Boolean Logic and AI – Today, Tomorrow

On-Off, True-False, One-Zero, And-Or-Not. Logic, specifically Boolean Logic and it’s use in binary coding can easily be argued as the 1st computer language. In actuality, at the descreet circuit level, it is the root language of computing. Amazingly it was developed in the 1850’s. When George Boole outlined his system in ‘An Investigation of the Laws of Thought’, he concedes that it was rooted in language, but I don’t believe he forsaw the use of his system in so many computer languages used in every chipset in our modern computers.  His was a logic of human language, reason and probability in natural science. It is this profound thought that brings me to consider the future of technology. When the underlying logic of our technology is a 19th century representation of human thought, it both compounds and simplifies our very understanding. The mathematics used to excercise by example, Boole’s system of human logic created a basis for logic systems in which there is no wrong output. There is always an output creating a perfect loop for problem solving. Logic is defined by the instance of a decision not by the knowledge to make that decision.

It may be a question whether that formula of reasoning, which is called the dictum of Aristotle, de omni et nullo, expresses a primary law of human reasoning or not; but it is no question that it expresses a general truth in Logic. Now that truth is made manifest in all its generality by reflection upon a single instance of its application. And this is both an evidence that the particular principle or formula in question is founded upon some general law or laws of the mind, and an illustration of the doctrine that the perception of such general truths is not derived from an induction from many instances, but is involved in the clear apprehension of a single instance

Boole goes on in his work to assign values and symbols of the system of logic and indicates ’That Language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted’. He identifies variables as unknowns in human reasoning, he defines = as an identifier, +, -, X, / as signs of operation, and continues to develop signs and symbols as they are perceived in truth. The term ‘classes’ of objects/things, and values are assigned to allow for the operation and comparison for the purpose of logical reasoning. All in comparison to the ’human’ language.  The Language of Logic and the use of symbols to calculate and come to reasonable output is sculpted and narrowed by exclusion at the same time it can be expanded by inclusion. Boolean Logic allows for reasoning at the most finite to the most infinite possible values. It allows for imagination and propositions. It opens the door and allows for the function of variable comparisons or in the world of human thought, the comparison of opinion and allows for individual interpretation. On the subject of opinion and belief, George Boole examines the ‘Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God’ by Dr. Samuel Clarke. With the proof:

For since something now is, ’tis manifest that something always was. Otherwise the things that now are must have risen out of nothing, absolutely and without cause. Which is a plain contradiction in terms. For to say a thing is produced, and yet that there is no cause at all of that production, is to say that something is effected when it is effected by nothing, that is, at the same time when it is not effected at all. Whatever exists has a cause of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature, and thus it must have been of itself eternal: or in the will of some other being, and then that other being must, at least in the order of nature and causality, have existed before it.

Amazingly, it holds up at both ends, whether you believe in God or believe in an infinite and always existing universe. Boolean Logic is the language spoken on Earth more than any other language in all recorded history. An examination of intelligent thought vs intelligent design is the perfect, never ending calculation. So using Boolean Logic, if we are to assume that what makes humans intelligent is our ability to reason, AND that the language of computers is Boolean Logic AND that Boolean Logic is the basic language of computers AND that Boolean Logic is the language of reason then it stands to reason that computers are intelligent. In actuality, it stands to reason that computers have the basic ability to be intelligent. To think that the underlying 0’s and 1’s of our computer circuits is modeled after an expression of human logic and reason is amazing. With this at the core of a systemit really isn’t hard to imagine strides being made in the world of AI. The question is, how do you make something a Being. What might or will be the final push in technology that makes a computer system think?
Source:  An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (PDF) This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net