--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:

> --- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
>
> > Now note, as well, that I don't reference "magical internal
> > processing" so your response concerning it seems to miss (or
> > mischaracterize) some of what I've said. I am, rather, talking
> > about perfectly ordinary processes, the kinds we can observe and
> > track in brains using the right instrumentation.
>
> Arthur C. Clarke supposedly said "Any sufficiently advanced technology
> is indistinguishable from magic
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws> ." I was using
> "magic" in that sense. No mischaracterization intended.
>

Then there would be nothing special in calling it "magic" of course, it would just be a remark about the current state of knowledge, namely that we lack it. But then there WOULD be something "magical" going on in that sense, no? That is, we don't know what the processes in brains are precisely, how they do what they do, and to acknowledge that is not to assert that there is something beyond the ordinary going on. Yet didn't you say there is no magic to the processes in question though, since we lack knowledge of how they work and you are using "magic" in this Clarkian sense, it would be more appropriate to say there is!

I wouldn't use that formulation myself because of the normal uses of "magic" but given your definition it would be acceptable to do so without violating the norms of scientific discourse.

>
<snip>

>
>
> > So there is still this problem of subjectness that, perhaps, speaking
> > of interaction with the world is not quite sufficient to address.
>
>
> >> Unfortunately, you don't seem to be receptive to a discussion of
> >> that way of interacting.
>

> It seems to me that you have just done it again. I try to introduce a
> discussion of interaction. It is hard to see your response as anything
> other than giving it the brush off.
>

This I don't understand, Neil. I am trying to discuss experience, being conscious, being a subject, etc., etc. To have that we have this first person point of view and the challenge is to say how that can exist in what seems, on the face of it, to be an otherwise third person world. There have been lots of answers to this ranging from idealism to dualism to materialism, etc., and many nuances in between. All seem to founder on the ongoing strangeness that some physical things are animate, sentient, aware while others aren't. It looks like this being aware, etc., is a special case, explainable as an added property or as a co-existing stuff with the stuff of matter.

You propose we suppose that the answer to this lies in talk about interacting, i.e., that we say consciousness comes about because of the way we interact with our environment. Now if you mean the physical interactions of our underlying physical stuff with all the other physical stuff around us, then I won't disagree because this is to say no more than what I have been saying all along, that physical operations give rise, in certain cases, to subjective experience.

But if you mean to say that we get consciousness by interacting with our environment where the interactor is us in the fuller sense of the word (including our being subjects) it seems to me this begs the question. Now I certainly did take you to be saying this latter since, if you were saying the former, it would seem we were already in agreement in which case there would be no reason to try to convince me of the role of interaction in the world.

However, to take this a step further, what we are really trying to do here, I think, is give an account which could explain HOW such interactions (which are recognizable as wholly third person, i.e., observable, phenomena) bring about the subjective. I've argued that it is perfectly explainable as processes in the brain and I am presuming you agree. Then the question is what do we mean by "processes in the brain", that is what is it about the processes that could make the difference?

My view, oft expressed here and elsewhere, is that it is the functions, the things the processes accomplish. Described in terms of computers we might say the programs but that term is misleading because we tend to think of instructions devised and coded by persons for a purpose, i.e., to get the machine to do what it does. And no one is claiming that brains are programmed in this way even if what they are doing is running processes that accomplish certain tasks like computer programs do. So the better way to think about this, I believe, is to chuck the term "program" and replace it with "algorithm" which is just to put a name to sets of instructions, broken down into steps. Computer programs embody algorithms and an organizational procedure, followed by workers in the organization would also be appropriately called an algorithm

On that view, there is nothing strange in saying that brains are constructed by the human organism in its formative stages according to a blueprint contained in the DNA which is to say according to algorithms, and that they then do what they do according to other algorithms some of which are, perhaps, just a function of their construction and some are uniquely developed through interaction with the environments in which they find themselves.

Now I am guessing that you have no problem with any of this so that we are really not so far apart. Jeff Hawkins, as we've seen, argues that brain algorithms, at least at the level of operation, have to be relatively simple and it is for this reason he thinks the AI project is doomed to fail, i.e., because it is aimed at reconstructing everything brains do via minute algorithms which, he notes, would be too demanding for the relatively slow processing capacity of our brains. Therefore he argues for a simple and relatively uniform algorithm at the neuronal level and for complexity in the architectural level (how the neurons are arranged and interact in the brain).

So your proposal that consciousness is about interacting does not strike me as strange if it is meant in a sense like this (which is what I now take you to be saying). But, if so, what is the difference between what you are proposing and some of the stuff I've floated here, vis a vis computationalism, Hawkins' ideas about intelligence, etc.? We get consciousness through interaction you say. Okay, but how? (I am not asking you to give me a defnitive answer, to prove anything. I am just asking that you spell out the mechanism[s] you think are at work here as I try to do, as Dennett does and as Hawkins does. Since you are disagreeing with them, and apparently with me, what are you saying is wrong with these approaches and what would be a better approach?)

> You seem to be saying there "Well, okay, maybe interaction is
> important. But it is boring humdrum stuff. So lets postpone any
> discussion for now, and instead get right the heart of consciousness."

Not at all. I am just saying what kind of interaction do you have in mind? What interacts with what and which interactions are specific to the production of consciousness on your view? I have suggested it is a kind of information processing that is occurring in brains. But you seem uncomfortable with that approach. What then is going on that does it?

> However, my whole point is that interaction is at the heart of
> consciousness, and that consciousness cannot be understood except in
> relation to our interaction with the world.
>

I think there is some truth to that. But lots of things interact with the world. The question is why do certain things interact in a certain way and that brings about consciousness? Why do some things, like rocks, remain inanimate whereas other things like people do not? And where are the gradations, the thresholds, between people and other animals. What are the processes that differentiate these?

>
> > Maybe it's just me Neil. I really don't follow this well
> > enough. Normally when we speak of decisions being made we already
> > have a conscious entity making decisions in mind. Machines don't
> > make decisions though we can use computers to make pre-programmed
> > choices and, thus, decisions in a sense.
>
> Perhaps you missed the literature on free will, wherein it is often
> argued that we don't make decisions either. Even Searle is troubled by
> this, as he indicates in his youtube video
> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCyKNtocdZE> . If decisions are based
> on truth, then you aren't really making a decision, for the truth
> dictates the decision to you. So you are left with dictated decisions
> and totally random decisions.
>

I think that kind of thinking stems from a misunderstanding of what we mean by "free will". Freedom is lots of things from political freedom to existential freedom. The term denotes different capacities within different contexts. Supposing that we are not free when we act on good reasons because we are somehow bound to abide by reason is a strange, and to me misapplication, of the notion of freedom.

> It seems to me that the only real decisions we make are those that are
> pragmatic.

Meaning to act for reasons (to achieve particular ends)? Okay, but on this view, when you invoke "pragmatism" I immediately hear a thinking, reasoning subject which implies consciousness. But from what you've said, that isn't what you have in mind so presumably you mean just a kind of blind activity that bumps along until something works and that the evolutionary process delivers, in the end, an entity that bumps better than other entities. I think this is fine as far as it goes. I have no beef with it. But it doesn't begin to specify what it is our bumping entity has learned to do that makes it aware of itself and what is going on around it, etc.

> And it seems to me that pragmatic decisions require some
> sort of purpose, though they need not require consciousness.
>

I agree with that as well. But at some point we get consciousness and that is the question before us. Why does consciousness come about at some point and what is it that our bumping entity does that generates the features we associate with being conscious?

>
> > This means it needs to be able to know and understand its choices
> > and to come to the point of selection in a way that is at least
> > roughly analogous with how and what we do what we do.
>
> A pragmatic decision requires some sort of weighing of choices to see
> how they fit the driving purposes. But I think such weighing requires
> a lot less than a full human consciousness.
>
>

I agree. Lots of animals at every level give evidence of being able to make choices. I recall Hawkins' example of the lizard and the rat in the maze. The rat learns, he notes, the lizard doesn't. He ascribes that to the fact that the rat has a cortex which the lizard lacks. Yet a lizard will scream in pain as much as a rat so it would seem odd to say the lizard lacked awareness (an important feature of consciousness). Hawkins aims to show the role of cortexes in intelligence but in so doing he also presents a picture of a very truncated consciousness in the lizard. Yet even the lizard is capable of making some choices, running away in some cases, attacking in others, mating in still others. Eating or not eating. This puts our lizard above the rock though, perhaps, not above other lower forms of life like frogs and fish and protozoas.

<snip>

>
> > Is this picture really all that different from Dennett's proposal
> > that brains run processes in the way computers run algorithms?
>
> Yes, very different. I'll think about posting a comparison in the next
> day or two.
>
> Regards,
> Neil
>

I'll look forward to it then. So far I have to say that I don't see a lot of difference, in principle, between your account and Dennett's. Granted you don't like the computational analogy but, insofar as your account hinges on an identification of consciousness with the occurrence of certain processes it is on the same order. I presume you will differ from Dennett in somewhat the way that Hawkins differs from Minsky?

SWM

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:

> Is this picture really all that different from Dennett's proposal
> that brains run processes in the way computers run algorithms?

Here's a quick comparison. I'll use "A:" to prefix the AI/Dennett
view, and "N:" to prefix my view.

Information

A: Information is a naturally occuring part of the world, and is picked
up by sensory cells.

N: Information is inherently abstract, so does not exist apart from its
construction and use by humans (or other cognitive agents. We interact
with the world in order to construct information, and we use sensory
cells in that interaction.

Core functionality

A: Computation/logic, applied to the information picked up by A:
sensory cells.

N: Information gathering, which I shall loosely refer to as
"measurement".

Starting point

A: Most AI people assume large amounts of innate knowledge or
structure, perhaps in the form of a program and a data base (often
called a "knowledge base").

N: Self measurement of internal states. The system can be said to
have, as innate purposes, the maintaining of internal states within
innately prescribed limits. Among those innate purposes is a drive to
explore ways of interacting with the world, including ways of forming
information about the world.

Learning

A: The usual AI view of learning is one of discovering patterns within
the input that is picked up. There is also some consideration of
reinforcement learning.

N: Learning is acquiring behaviors which tend to promote the ability of
the system to meet its purposes. With each new behavior, there is an
accompanying new measurement system for self-measuring performance in
carrying out that behavior. Of particular importance are behaviors
that provide ways of forming information about the external world - we
can refer to that as discovery/invention of new ways of measuring.
Note that this could be described as perceptual learning.

N: With each new way of measuring, there is an associated new concept
(that which is measured). With each new self-measurement associated
with new acquired behaviors, there is a new purpose of carrying out
that new behavior appropriately.

Intentionality

A: The usual AI view is that there is nothing more to intentionality
than attribution. That is, there is only derived intentionality.
Dennett argues for that in his "The Intentional Stance."

N: The initial self-measurement of internal states, and the consquent
initial purposes, are perhaps best considered to be examples only of
derived intentionality. However, the new measuring systems created by
the system itself are best considered to be examples of orginal
intentionality. In particular, information about the world that is
formed on the basis of these acquired measuring systems should be
considered intentional information.

Free will

A: The behavior of the system is determined by the input and the
mechanistic rules it is following. The system is free to choose only
in the compatibist sense that it is free to accede to doing what the
mechanism dictates that it shall do.

N: Free will is the ability to make pragmatic choices. The options are
evaluated according to the systems purposes, and a choice is made in
accordance with those purposes. Note that there might be several
relevant purposes and some of them might be in conflict.

Regards,
Neil

--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:

> --- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
>
> > Is this picture really all that different from Dennett's proposal
> > that brains run processes in the way computers run algorithms?

> Here's a quick comparison. I'll use "A:" to prefix the AI/Dennett
> view, and "N:" to prefix my view.
>

This is very difficult for me to parse (having already read it once through -- those who carp about my tendency to respond on the fly, please take note!) but I will attempt to follow and ask questions or comment in the appropriate places.

> Information
>
> A: Information is a naturally occuring part of the world, and is picked
> up by sensory cells.
>
> N: Information is inherently abstract, so does not exist apart from its
> construction and use by humans (or other cognitive agents. We interact
> with the world in order to construct information, and we use sensory
> cells in that interaction.
>

What does the claim that information is a naturally occurring part of the world rather than being abstract amount to?

In one sense, no doubt, all that the "A" people would want to say is that abstractions don't occur in any causal way, they are ideas, general ones in fact, covering a number of cases. Hence they are only in the mind (as you seem to be saying Neil). Nevertheless, if that WERE the case, if they had no concrete reality at all we would have the situation Searle envisions with computer programs, i.e., nothing happening in the world, just ideas in some heads as it were, the meaning of the computer codes in the minds of their programmers and the understanding of the computer users.

Yet things DO happen in the world as we know and computers programmed in particular ways certainly cause physical events. People with ideas in their heads take actions.

A way around this? Josh would likely say that all abstractions are really elaborations of very precise, concrete things, events, what have you. There is not the class of X but the name we give to X-1, X-2, X-3, etc., until all the relevant X's are exhausted in some relevant context (the class of all X's in Y).

Where are the classes themselves? Well not anywhere, really. Speaking of classes is just a way of organizing our references to many X's. One could, conceivably, organize these in other ways, too. All the X's in Y, all the X's that Z, etc. Classifying and grouping just seem to be natural things we do. It's how we think about and talk about the multiplicity of our phenomenal world.

But what is an X, itself, then? Josh (again I am guessing but perhaps I am not far off) would say it's this particular X and this one . . . and this one and so on. But as soon as we name whatever the referent of X is and say THAT is an X (what I mean by "X"), we are back to this idea of "information" aren't we, i.e., a named particular is no less an instance of information than a generalization about many X's. That is, calling a referent an X is informational, no less than grouping multiple X's in some fashion. To name something is already "informative", it already represents information!

I think you are right, Neil, that information needs to be information FOR someone and I also think it needs to be ABOUT something. So there is no information without minds. But THAT information, the kind minds hold/think about/conceive, must be grounded in something or we are left with an abyss between whatever it is minds do and the world. But that can't be because 1) minds lead to effects in the world and 2) the world can manifestly have effects on minds.

If there was no physical reality, no phenomenal input, there could not be anything to be informed about. So I think Josh (and I'm picking on him because he's our most explicit nominalist here) would say that there must be a physical underpinning to every informational conception, every informational application.

How then are we to understand the physics of the phenomenally real world if we presume a divide between what the mind is and the world it knows? Searle says what is abstract can have no causal efficacy except through an agential medium (someone who can act with intention, who makes the abstraction concrete). But if a view like the one I am imputing to Josh is true, every single physical transaction, whether between two mindless entities or one minded entity and one mindless one, or between two minded entities must occur in a physical medium. How then does information as abstract mesh with the causally real, how does the general with fit with the particular?

Can it make sense to suppose that information is always set apart from what it is information about or is it really more sensible to collapse the distinction between information as abstraction and information as what is particular? After all, the work of both computers and brains occur in terms of real world events, albeit of an an apparently quite different sort.

Searle grounds his later argument on this question of the causal incapacity of the abstract. But can we really presume such a radical disconnect between what is abstract and what is causal?

You say, Neil, that "We interact with the world in order to construct information, and we use sensory cells in that interaction." But how can we interact if there is this radical divide? How can "we use" anything, how can sensory cells do anything to anything else if there is not some kind of transactional event occurring between physical entities at some level?

I don't want to suggest that we don't construct ideas, impose form on raw data because I think it's pretty clear we do. But perhaps it's a confusion to suppose that in so doing we are taking something from an abstract realm to superimpose it on raw, formless physical phenomena. Perhaps THAT is just a picture which is finally misleading?

If the universe has order (and everything we know tells us it does) why should we suppose that that order is only in our mind, our way of seeing things?

While we can never know what the universe would be without the presence of observers like us (and indeed, on a strictly individual phenomenal level there would just be nothing at all), there is no reason to think the universe exists only in our own minds (though, metaphysically speaking, there may be no reason to think otherwise, either). If it doesn't then there is order to it, beyond ourselves, and our capacity to succeed in it, to survive and even, at times, to prosper, must depend on our being in sync with such an order, an order that cannot be something imposed by each and every observer at each moment of that observer's existence.

If this is the right way of looking at this, then information IS a naturally occuring phenomenon (as the "A" people say). It's just different than what we normally think of as "information" when we consider things like knowledge, perceptions, etc. That is, what we think of as the information we have in our heads would just be a particular manifestation of the physical events that underlie the reality that produces brains, brain events and the sense of subjectness that we recognize as having a mind, being conscious, when we consider ourselves.


> Core functionality
>
> A: Computation/logic, applied to the information picked up by A:
> sensory cells.
>
> N: Information gathering, which I shall loosely refer to as
> "measurement".
>
> Starting point
>
> A: Most AI people assume large amounts of innate knowledge or
> structure, perhaps in the form of a program and a data base (often
> called a "knowledge base").
>

This may be. I don't know what the underlying assumptions are of most AI folks. But I don't think it is essential to the AI project to think this way. Yes there must be some structured mechanism or medium to have the interactions we think of as being conscious. But is that "innate knowledge" in any real sense? Is a "tabula rasa" that if it lacks the form of a tabula, the emptiness of being rasa, etc.? And if it doesn't, does that mean we must say that there is already innate knowledge that is part of being a tabula rasa because it looks like a blackboard rather than a grapefruit?

> N: Self measurement of internal states. The system can be said to
> have, as innate purposes, the maintaining of internal states within
> innately prescribed limits. Among those innate purposes is a drive to
> explore ways of interacting with the world, including ways of forming
> information about the world.
>

I think we can actually join your A and N here. That is, the system you seem to have in mind already has form, as the tabula rasa does. It's an X and not a Y. But that doesn't imply that it isn't interactive with its world or capable of ongoing adjustment to the inputs it is receiving. Is the fact that it is the particular kind of system it is, "innate knowledge"? Well it might be, depending on how sophisticated the particular system is. Thus, human brains are better prepped to handle the world than some other kinds of animals' brains or equivalents. Other animal brains may be better prepped though for their particular environments. Innate knowledge? Maybe. But then how does that differ from the supposition you propose the "A" people hold?

That there is a drive to achieve and maintain internal integrity, to self-propagate, etc., as a means of system self-preservation in no way obviates the idea that systems are suited for particular conditions and that sometimes some of that suiting involves a great deal of built-in capacity for flexibility.

> Learning
>
> A: The usual AI view of learning is one of discovering patterns within
> the input that is picked up. There is also some consideration of
> reinforcement learning.
>

> N: Learning is acquiring behaviors which tend to promote the ability of
> the system to meet its purposes. With each new behavior, there is an
> accompanying new measurement system for self-measuring performance in
> carrying out that behavior. Of particular importance are behaviors
> that provide ways of forming information about the external world - we
> can refer to that as discovery/invention of new ways of measuring.
> Note that this could be described as perceptual learning.
>

The idea of behaviors does not undermine the idea that there is also a subjective live, thoughts, mental pictures, memories of such, etc. What, after all, drives a great number of our behaviors if not the mental events that make up our inner world of thought and feeling? Yet, where is the mental life in your picture here? I think the picture you draw immediately above is not complete.

> N: With each new way of measuring, there is an associated new concept
> (that which is measured). With each new self-measurement associated
> with new acquired behaviors, there is a new purpose of carrying out
> that new behavior appropriately.
>

And purposes are articulable and, also, conceptual (we can explain our purpose in our own heads or just grasp something we're after in the form of a mental picture). Isn't the real question here how it is that we come to a point where we have a mental life in the way we do, how it is we get self-awareness, reasoning, etc.?

> Intentionality
>
> A: The usual AI view is that there is nothing more to intentionality
> than attribution. That is, there is only derived intentionality.
> Dennett argues for that in his "The Intentional Stance."
>

I'm not sure that's quite fair. Even Dennett doesn't say we don't think about things. He just wants to say there is no such thing as a phenomenon of intentionality somewhere in the brain but, rather, it's just a way of relating to things around us. We call it "intentionality" because we see it in the behavior of others and so we think that there is some special intentional feature happening in their brains. But, on Dennett's view, there isn't. Intentionality is just a term we impute to certain things behaving in a certain way.

> N: The initial self-measurement of internal states, and the consquent
> initial purposes, are perhaps best considered to be examples only of
> derived intentionality. However, the new measuring systems created by
> the system itself are best considered to be examples of orginal
> intentionality. In particular, information about the world that is
> formed on the basis of these acquired measuring systems should be
> considered intentional information.
>

This, I'm afrad, loses me. You have spoken of "intentional information" before but I don't see how this makes either of the constituent terms any clearer. If by "intentional" we mean aboutness (as in thinking about things) then we can say that we are intentional when we make a complex set of relational connections between things we become aware of.

You have also called information, abstract, something imposed on what is not, itself, fundamentally informational because it exists apart from any mental observation. As noted at the outset, I think that is only one use of the term "information" and that a more comprehensive understanding of it would relate it to the transactions between physical phenomena, independent of minds as well. Thus, everytime one physical entity impinges on another, in a perfectly reasonable sense, we could say information is being exchanged, even if there is no thinking observer taking it in, considering it, filing it away!

Now what is "intentional information"? Is it just the information that makes sense to an observer, that the observer is able to impose his/her forms of comprehension upon? Why should that have some special place in the area of physical causation underlying the occurrence of minds in the world?

> Free will
>
> A: The behavior of the system is determined by the input and the
> mechanistic rules it is following. The system is free to choose only
> in the compatibist sense that it is free to accede to doing what the
> mechanism dictates that it shall do.
>
> N: Free will is the ability to make pragmatic choices. The options are
> evaluated according to the systems purposes, and a choice is made in
> accordance with those purposes. Note that there might be several
> relevant purposes and some of them might be in conflict.
>
> Regards,
> Neil
>

Even making pragmatic choices is going to be driven by what serves the purpose so in the same sense one might say choosing only according to the rules isn't "free" neither would choosing according to the purpose because, in this case, the rule is "serve the purpose".

I know my response has been rather extensive. I am not trying to shoot you down Neil. I am just trying to express my concerns about some of the issues you've presented.

But let me ask the original question. Maybe this will help. How do all the foregoing dynamics you've described serve to explain how a brain comes to be or to produce consciousness? What is going on in the brain that is the consciousness and where does it come from? Would you say that abstractions underlie the abstractions of the thinking mind? Mustn't we, finally, presume a physical foundation for thought?

SWM

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:

> This is very difficult for me to parse ...

Having read your full reply, I'll say that this is probably the worst
miscommunication ever. In retrospect, I should have realized that
would happen.

There's no way I can straighten that out, so I won't even try.

I'll make a few meta-comments to give some perspective.

There are problems that a cognitive agent needs to solve. AI methods
don't solve them. They don't even attempt to solve them. In fact AI
proponents are blissfully unaware that the problems even exist.

There are other, quite different problems, that AI systems do attempt
to solve. As best I can tell, those are not problems that any actual
cognitive agent needs to solve.

In my last post, I was trying to present the basic principles with
which a cognitive agent would address those problems that it needs to
solve. And, as I should have expected, you have attempted to construe
it as being about the kind of problems that AI systems actually
address.

It's pretty much a total miscommunication.

Regards,
Neil

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:
>
> I'll make a few meta-comments to give some perspective.
>
> There are problems that a cognitive agent needs to solve. AI
> methods don't solve them. They don't even attempt to solve them.
> In fact AI proponents are blissfully unaware that the problems
> even exist.

I'm rereading some 1980/1990 Fodor, "RePresentations" and
"A Theory of Content". Both are collections of papers.
"RePresentations" contains his "Methodological Solipsism as a
Research Strategy in Cognitive Psychology".

He makes the point repeatedly, that AI (well, computation per se)
only addresses "formal", computational issues, while "semantics"
that explain behaviors, are something other, which Fodor
generally subsumes under the term "representational".
He asks, "If physicists have numbers to play with, why can't
psychologists have propositional attitudes?"

Among his other labels, Fodor is happy as an "intentional realist",
which he tries (and tries) to square with computational theories
of mind.

Fodor's real project, in his 1975 LOT and all of the subsequent
work, is to explain how these are dual aspects all the way down.

I'm don't think he quite succeeds, many other people don't think
he quite succeeds, and even Fodor himself expresses some doubts that
he ever succeeds. What he says is basically that he's sure he's
working in the right area, and welcomes further progress.

(it's amazing what you can find in old books, when you go back with
a very specific theory in mind!)

Josh

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:

> --- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
>
> > This is very difficult for me to parse ...
>
> Having read your full reply, I'll say that this is probably the worst
> miscommunication ever. In retrospect, I should have realized that
> would happen.
>
> There's no way I can straighten that out, so I won't even try.
>

Yes, I too should have realized this would be a doomed effort.

> I'll make a few meta-comments to give some perspective.
>
> There are problems that a cognitive agent needs to solve. AI methods
> don't solve them. They don't even attempt to solve them. In fact AI
> proponents are blissfully unaware that the problems even exist.
>
> There are other, quite different problems, that AI systems do attempt
> to solve. As best I can tell, those are not problems that any actual
> cognitive agent needs to solve.
>

But the issue that I am addressing and have always been addressing, even when asking your for explication of your reason for thinking AI is on the wrong track, is not what cognitive agents do but how they come to be in a world chock full of apparently inanimate things.

> In my last post, I was trying to present the basic principles with
> which a cognitive agent would address those problems that it needs to
> solve. And, as I should have expected, you have attempted to construe
> it as being about the kind of problems that AI systems actually
> address.
>
> It's pretty much a total miscommunication.
>
> Regards,
> Neil
>
> =========================================

Yes, but the issue at hand is how do we get these kinds of sentient agents, that is entities with a subjective point of view, entities that experience. It's not what THEY do but how they come to be that AI, and cognitive science generally, addresses.

You have said, here and elsewhere, that AI is on the wrong path and that you have a different, a more promising approach and I asked for more information on that. That is, I asked you to explain what you once told me on another list, that the key to understanding how minds come to be (not came to be as in evolutionarily history!) is in understandinding the homeostasis of living systems (which, presumably, computers don't have). But that still remains unexplicated as far as I can see, or at least I have failed to understand your reasons for thinking homeostasis yields pragmatics yields perception yields mind. There is some account of the mechanics of what brains do that is still missing.

At least Dennett has an account, whether one chooses to say it can't work because it is premised on the abstraction of computational programming or not. I am trying to understand the alternative you once told me you had in mind when you criticized Dennett.

But you're probably right. We've gone over this before and never gotten any further than we now have so perhaps we really are just not understanding each other. I am willing to consider that I just may be missing your points here, as you say. Sorry we couldn't make progress on this though.

SWM

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "jrstern" <jrstern@...> wrote:
>
> "RePresentations" contains his "Methodological Solipsism as a
> Research Strategy in Cognitive Psychology".

I meant to mention, that's the paper that was pretty much the
launch point for Searle's Chinese Room.

Searle's reading of Fodor is tendentious (or perhaps just careless)
- Fodor actually answers in this paper many problems that Searle
raises in the Chinese Room.

But there it is, for y'all history buffs.

Josh

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "jrstern" <jrstern@...> wrote:

> Among his other labels, Fodor is happy as an "intentional realist",
> which he tries (and tries) to square with computational theories
> of mind.

> Fodor's real project, in his 1975 LOT and all of the subsequent
> work, is to explain how these are dual aspects all the way down.

You are right, that Fodor does not succeed. His approach won't solve
the "all the way down" part. But he at least comes closer than most to
appreciating what is the problem.

Regards,
Neil

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:

> But the issue that I am addressing and have always been addressing,
> even when asking your for explication of your reason for thinking
> AI is on the wrong track, is not what cognitive agents do but how
> they come to be in a world chock full of apparently inanimate things.

But you only see that as a puzzle because of how you are looking at it.
Even the most primitive biological organism has more intentionality than
a computer will ever have. Sure, an amoeba or a plant is not conscious.
But it is still very different from computers.

You are trying to look at every thing as mechanism. And in a way, the
greater puzzle is that you (and others) would do that. As best I can
tell, the only actual mechanisms that exist are human artifacts. So this
whole idea of trying to reduce everything to mechanism seems foolish.

> Yes, but the issue at hand is how do we get these kinds of sentient
> agents, that is entities with a subjective point of view, entities
> that experience. It's not what THEY do but how they come to be that
> AI, and cognitive science generally, addresses.

Yet it seems to me that AI and most of cognitive science make little
effort to address that question. What I more commonly see is people
trying to explain away that question, and to convince themselves that it
is all mechanism. But, if you look around the world, the only
mechanisms are our own created artifacts, so it seems foolish to try to
explain everything as mechanism.

> That is, I asked you to explain what you once told me on another
> list, that the key to understanding how minds come to be (not
> came to be as in evolutionarily history!) is in understandinding
> the homeostasis of living systems (which, presumably, computers
> don't have).

It seems that I cannot explain it. You do not recognize the existence
of the kind of problem that homeostasis can solve, and I have been
singularly unsuccessful in my attempts to introduce you to those
problems.

> At least Dennett has an account, whether one chooses to say it can't
> work because it is premised on the abstraction of computational
> programming or not.

Whether or not it is based on particular abstractions is not what
matters. The learning method proposed for AI is wholly inadequate to
account for human learning.

Regards,
Neil

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:
>
> > But the issue that I am addressing and have always been
> > addressing, even when asking your for explication of your
> > reason for thinking AI is on the wrong track, is not what
> > cognitive agents do but how they come to be in a world chock
> > full of apparently inanimate things.

Is this a special case?

Do you worry about how cats come to be in a world chock full of non-cats? Hot things in a world chock full of cold things?

> But you only see that as a puzzle because of how you are looking
> at it. Even the most primitive biological organism has more
> intentionality than a computer will ever have. Sure, an amoeba
> or a plant is not conscious. But it is still very different from
> computers.

Different, or more?

Even Searle says computers have intentionality -
derived intentionality.

So does Fodor, btw, not derived but vanilla, but only by
invoking his dual-aspect business.

> You are trying to look at every thing as mechanism.

Perhaps mechanism itself is more than previously assumed.

One has to watch all the Wittgensteinian issues here, about
reifying every word.

> Whether or not it is based on particular abstractions is not what
> matters. The learning method proposed for AI is wholly inadequate
> to account for human learning.

Fodor, not to mention Chomsky, assumes innate factors.

Myself, I haven't worried much about learning, I'm still trying
to figure out how something once learned or innate,
could possibly work anyhow.

Josh

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