Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!emory!mephisto!mcnc!rti!ntpdvp1!sandyz
From: sandyz@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Sandy Zinn)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Chess, Reductionism, Probablistic Determinism.
Summary: model for thought
Keywords: rules, causes, consciousness
Message-ID: <369@ntpdvp1.UUCP>
Date: 5 Apr 90 23:55:29 GMT
Organization: Northern Telecom DMS-10 Div., Raleigh, NC
Lines: 61

> Let me emphasize again that my view is opposed to the computationalist.
> Logic and computation, for me, are *methods*, not *models*.  (I think
> I have demonstrated that logic is not the only method (:-) but logic does
> have the advantage of sharpening objections).  Fantasy and ritual are
> the appropriate models for thought - that is my view.  With a position
> like this, I hope it is obvious why I concentrate on formal methods!
> 
> Ken Presting  ("Descartes never woke up")

This is my third hit on this posting.  (besides, our news feed is down.)

Ken, this fantasy-as-model idea just keeps getting more interesting to me,
as a springboard for further exploration of the divergences & convergences
in this discussion, if nothing else.  I agree with Stephen that it's a 
method as well; to my old "identity of incomparable categories", I'd add:

>   rules = representation = processes = perception = methods = models

The Dotland Identity. [ which has something to say but leaves a lot unsaid ]

Instead of fantasy-as-model, let me leap from dream-as-model.  I'm going to
use Bateson's discussion of the Freudian notion of primary process.  Dreams,
in the classical Freudian sense, translated material into metaphors to avoid
the Superego watchdog.  Bateson argues, and I agree with him, that dream
metaphors are not *result* but *source*.  Insofar as Mind is representa-
tion, it is a metaphor for whatever is being represented.  The Primary
Process is metaphorical, and involves the representation of *relationships*.
Bateson says:

  ...the subject matter of primary-process discourse is different from
  the subject matter of language and consciousness.  Consciousness talks
  about things or persons, and attaches predicates to the specific things
  which have been mentioned.  In primary process the things or persons
  are usually not identified, and the focus of the discourse is upon the
  *relationships* which are asserted to obtain betweeen them.

I suggest that this primary process is Dotland, is Implementationism.

  A metaphor retains unchanged the relationship which it "illustrates"
  while substituting other things or persons for the relata.

Gee, this sounds like a Normative Property! (or do I seriously mistake you?)

  Primary process is characterized (e.g., by Fenichel) as lacking
  negatives, lacking tense, lacking in any identification of
  linguistic mood (i.e., no identification of indicative, sub-
  junctive, optative, etc.) and metaphoric.

Dreams.  Fantasy.  Ritual.  The relationships just ARE, period.  These
relationships are primarily iconic, or analogic:  it is a *pattern*
which is represented, a style of relationship, if you will.  The 
digitalization of information comes only at the level of language.
Logic, a set of digital relationships, is imposed on dreams.

The question becomes, can Edelman's neural-processor code for this kind
of primary process?  My guess is yes.

@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
    Sandra Zinn              |   "The squirming facts
    (yep these are my ideas  |      exceed the squamous mind"
     they only own my kybd)  |         -- Wallace Stevens