can be done in multiple ways. ing the symbols are not depending on their meaning any longer. Within operative symbolism the process of sym­ (b) Our natural language is the most influential repre­ bolic activity gets a certain self-sufficiency. The charac­ sentational medium. With its vagueness, its metaphoricity teristic feature of the operative symbolism is the calculus, and its grammatical variability, every day language serves a formal system which can be interpreted in different very well for our communicative behavior, Qut it is ways. inadequate for our cognitive activities
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