Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!xanth!mcnc!rti!ntpdvp1!sandyz From: sandyz@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Sandy Zinn) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Plaiting a Plexus of Processes (Was: Re: Inferring meaning from use ...) Summary: going for iso-squiggles Keywords: processes, interaction, meaning, symbols Message-ID: <372@ntpdvp1.UUCP> Date: 10 Apr 90 23:30:19 GMT References: <2080@skye.ed.ac.uk> <352@ntpdvp1.UUCP> <38xh02jQ98ON01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> Organization: Northern Telecom DMS-10 Div., Raleigh, NC Lines: 93 > (Sandy Zinn) writes: > > > >... the motivations behind behaviors such as imitation, > >tearing wings off flies, hitting your baby brother, and eventually posting > >articles, are actually meta-processes emerging from the plexus of physio- > >logical exigency X organizing processes X environmental patterns. > (Ken Presting) writes: > (Whose baby brother? *I* was a sweet child, a model of gentle decorum...) Ahh, the most dangerous kind!! > Implementationism is cheap (I can get it for you wholesale) but it only > works between abstractions. The three plaits of the plexus are all > within the organism/environment biological abstraction, so Imp'ism is > irrelevant for this. Whoa! I obviously still do not understand Imp'ism. If you don't use it here, where do you use it? (An Imp. w/o a home == Obvious Troublemaker!) What kind of abstractions is it good for? I have a very broad and deep definition of abstraction: representation of pattern/info in a different symbolic system. I don't consider that all abstractions are fully homo- morphic; they can be transforms, or partial mappings. Lots of biological examples of those. If you want to reserve "abstraction" only for full homomorphs, for formalized systems, then let's Capitalize it to indicate this more pristine use. > within the organism/environment biological abstraction, so Imp'ism is ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: I want to stress that the organism/environment is an Abstraction when we *think* it, but it *operates* as a reality. It's ecodisaster, blood and death not to realize that. And I don't think we do, not deeply. > To use a formal metaphor, we need an algebra for > squirms. If squirms turn out to be at all like vectors, which I think > is likely, then we have plenty of lovely linear and nasty non-linear > algebra to haggle with. (By "squirms" I mean trajectories of a physical > system through phase space) OK here. > I have a big problem with the idea of "meta-" processes. If this is > just metaphor, then it's OK by me, but if it's a use of logic in a model > of the mind there might be trouble. I worry a *lot* about homunculi - > we want to explain how it is that people think, and if we put logical > concepts into the explanation, it'll be hard to avoid begging the > question. Hierarchies as such are no problem. Okay, I'll go with "meta" == hierarchy -- I *currently* see no need to do otherwise. I've never intended *homunculi*. I talk primarily in metaphor, so you can help us out here by cleaning up terms. > Would "determined by" work as a substitute for "emerging from" in the > statement above? Please? How about "made of?" "Implemented in?" No, *not* "determined by". Too many bad implications for me. How about "abstracted from", or "which are transforms of"? For the sake of your *gentle decorum*, I'll give up "emergent", except when I'm in that gadfly mood... > Here's an improved version: > > > Comfortable squirms, that always fit some part of every other > squirm. That's on the subjective, private side. On the objective, > public side, you can make your pencil squirm out pretty squiggles > that other people can see, and if they really want to, they can make > their squamae squirm as comfortably as yours do. Ah, that's better. Comfort, eh? I like it. I really like it. > I've tried to emphasize the physical interaction of the squirms, and > eliminate the suggestion that squirms "observe" each other. I also > want to emphasize the issue of motivation in all communication. I > think it is very important to recognize that understanding someone else > can be affected by factors that are called "emotional", at least in > everyday speech. > > I believe that communication does not occur in the absence of an > emotional interaction (real or imagined). This is a problematic > assertion, I realize. Maybe for some. The biggest problem I have here is that you have tried to distinguish *real* from *imagined* emotional interaction. There is no make-believe emotion. It's a transform of real inter- actions. Now, whether those interactions are comfortably isomorphic is another story.... @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sandra Zinn | "The squirming facts (yep these are my ideas | exceed the squamous mind" they only own my kybd) | -- Wallace Stevens