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From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai,sci.bio
Subject: Re: RE: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence (long)
Message-ID: <2965@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 7 Jan 89 14:19:18 GMT
References: <558@soleil.UUCP>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 29

From article <558@soleil.UUCP>, by peru@soleil.UUCP (Dave Peru):
" ...
" Paradoxically, these three people's thoughts may sound unrelated.  It is up
" to you to decide, any comments?

Yes.  Guillen (not Conway) doesn't make sense, and Minsky's and
Capra's views seem to be in contradiction -- Minsky urging analysis
into parts and Capra denigrating it.  In the quoted passage from
Capra, I believe one can detect some confusion among:

(1) analysis into component parts
(2) analysis into independently acting component parts (= Cartesianism?)
(3) analysis in terms of more fundamental entities (= reductionism)

It's hard for me to see that there can be any real objection to (1).

I have been interested in analogues to the assumption of orthogonal
axes, (2), for a long time, but have been unable to find any general
discussions of the matter.  Maybe someone can provide a reference?
Here's a little example of this sort of reasoning from my own field.  In
1783, in Elements of Phonetics, Geoffrey Holder pointed out that
(voiceless) p, t, k are similar (voiced) to b, d, g, except for the
action of the vocal cords, and that the latter are similar to (nasal)
m, n, ng, except for the passage of air through the nose.  He argued,
on this basis, that there must exist in some language voiceless
nasals -- this fills the gap in the paradigm.  (It's very much like
the prediction of new elements to fill holes in the periodic table.)

		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu