Xref: utzoo talk.philosophy.misc:1803 comp.ai:3037 sci.bio:1717 sci.psychology:1311 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!ucsd!cogsci!meadors From: meadors@cogsci.ucsd.EDU (Tony Meadors) Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai,sci.bio,sci.psychology Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence (long) Message-ID: <686@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> Date: 10 Jan 89 02:05:20 GMT References: <558@soleil.UUCP> Reply-To: meadors@cogsci.UUCP (Tony Meadors) Organization: U.C. San Diego, Institute for Cognitive Science Lines: 194 In article <558@soleil.UUCP> peru@soleil.UUCP (Dave Peru) writes: >Please consider the following thoughts of three people concerning the physics >of the mind. > COMPUTER SCIENTIST: >In the book "The Society of Mind" Marvin Minsky writes (p.50): >"When people have no answers to important questions, they often give some > anyway. > What controls the brain? The Mind. > What controls the mind? The Self. > What controls the Self? Itself. > .... > It cannot help for you to think that > inside yourself lies someone else who does your work. This notion of > "hommunculus"--a little person inside each self--leads only to a paradox An infinite regress. One of the challenges of psychological explanation is to explain our overall intelligent behavior and cognitive abilities with a model whose parts are not themselves possessors of those abilities...this is how homunculi can creep into real world models. What Minsky is doing in the quoted passages is simply noting how commonsense notions such as self and mind entail the idea of a "detatched controller" and this quickly leads down the homunculi trail. > MATHEMATICIAN/PHYSICIST/ASTRONOMY: >In the book "Bridges To Infinity" Michael Guillen (Ph.D in physics, mathema- >matics, and astronomy from Cornell University) writes (p.98): > ........ > From there he goes on, however, to create an infinity of in-between numbers, > such as the number whose left set contains zero, {0}, and whose right set > contains one through infinity {1, 2, 3, ...}. > This defines a number somewhere > numbers, is embellished by an interminable number of in-between volumes. > And it doesn't stop there. > > Pursuing the logic of his method, Conway is able to create between in-between > numbers, then numbers between *these*, and so on, literally ad infinitum. > The result is limitless hierarchies of in-between numbers, never before > named in mathematics. I'm no mathematician, but if I take the numbers 2 & 3 and stick a bunch of new items between them (no matter how cleverly) I certainly won't have created "numbers never before named in mathematics." Numbers seem rather fixed to me, those that might be found on a simple numberline; the labels I attach to various points shouldn't make any difference...Unless these new numbers are not expressable in decimal form at all. If this is the case I missed the point but my point is below anyway... > points. Conway's theory, however, asks us to imagine numbers that fall > somehow between unimaginable cracks in this blur of points, and between > the cracks left behind by those numbers, and so on and so on. With his > theory, Conway has made credible what many persons before him had merely > speculated about: there is conceptually no limit to how many times an object > can be divided. Cosmic cracks eh. Again, Im not a numbers man, but was there ever any doubt that a given two points on a line one may always be found which lies between them? > Conway's "All Numbers, Great and Small" shows off the boundless potential > of the null set, but also of the human mind. Human creative energy, like > nothing, isn't anything if it isn't potential. It is also an indomitable > part of being alive, as countless experiments have documented. People > who are deprived of their senses by being floated in silent, dark tanks > of water warmed to body temperature will hallucinate. It is as though > the human mind will not be stilled of its propensity to make something > of nothing even, or especially, when immersed in nothingness. > > Like a physicist's vacuum, the human mind can be induced to create thoughts > that come seemingly out of nowhere. Mathematicians over the years have > documented this common phenomenon. The German Carl Friedrich Gauss recalled > that he had tried unsuccessfully for years to prove a particular theorem > in arithmetic, and then, after days of not thinking about the problem, > the solution came to him "like a sudden flash of lightning." The French > mathematician Henri Poincare, too, reported working futilely on a problem > for months. Then one day while conversing with a friend about a totally > unrelated subject, Poincare recalled that "... the idea came to me without > anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it." > > In this sense, the human mind is the real null set in Frege's and Conway's > number theories; the mathematical null set is but a subordinate entity > created after the mind's self-image." I must say it's really getting deep at this point. I realize that the "wondrous parallels between profound mathematical principles with the human mind" is the idea here. But I see no more that a paper thin relatedness between the specifics under discussion. This reminds me of other cases where "deep fundamental" mathematic principles are put forward as "the essence" of thinking or mind (recursion a common one). Let's go over this again: > Conway's "All Numbers, Great and Small" shows off the boundless potential > of the null set, but also of the human mind. Human creative energy, like > nothing, isn't anything if it isn't potential. So roughly the claim is "the mind is like, the null set." (a california surfer dude accent would go nicely here). I find this a very strange claim but let's consider the two examples... First, > People > who are deprived of their senses by being floated in silent, dark tanks > of water warmed to body temperature will hallucinate. It is as though > the human mind will not be stilled of its propensity to make something > of nothing even, or especially, when immersed in nothingness. Yes people do eventually have all sorts of wild experiences. How does this relate to the mind being like a null set or the mathematical discussion at all? Does the null set notion PREDICT that those in such cahmbers will hallucinate? THERE IS ONLY A VERY CRUDE SEMANTIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE NULL SET AND SENSORY DEPRIVATION. "Oh, like both have to do with complete nothingness man..." Second, > Like a physicist's vacuum, the human mind can be induced to create thoughts > that come seemingly out of nowhere. Mathematicians over the years have > documented this common phenomenon. The German Carl Friedrich Gauss recalled >..... Yes, yes, such cases are well known. But now the relationship between the null set and the "example" is almost hard to find at all. First, there is no reason to suppose any sort of emptiness involved. Research on this "incubation" period of problem solving indicates that active though unconscious processing is involved in producting "the answer." And the individual, through his long and arduous pursuit of a solution to fulfill some set of constraints, has set up a situation where when the "answer" is unconsciously conceived of, it is "recognized" and brought to consciousness. Anyway THERE IS NOTHING MORE THAN A CRUDE SEMANTIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE NULL SET AND THE INCUBATION PHENOMENON IN PROBLEM SOLVING. > In this sense, the human mind is the real null set in Frege's and Conway's > number theories; the mathematical null set is but a subordinate entity > created after the mind's self-image." 1 THE HUMAN MIND IS NO MORE "THE REAL NULL SET IN...NUMBER THEORIES" THAN IT IS A BASEBALL BAT OR A TORNADO. 2 The notion that the null set arose as a mathematical concept due to man's perception of some nothingness within his psyche is absurd. > PHYSICIST: >In the book "The Turning Point" Fritjof Capra (Ph.D in high-energy physics >from University of Vienna) writes (p.101): > >"While the new physics was developing in the twentieth century, the > mechanistic Cartesian world view and the principles of Newtonian physics > maintained their strong influence on Western scientific thinking, and even > today many scientists still hold to the mechanistic paradigm, although > physicists themselves have gone beyond it. > ... > In biology the Cartesian view of living organisms as machines, constructed > from separate parts, still provides the dominant conceptual framework. > Although Descartes' simple mechanistic biology could not be carried very > far and had to be modified considerably during the subsequent three hundred > years, the belief that all aspects of living organisms can be understood > by reducing them to their smallest constituents, and by studying the > mechanisms through which these interact, lies at the very basis of most > contemporary biological thinking. So is this a tirade against a mechanistic approach, or the reductionist enterprise? They are not the same of course. >.... > Transcending the Cartesian model will amount to a major revolution in medical > science, and since current medical research is closely linked to research > in biology--both conceptually and in its organization--such a revolution > is bound to have a strong impact on the further development of biology." Yeah this sounds like Capra. I don't know what it would mean to "transcend the cartesian model", and no explanation of what that would be like is offered in this passage. If what is meant is to "look for causes and processes outside the normal realm of measurable cause and effect then I would say that its hogwash. If its just a childlike hope that taking new perspectives, sometimes a "systems" or "cybernetic" perspective may yield new insight into complex systems, then point taken. >Paradoxically, these three people's thoughts may sound unrelated. It is up >to you to decide, any comments? Yes, not only unrelated, they are unremarkable. Dave, your postings remain without peer in being provocative and interesting. But trust me, the "deep stuff" concerning minds and brains, the meta-psychology, is largely fluff. Move up the scientific foodchain a bit. You know the old saying, fact is stranger than fiction. Its never been more true than in psychology. Get down to real data and yet keep these larger questions in mind. Read about the bizzare dissociations brain damaged patients exhibit, study up on perceptual illusions, investigate the cases of extraordinary memories (people can literally tell you what shirt they wore or the change they made on a given day in 1966, and its not a trick or learned ability). Well, you get the picture...these sorts of phenomenon baffle and challenge, and if there are secrets to be found and profound changes to take place in how we understand the mind it will likely be fueled by these inexplicable sorts of data. tonyM