ONT Re: Any PORT In A Storm
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HP = Howard Pattee
JA = Jon Awbrey
JA: Gee, Howard, I did not say that I had not read lotsa literature on the subject.
HP: Sorry, I mistook your "I do not have a clue" confession
as lack of awareness of current models.
Yes, the idiom is a bit idiotic at times.
There is no false humility in it, as you
know that I lack humility of any variety.
But the point is that when I compare the
current models, that are offered in hope
of capturing or explaining the wealth of
phenomena, with a phenomenon to be saved,
well, my examen, my sense of the balance
between the two pans, tells me instantly
that the preponderance of the impression
lies with impressiveness of that unknown.
JA: I did spend my spare time throughout the 80's getting a Master's in Psych, and
most of the jobs that I have actually gotten paid for in my so-called career
were doing comps, data, and stats work in health science research settings,
and if you want to call what's currently known a "clue" then I reckon that
I have picked up a few shreds of it along the way ...
HP: Then am I to assume that you find none of these
current "shreds" provide any significant clues
for your studies of scientific inquiry?
Well, "significance" is a judgment call that can vary
from moment to moment and one application to the next.
I guess that I pretty much treat all such models and
theories as hypothetical speculations, each of which
may appear to capture a bit of the source, but most
of which just barely succeed in catching one drop.
JA: ... but I guess that my estimate of how well the models approach
the complexity of everyday phenomena, not to mention the as yet
unknown basis of consciousness, well, call me when an fMRI has
explained Lao Tzu, and then we'll both have a clue.
HP: It is just the "complexity of everyday phenomena" that is the central problem for me,
as well as for many brain theorists and AIers. Some form of concurrent, distributed
nonlinear network dynamics appears to many of us to be the only presently known type
of model that can make timely discriminations from the megabits/second that our
senses provide, as well as outputting the linear strings we call speech.
I appreciate that it is likely, and even motivationally necessary,
for people to be enthusiastic about their current favorite models,
and I have been around long enough to know that it is pointless
to criticize them until the exponents themselves have started
to acknowlege a few anomalies, a few inadequacies to the res,
and so I can do little but wait for that moment to arrive.
You have used the word "linear" here with a punning sense
that I of all people can well appreciate, and that almost
tempts me to jump in, but no, I have fallen for that line
way too many times before.
HP: This problem has nothing to do with us human late-comers and our "consciousness".
Spiders and flies have had the problem solved for years. Do you really believe
that the linear "one-at-a-time" productions of logic and rule-based computation
and syntax-constrained language is adequate for survival, let alone inquiry, in
this everyday complexity?
Still on the topic of labyrinths to which I lack a clue,
I have no idea whether spiders and flies have some sort
of consciousness or not, indeed, I do not know for sure
whether some sense of sense might not abide within the
most concrete non-sense of quarks, or wheyves, or what
all-bottom the cosmos may have -- by the way, a similar
sentiment was rather notoriously expressed by Peirce --
I know no more than that their behaviors are of such
species that my interest in them is equally specific.
As one who once studied the "grooming grammars" of
guinea pigs and gerbils, I can vouch for the fact
that formal language theory is nothing more than
a descriptive formalism, and indites nothing of
substance about the substance of its subject,
except the descriptive complexity thereof.
Jon Awbrey
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