ONT Re: Architectronics Of Inquiry :> Discussion
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
Topic :> Architectronics Of Inquiry :> Discussion 2
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
JA = Jon Awbrey
JP = Jack Park
Jack,
In lieu of a proper beginning, let me just toss out a few items
that I find clumped together in my head, though you may find it
best, at first, to take them as a random sampler of curiosities.
In one of Stephen Grossberg's competition models -- if memory serves, and
that's always a gambol, I think he called it the "winner take all" scenario --
there is a set-up where you have a neural pool of k formal neurons, each of
which inhibits all of the others. Which reminds me a lot of some discussion
lists that I've been on lately, present company excepted, at any rate, so far.
All of these models are very quantitative and everything,
and there is a particular type of differential equation
that is associated with this set-up, which I will go
look up later. But my main interest has always been
with the bridge of analogy between the quantitative
picture and the qualitative picture, in epitome,
between the world built on the real numbers R
and the world built on the boolean values
B = {0, 1} = {false, true}.
But here's the curious part of the story: There really is
a logical or qualitative analogue of differential calculus,
just sitting there waiting to be discovered -- like some
Hollywood *let, I guess -- and right there where it ought
to be, on the next flight or storey up from your everyday
hometown propositional calculus next door. True story.
To be continued, of course ...
Jon Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
Previously ...
[Will hang onto this for a while and work my way through it.]
JP: There are folks creating a "language" for the description of topic maps.
I think they are on a track that could represent a contribution to
architectures of inquiry and have been dogging it, them, and
implementations of prototypes for quite a while now.
Their latest effort is found at:
http://www.isotopicmaps.org/tmrm/TMRM-3.10/TMRM-3.10.html
JP: One of the designers, Patrick Durusau, is now suggesting that Z:
http://spivey.oriel.ox.ac.uk/~mike/zrm/zrm.pdf
would be a good description language in which to do that work.
JA: generally speaking, there are getting to be so many new languages
every week that i don't think there's much hope keeping up with
them unless we start finding better ways of teaching them to
each other, and i am not seeing that happen, even on the
far horizon. you find me in the middle of my return to
english, which has been a struggle for a dozen years
now, after a decade of thinking in pascal, that is
not spoke all that much anymore. as a practical
matter, it does not look like i will get either
the time or energy to learn another artifact
of that sort. i will probably stick to the
basics of logic and math language, though
of a peircean bent, from here on out.
of course, there are few innovations
of syntax that would facilitate
matters greatly, but we can't
let the course of inquiry be
impeded by the lack of
a perfect language.
JP: I hear you.
JP: Nevertheless, I am profoundly locked in a dance with destiny
which is guided by an underlying thesis that there must be
a way to program my computer such that it will augment my
own intellect. To do that, I am stuck examining all the
artifacts I can find, looking, always, for the "perfect"
match to the task I have posed. Along the way, I have
discovered inference engines which reason both forwards
and backwards, Eurisko-like evolutionary programming
methodologies, qualitative reasoning, dialog mapping,
and IBIS structures, neural net (analog and digital)
representations, semantic net representations,
category theory, Rosen, Raschevsky, etc.,
Peirce.
JP: Somewhere in there lies the seeds of an architectural
implementation, one most likely guided by the diagrams
you are now drawing, but somewhere in there, motivated
by desires sparked more by Rosen than by anyone else;
I fully subscribe to Raschevsky's notion that we have
yet to invent a representation scheme which allows us
to discover and understand that which constitutes
life i[t]self. Along the way, I have discovered
quantum entanglement, and I have posited that *it*
is the *thing* we disentangle when we tease open
living cells, whereupon they die and from which
we are completely unable to reconstruct them.
JP: I am to understand that there is a group of people, perhaps
driven by Chris Langton (not sure on that) who think they are
on the verge of actually constructing a living cell from scratch.
If they succeed, then, so much for my quantum entanglement thesis.
I'm personally betting that they will not succeed, simply on the
strength of words by Raschevsky and Rosen.
JP: At the same time, I am most interested in teasing structures
of understanding, grist for your architecture, out of the
spoken and written word. My friend Patrick Durusau sent
this URL along this morning:
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/ivs/journal/v2/n1/full/9500037a.html
JP: Food for thought in there.
JP: Sure, we can analyze hell out of every word down to Peirce's triads.
Sure we can construct commutative graphs ala Rosen. But, in the end,
where do you go with those? One of the grand problems I had with all
the discussions going on in the Mikulecky letters:
http://www.vcu.edu/complex/
was that nobody was able to take Rosen's 10C-6 and "fill in the blanks."
(10C-6 is the commutative diagram that is Rosen's "canonical organism",
a metabolism-repair diagram which, when drawn, elicits reproduction for
free, found in his book 'Life Itself'). Nobody seems to know what to do
with a basic MR diagram. Does anybody know what to do with Peirce's triads?
JP: I think we are a loooooong way from wherever it is we want to be.
JA: But you have gone and reminded me of some more stuff that
I was thinking a lot about in the early 80's and then again
in the early 90's, so maybe it's one of those sunspot things.
JA: I was thinking of Grossberg's competition/cooperation models.
It's a very cold memory, so I will leave it at that for now,
and hope that I remember more tomorrow.
JA: I will say that I have always been wildly ambivalent about
so-called "connectionist" models, partly because the term
itself is so ambiguous. On the one hand I like the idea
that "it's in the connections". On the other hand, the
full strength of that idea is hardly ever explored in
the models that one commonly sees, which are limited
mostly to linear transforms, algebraically speaking,
and 2-adic junctures, graph-theoretically speaking,
and you know that just won't cut it, or splice it,
from a Peircean point of view.
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/history.html
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o