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From: smoliar@isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Just Minds and Machines this time
Message-ID: <16589@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 31 Jan 91 21:39:12 GMT
Reply-To: smoliar@venera.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar)
Organization: Information Sciences Institute, Univ. of So. California
Lines: 34
Summary:

In article <1991Jan31.040637.15353@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley) writes:
>
>As far as varying the context goes, there are examples of I know of
>in which entire sub-structures of a NN are mutually exclusive but
>deal with the same input 'item'.  My original mention of two
>differently structured nets independantly competing for the same
>'output' seems similar.  On the other hand, I have no idea how a
>net might be allowed to vary its context freely (or creatively!)
>I would be curious to know how the linkage structure you proposed
>might account for this.
>
So would I!  I seem to have started with a casual metaphor, and now I have to
account for it!  Bearing in mind that I still do not know how seriously I want
to take this metaphor (primarily because I am not sure I want to buy into
viewing knowledge states in terms of points in a space of some unknown
dimension and a topology which is probably not Euclidean), I would say
the way to approach context is in terms of the current configuration of
the linkage system.  As I said before, I tend to view interpretation in
terms of both how the linkages will move to meet a given point and where
that meeting takes place.  How the linkages will be disposed to move (and
I use that word intentionally acknowledging the influence of Minsky's original
K-lines paper) will depend not only on where the point is but also on how the
linkages are currently configured.  That configuration should, in at least a
remote sense, be a representation of previous (mental) activity, which is to
say a context established by what the linkages were last doing.  Varying
context may then be a matter of shaking the linkages around before trying
to approach the point (which is beginning to sound a bit like raising the
temperature before cooling down to anneal).
-- 
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