ONT Re: OCA: Differential Logic & Dynamic Systems
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Howard,
A little friday night musing ...
not to be taken too serially ...
H H Pattee wrote:
>
> At 08:36 AM 8/10/01 -0400, Jon wrote:
>
> > | The most fundamental concept in cybernetics is that of "difference",
> > | either that two things are recognisably different or that one thing
> > | has changed with time.
> > |
> > | Ashby, W. Ross,
> > |'An Introduction to Cybernetics',
> > | Chapman & Hall, London, UK, 1956,
> > | Methuen & Company, London, UK, 1964,
> > | Page 9.
> >
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>
> Life began with pattern recognition.
And here I thought it was pattern replication ...
I am sure there is a connection somwhere, but ...
what?
Pattern recognition was the problem that first piqued my interest in AI --
excuse me while I wax nostalgic -- Minsky & Papert made me believe that
it could be done right, if a bit harder than anyone had guessed --
I was shocked to find out twenty years later they had gotten
the blame for killing the angels, when all this time I had
believed that they were the messengers. Strange but true.
> All living organisms are pattern recognizers and are controlled by pattern recognizers
> (i.e., enzymes). The most fundamental distinction in physics is between things that
> change and things that do not change. This is a primitive distinction common to all
> organisms with sensorimotor controls that to survive must detect objects (patterns
> that do not change) and the relative motion of objects (patterns that change).
Yes, Wiener, McCulloch & Pitts, Arbib -- the apperception and action apropos
universals and invariants -- my first brush with combinatorial logic, groups,
and the theory of computability, all in one fell swoop in Arbib's little book.
> All brains have special pattern recognizers for each, coupled to motor controls.
Ashby:
| What is it that survives, over the ages? Not the individual organism,
| but certain peculiarly well compounded gene-patterns, particularly those
| that lead to the production of an individual that carries the gene-pattern
| well protected within itself, and that, within the span of one generation,
| can look after itself.
|
| What this means is that those gene-patterns are specially likely
| to survive (and therefore to exist today) that cause to grow,
| between themselves and the dangerous world, some more or less
| elaborate mechanism for defence. So the genes in 'Testudo'
| cause the growth of a shell; and the genes in 'Homo' cause
| the growth of a brain. (Ashby, 'Intro. Cybernetics' 10/5).
JA had written, in the margin, so many years ago:
| brain, skin, shell -> ectoderm
|
| cortex, cork, bark -> epi-\
| > Derm
| keratin, horn, ... -> exo-/
Brain as Shell -- it explains a lot!
> Physics has just refined and formalized (i.e.,
> symbolically represented) this distinction.
> Things that change are called "observers"
> and "initial conditions", ...
I call these "boundaries".
> ... things that do not change are called
> the laws of change (i.e., "laws of motion") and the
> fundamental patterns (i.e., "fundamental particles").
I call these "interiors".
> Hertz's epistemological condition and limitation hold at all levels.
> Organisms form images (or models) of external patterns;
> and the form which they give them is such that the
> consequents of the images are always the images
> of the necessary natural consequents
> of the patterns pictured.
It hertz me to have to say it,
But I'm afraid that I observe
A defect in the picture given.
Arrows of logical implication
And arrows of cause to effect
Need not of necessity commute
These all too convenient ways.
> As a matter of fact, organisms do not know, nor have they any means of knowing,
> whether their images or models of external patterns are in conformity with them
> in any other than this one fundamental respect.
I worry a little about that.
Okay, a lot.
Jon Awbrey
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