ONT Re: Any PORT In A Storm
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HP = Howard Pattee
JA = Jon Awbrey
BR = Bertrand Russell
JA: 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.
HP: It is not pointless. On the contrary, you learn nothing by not criticizing
current theories, and I learn nothing without your criticisms. Don't confuse
enthusiasm with credulity. Everyone already acknowledges that current network
models are inadequate brain theories. We learn only from their inadequacies.
Also, to the extent that these inadequacies are remediable, waiting costs
you some useful knowledge. Anyway, what do you mean "wait for the moment"?
The moment of Truth? You have been around long enough to also know that
you're not going to be around that long.
I am simply speaking from experience. We both know the ideals espoused for inquiry.
We both know how human beings really behave. There is a non-trivial tension there,
eliminable or essential I can't say, and "the economy of research" (TEOR) is just
another name for picking your battles. In my last active engagement with these
issues I came to the conclusion that some necessary pieces of mathematics had
just not been invented yet, and so I retreated to work on that. It's been
enough to occupy me for a while.
My sentence clearly indicated not the moment of truth but the moment of doubt,
the moment when inquiry begins, when those who occupy the field in question
"have started to acknowlege a few anomalies, a few inadequacies to the res"
of their favorite models and theories. Until the paramours of a paradigm
start to feel the "irritation of doubt" as arising from internal sources,
bothering them with bad news is rarely treated as anything but annoyance.
Spoken like a gadfly whose been swatted enough times for one brief life.
HP: Let me rephrase the central problem of the "complexity of everyday phenomena"
in a more primitive form, since you have no enthusiasm for network brain theories.
Actually, I have done a bit of work with network models,
that grew out of looking for qualitative dynamic analogues
of Arbib's cooperation models, Grossberg's competition models,
McClelland & Rumelhart's PDP models, just to name the ones that
I can remember. The data structures in my learning and reasoning
programs were explicitly modeled to imitate "neural growth cones".
Here is a very primitive example that I used in my Master's work:
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Excerpt from "Theme One: A Program of Inquiry",
By Jon Awbrey and Susan Awbrey, August 9, 1989.
| Historical Note
|
| My old name for the logical bracket "(_,...,_)",
| the text frame that parses into a 'cactus lobe',
|
| o-...-o
| \ /
| \ /
| @
|
| was the "boundary operator".
|
| The name "Study" refers to the module of the Theme One Program
| that functioned as the propositional calculus managing utility.
Example 5. Jets and Sharks
The propositional calculus based on the boundary operator
can be interpreted in a way that resembles the logic of
activation states and competition constraints in certain
neural network models. One way to do this is by interpreting
the blank or unmarked state as the resting state of a neural
pool, the bound or marked state as its activated state, and
by representing a mutually inhibitory pool of neurons A, B, C
in the expression "(A, B, C)". To illustrate this possibility,
we transcribe a well-known example from the parallel distributed
processing literature [McR] and work through two of the associated
exercises as portrayed in Existential Graph format.
o----------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| (( art ),( al ),( sam ),( clyde ),( mike ),
| ( jim ),( greg ),( john ),( doug ),( lance ),
| ( george ),( pete ),( fred ),( gene ),( ralph ),
| ( phil ),( ike ),( nick ),( don ),( ned ),( karl ),
| ( ken ),( earl ),( rick ),( ol ),( neal ),( dave ))
|
| ( jets , sharks )
|
| ( jets ,
| ( art ),( al ),( sam ),( clyde ),( mike ),
| ( jim ),( greg ),( john ),( doug ),( lance ),
| ( george ),( pete ),( fred ),( gene ),( ralph ))
|
| ( sharks ,
| ( phil ),( ike ),( nick ),( don ),( ned ),( karl ),
| ( ken ),( earl ),( rick ),( ol ),( neal ),( dave ))
|
| (( 20's ),( 30's ),( 40's ))
|
| ( 20's ,
| ( sam ),( jim ),( greg ),( john ),( lance ),
| ( george ),( pete ),( fred ),( gene ),( ken ))
|
| ( 30's ,
| ( al ),( mike ),( doug ),( ralph ),( phil ),( ike ),
| ( nick ),( don ),( ned ),( rick ),( ol ),( neal ),( dave ))
|
| ( 40's ,
| ( art ),( clyde ),( karl ),( earl ))
|
| (( junior_high ),( high_school ),( college ))
|
| ( junior_high ,
| ( art ),( al ),( clyde ),( mike ),( jim ),
| ( john ),( lance ),( george ),( ralph ),( ike ))
|
| ( high_school ,
| ( greg ),( doug ),( pete ),( fred ),( nick ),
| ( karl ),( ken ),( earl ),( rick ),( neal ),( dave ))
|
| ( college ,
| ( sam ),( gene ),( phil ),( don ),( ned ),( ol ))
|
| (( single ),( married ),( divorced ))
|
| ( single ,
| ( art ),( sam ),( clyde ),( mike ),( doug ),( pete ),
| ( fred ),( gene ),( ralph ),( ike ),( nick ),( ken ),( neal ))
|
| ( married ,
| ( al ),( greg ),( john ),( lance ),( phil ),
| ( don ),( ned ),( karl ),( earl ),( ol ))
|
| ( divorced ,
| ( jim ),( george ),( rick ),( dave ))
|
| (( bookie ),( burglar ),( pusher ))
|
| ( bookie ,
| ( sam ),( clyde ),( mike ),( doug ),
| ( pete ),( ike ),( ned ),( karl ),( neal ))
|
| ( burglar ,
| ( al ),( jim ),( john ),( lance ),
| ( george ),( don ),( ken ),( earl ),( rick ))
|
| ( pusher ,
| ( art ),( greg ),( fred ),( gene ),
| ( ralph ),( phil ),( nick ),( ol ),( dave ))
|
o----------------------------------------------------------------------
We now apply Study to the proposition
defining the Jets and Sharks data base.
With a query on the name "ken" we obtain the following
output, giving all the features associated with Ken:
o----------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| ken
| sharks
| 20's
| high_school
| single
| burglar
|
o----------------------------------------------------------------------
With a query on the two features "college" and "sharks" we obtain
the following outline of all features satisfying these constraints:
o----------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| college
| sharks
| 30's
| married
| bookie
| ned
| burglar
| don
| pusher
| phil
| ol
|
o----------------------------------------------------------------------
From this we discover that all college Sharks are 30-something and married.
Further, we have a complete listing of their names broken down by occupation,
as no doubt all of them will be, eventually.
Reference.
| McClelland, James L. & Rumelhart, David E.,
|'Explorations in Parallel Distributed Processing:
| A Handbook of Models, Programs, and Exercises',
| MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1988.
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HP: The simplest case of symbol manipulation in my view is the gene. DNA is copied
sequentially one-base-at-a-time and translated one-codon-at-a-time. This is called
copying, reading, and translating just because it has the form of a language. So far
this is all structural or syntactic activity. Only when the linear sequences fold into
three-dimensional allosteric shapes do we have any biological function, and folding is
not a one-at-a-time sequential (or linear) process, but an everything-happens-at-once
(or nonlinear) process.
Again, you are punning on the word "linear" in ways
that has me doubled and folded over with convulsions,
but I have yet to meet a person who will thank me for
telling them that. You're welcome.
HP: Now here we have the simplest form of the problem of
the "complexity of [the cell's] everyday phenomena",
and the point is that in this case we know that there
is no linear, one-at-a-time solution. In other words,
there is no logical form that describes folding. [Roughly,
there is no computationally tractable ab initio folding
algorithm, and approximations must rely on trial and error,
multiple-level partial decomposability, and parallel network
relaxation models.] The cell, of course, does not "solve"
the problem but has avoided it by harnessing energy-based
physical laws to do the folding using the DNA symbol
sequences as the harness.
And planets avoid the problem of learning differential equations
by simply going about their orbital business. Sadly, the job of
the physicist is not thereby reduced to pointing the planet and
saying "I don't know what it is -- but there it goes again".
HP: Now perhaps you can see some similarity with Russell's problem:
BR: How shall we describe the logical form of a belief?
HP: Just as there is no logical form that describes folding (or function),
there is no logical form that describes belief (or meanings).
You bought that? BR is only saying "no logical form that I am willing to consider".
He is deliberately or inveterately avoiding the use of 3-adic relations in an effort
to decompose everything in sight into 2-adic relations. If he had been just a little
better-read than he was, he might have had a clue not to bother. The overall strategy
he employs is called "using Ockham's razor to cut off one's head".
HP: Of course, this is more of a metaphor than a model because the
brain's dynamics that form beliefs are nothing like the physical
law dynamics that form the functional folding. But note the the
similarity. It is between the relation of the symbols and their
meaning. That is, structurally decomposable DNA symbol sequences
acquire function by harnessing non-decomposable physical dynamics
to fold. Similarly, logically decomposable syntactic parts of
speech acquire meaning by harnessing the brains non-decomposable
network dynamics.
Howard, we started to have this conversation once before,
but you never answered the first questions that I asked.
In order for me to speak sensibly of signs and meaning,
I have to know what the object, sign, and interpretant
domains are, and how the system under view is supposed
to fit the definition of a sign relation that I use.
You have made assigments that seem questionable to me,
and all I see going on here is semeiosis or semitosis
or some other process that transforms sign vehicles.
If I had to take a wild guess at the "object" of all
these goings on, I might say the object of the process
is probably "to reproduce itself" (TRI). The pragmatic
theory of signs recognizes that the pragma of a praxis is
very often an objective like that, indeed, it is practically
the primary kind of object, with things like physical objects
being derived from the orientation of an agent toward a goal.
BR: | Suppose I take "A believes that B loves C". "Othello believes that Desdemona loves Cassio."
| There you have a false belief. You have this odd state of affairs that the verb "loves"
| occurs in that proposition and seems to occur as relating Desdemona to Cassio whereas
| in fact it does not do so, but yet it does occur as a verb, it does occur in the sort
| of way that a verb should do.
HP: Russell is trying to logically decompose the sentence structure, but he has
an "odd state of affairs" just because you cannot decompose the meaning of
a sentence into its structural parts of speech. The brain's network dynamics
must be harnessed by the whole sentence (it must "fold" the linear sequence
of words into a stable meaning).
HP: Well, there is a lot more evidence favoring this metaphor, but that's enough for now.
I hope it shows why some of us find the distinctions such as structure and function,
syntax and semantics, linear sequences and non-linear nets, symbols and dynamics of
great biosemiotic interest in spite of many remaining inadequacies.
BR's problem is not that he does not know enough biology.
His problem is that he does not use or know enough logic.
Jon Awbrey
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