The Theory of Mind and Cognition

Sources of Driving Functions

2008-05-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

Can they depend on time or timing or time dependant phenomenon? For example: How long it takes for recognition to occur? Can they be aspects of the memory trace or the lack of counter evidence in other memory traces? I am very certain about my name, I am currently certain now about the time of day, the year, perhaps many other things. What is the nature of this psychological. which is to say, physiological, certainty? What is the driving function if I assert, or acknowledge, certainty here?

Notice that I cam assert the certainty or merely acknowledge it. Is this the same process, the same driving functions with just potentially variable output states? Is the driving function mnemonic or something else? Am I certain about my name because no one has ever suggested that it is something else? Is their a “doubt” state or process and is my confidence in a proposition a result a low level of activity somewhere or a greatly reduced state of doubt?

I wonder sometimes about the possibility of a post economic society, one in which money is no longer relevant. This doesn’t seem quite possible to me, not everyone can have a house in Malibu or an original Picasso, so it seems we would have to retain some measure of value or a means of exchange. On the other hand, how can we know what the world will be like 1000 years hence, or 10,000 years from now? Doubts both ways? What is the nature of these doubts? There seems to be a feeling associated with them. What is it, anxiety, a fear of being wrong?

Meaning: The Strawman

2008-05-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

Do we suppose that when we learn a language we learn the meanings of words? Meanings are sometimes given explicitly as when we define words for children, e.g., answer the question “What does X mean”?. But most of the words we learn are not learned through explicit definition. Does a word have to have a meaning (or a referent) to be comprehended or used successfully? Are meanings what makes language work? Many analysts of linguistic behavior seem to suggest that this is the case. Let us call this the simplified strawman theory of meaning. (SSTM)

Is it supposed that words without specific referents must have meanings and that these meanings are somehow formulated and internalized when we learn a language and serve as determinants of semantic aspects of linguistic behavior. Somehow, evidently, we are suppose to abstract the meanings of non-referential words and utilize these meaning things in our subsequent linguistic behavior. But maybe e just rely on multiple exposures to a word, numerous instantiations of correct usage and base subsequent performance on this.

What is Philosophy?

2008-04-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

As noted before, on the surface we are doing psychology, not philosophy, because we seem to be concerned with cause not reasons or justification. This is wrong because we are concerned ultimately with the consequences, the meaning, the significance of what we now know to be the cognitive psychology of human agents. We are concerned with the implications of this psychology, not of the specific content. If you ignore human psychology, human capacities and limitations then you are doing something other than human philosophy. There may be a more generic philosophy of agents, but we can’t do it yet.

Human philosophy is exhausted by the possibilities of human cognitive psychology. If there is no ghost in the machine then we are left with only the mechanics of the machine and that is the end of it. Once you reject the ghost you must acknowledge the limits. This has not yet been done, it is what we are trying to do. We cannot escape with the normative escalation because this is still subject to the theory of limits. The desirable must include or is limited by the possible. Similarly the theory of philosophy as meaning, as referents of universal terms, of conceptual analysis, all must be based on what are cognitive capabilities really are.

The dogmas of meaning are probably especially important to consider here. The idea that meaning is essential to language, that meaning is what is important, what is to be analyzed or discovered ignore the fact that meaning is a theoretical term that has no known experimental referent in cognitive psychology. Meaning is what we say its all about, what it is really, however, is process. Meaning has become the cover term, the mask, the mystery for and about our cognitive functions, the modern philosophical equivalent of coloricfluid or the physicist’s ether.

What is the case, what ought to be the case. The universe of possible discourse outside the area of purely formal systems like logic or mathematics is pretty well exhausted by these two possibilities.

Advancing the Theory of Driving Functions

2008-04-01T15:50:00.001-07:00

How is it possible to answer a question like “Do you hear anything?’ We can imagine a test in which a screen flashes this question to a subject wearing headphones who is suppose to press a button, yes or no. This audiologist test does not require that the sound be identified, only that the subject knows that there is a detectible sound. His responses then are not being determined by a recognition network but by some network capable of determining the level of activity in the auditory cortex, let us assume. We can imagine other minimal level of stimulus tests for the other sensory modalities as well. How is a driving function generated in situations like this?

Consider also responses determined by quantitative variations in the stimulus. How do we know, which is to say : How can we say…that the amplitude of a stimulus has changed even if the stimulus has no name, does not trigger a particular recognition network? Perhaps this reflects some pattern of activity in the sensory organs, something is switched on or off as the quantity of stimulus changes. But we can probably judge variations. Values along a continuum as well, so on/off theories are problematic. We imagine we can do this for stimuli which are not dangerous or painful so that protection mechanisms are not triggered.

There is no reason to think a priori that only specific stimuli or memories can serve as driving functions. We note here that driving functions are convenient abstractions or simplifications, macroscopic summations on microscopic events, somewhat analogous to Newtonian forces. Consider a pressure or impact force in Newtonian mechanics, they are summations of the large numbers of electro-magnetic influences.at the point(s) of contact. Newtonian forces are somewhat of a fiction. Driving functions are more real.

Epistemic Processes

2008-04-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

In what sense, to what degree can our cognitive processes be said to differ from the fundamental information processing operations in the brain. Finally, after all, this is what is driving the response networks, these operations are the source of the driving functions. Is cognition nothing more than reduction and summation? Is this confusing the media with the message, the process with the product? Are these anything more than modes of transmission, principles of conduction?

Finally, we need a theory of cognitive affect. The affect for the subject effect, i.e., cognitive behavior. These would have to be sensory states, states of the sensory processing systems and other states of the CNS not currently known. Certainly our emotional states are elements here. We also need a theory of a” truth value” state. What is it that determines whether or not I regard a proposition as true? Is this anything more than an emotional tag associated with the content of the proposition? Positive for true, negative for false? How do they acquire these tags? I believe 2 + 2 = 4 but I’m not emotionally involved with the issue. But I’m upset if someone denies it, generally- maybe this is the clue.

Terms like “knowing”, “ understanding”,” believing” also have driving functions which are difficult to discern but which must finally come down to some system operation, perhaps not currently identifiable. Here’s what’s going on: We have at some output stage, say the premotor cortex, a network, an engram which if activated, driven by the appropriate sort of neurological activity will generate a particular element of behavior. I deny, agree, say “I don’t know”, whatever. The question is: What can I use to drive this response network, and what difference does it make?

The Theory of Judgment

2008-03-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

Predication, truth values, all judgments or reflections of knowledge or opinion are determined internally unless we are responding to an immediate sensory experience in which case the information in our response is determined by the sensory information. What’s happening in these other cases? In these other cases, justification for our judgments can have many forms and involve many reasons, ideas, thoughts, recollections etc., but they all have one thing in common, they are determined by our internal neurological states. Sometimes these states are determined by prior immediate sense experience, sometimes not. In all cases we can seek to determine the information contained in the behavior and determine its ultimate source. Frequently these will be auditory recollections, their remnants or related neurological phenomenon. Much of what we say is determined only by what we have heard before, novelty is difficult and rare.

We tend to think our judgments are determined by some other process, something deep and “cognitive”, something more than acquiescent recollection. But what evidence do we have for this? If I acknowledge that “Democracy is the best form of government..” is this because at the time of the acknowledgement I have reviewed all other forms and calculated their relative desirability. But is their really time for this?. Perhaps I have thought about this before and come to this decision and my current judgment is a reflection of these past efforts. More likely this is a reflection of an unconsidered but internalized prejudice. Is the linguistic history of an individual typically the result of informed, reasoned opinion at the time of performance or something else? What can this something else be?

Intelligence as Reactive Behavior

2008-03-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

So, the difference between programmed and unprogrammed action is in reactivity. It is not behavioral change simpliciter, because programming can change behavior, over time intervals for example. It is behavioral change caused by changes in the external situation, (external to the behavior generating component) but not just by any aspect of the external change. Plants can change their growing patterns because of changes in the environment, if we fertilize them for example. .I can be walking along and fall into a hole, these are not intelligent reactions to the external world, they are mechanical or biochemical reactions. Reactive, information based, behavior is required for intelligence. But is this enough? Clearly not, my computer meets this standard, and it does not seem at all intelligent..

Is motive, intention, desire required for intelligent behavior? We think these half the causal nexus for human action, some of the non-specific excitation required for behavior. What do or would non- biological system, putative agents, require? Syntactic behavior at least requires a plan, a model or some other overall control or directive to determine the course of the behavior. It would seem generally to require some representation or formulation of an end state, though whether or not his is a goal is another question. If the behavior has no end state marker or criteria then it goes on forever until the system fails or runs out of energy. It could have a mechanical stop, the arm pushes out until it reaches a wall for example. But purely mechanical limits on behavior would tend to put it out of the cognitive realm.

So the first component of the external analysis of the concept of intelligence or since it is an external judgment , of intelligent behavior, is the bifurcation between the internal and the external, where the external is not necessarily the external world but rather the world external to the supposed cognitive unit of the system under consideration. The behavior must be reactive and reactive in an information sensitive manner. Secondly the behavior must be end state determinate, even if that end state is a continuous ongoing process or condition. What else is required? Variability, if you can only do one thing you aren’t or al least need not be very smart.

Intelligent Behavior

2008-03-18T10:10:00.000-07:00

(Wikipedia) Definitions:

Intelligence comes from the Latin verb "intellegere", which means "to understand". By this rationale, intelligence (as understanding) is arguably different from being "smart" (able to adapt to one's environment), or being "clever" (able to creatively adapt).

At least two major "consensus" definitions of intelligence have been proposed. First, from Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, a report of a task force convened by the American Psychological Association in 1995:

Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person’s intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen somewhat different definitions.^[1]

A second definition of intelligence comes from "Mainstream Science on Intelligence", which was signed by 52 intelligence researchers in 1994:

A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on", "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.^[2]

Can we define intelligent behavior, give an analysis, norms, criteria? This is important if we want to get epistemology beyond the definition or conceptual analysis stage. Maybe epistemology – “The Theory of Knowledge”- is really, or should be regarded as a non- anthropomorphic theory of intelligent behavior, or more generally as theory of “intelligence” per se. But all these terms are prejudiced epistemologically , what do we do to get around this?

The Turing test is a test, an interactive communicative test.(It was for computers after all.) Can we not define intelligence without interactive communications? Can we have a purely observational test for intelligence, involving no interaction? Deciding on the basis of actions is hard. Suppose we have a really good robot that makes car parts and assembles cars, does this make it intelligent? Suppose it starts with raw materials, iron ore, silica, raw rubber and produces a Ferrari, does this make it smart or just well programmed and capable? Could it not pass all the Wikipedia tests above and still not be intelligent. It could be adaptive, it could learn, modify its behavior, even be said to grasp abstract ideas.. These are performance criteria which could in principle be met by machines not much more advanced than those that exist today .Didn’t Big Blue, the chess playing program grasp, in effect, the abstractions in chess?

A system can evidence something we might, primitively, want to call intelligence, via its external behavior ,i.e., behavior we can observe without reference to the internal states of the system. Why would we call this intelligent behavior?. Probably because we observe that it is reactive, the systems performance depends on the external situation. (We actually generally do this on inference maybe, if it acts like us its smart.) If we don’t know its reactive we have a problem. Imagine an mechanical arm coming through a wall making marks on paper, a simpler Turing test.. Whether or not we think it intelligent depends what we make of the marks on the paper whether we think they are wrote learning or creative, assuming we can make any sense out of them at all.. It is impossible to determine externally whether the system is intelligent or not unless it is reactive. And this reactivity must be information based.

Phenomenal Properties (IMPD): Revised Summary -3/9/08

2008-03-10T10:18:00.000-07:00

Explaining a difference requires a difference, but how much difference is enough, and when do you know if you have the right kind of difference?

The most fundamental fact about sensory experiences, aside from the fact that we have them, is that they are all qualitatively different. Hearing the violin is nothing at all like seeing it which is nothing at all like touching it or smelling the varnish on it. Sensory modalities are fundamentally different experientially, yet this is hard to explain on the neurological level. Let us call these differences: Inter- Modal Phenomenal Differences, or IMPD. It is easy to explain IMPD if you don’t know much- e.g., seeing is different from hearing because eyes are different from ears; easy and obvious.

This “explanation” becomes a little less obvious if we learn some physiology however and even more difficult to hold if we adopt a theory of the brain as an information system.. (Scientific developments produce new philosophical problems? Not unheard of- quantum mechanics.) Neurological activity is all basically ionic flow through semi- permeable membranes. The patterns may change, but so what? Is this suppose to account for IMPD? Why, if IMPD is basically a cortical phenomenon, is a pattern of activity in the auditory cortex so different at the experiential level from a pattern of activity in the visual cortex? The sensory organs are different off course, but we are not aware of the states of our sensory organs without higher level neurological activity. Further, from brain stimulation experiments, it looks like we can have sensory experience without sensory organ simulation. (Is there retrograde activity out this far –to the sense organs- with direct electrical simulation of the brain?) So there is a suggestion here that experience is a cortical phenomenon.

“ Cortical only” theories are a problem since they fail the “difference tests”. “Transducer/sense organ only” theories fail also perhaps because, at least, I can’t know what’s going on without cortical operations. But it is not at all obvious that this counts. Having a sensation and being aware of it or being able to respond to it are two different things. But other problems with transducer theory abound. First of all, moving the experiential level out to the sensors does no good. Its still the same sort of neuro- biochemistry out there; this too fails the difference test. Combining the two, holding that sensation involves both transducer and cortical neurological activity doesn’t help if their both basically the same thing.

Am I directly aware of the state of my sensory organs? This would seem hard to maintain-who is this “I”?. Our operating hypothesis is this: I am the sensation in that having the sensation is a state that I’m in, I am the sensing thing and the sensation. The total state of the organism is that of having or being aware of the sensation. If –sense organ and central neurological activity apart, each separately, or together are not enough for experience, which seems likely. So the sensation is a totals state of the system which involves the transducers which are different from one another, e.g. organ of corti, cones in retina, and the required difference now lies at the sense organ or transduction level.. (This is a great philosophical position since it is confusing, and explains nothing and with luck is irrefutable!)

. Including the interface level would seem to be required. Right now I’d say that the interface is were its happening, where the sensation is, or what it is but I find this close to incomprehensible. One problem is that sensation involves more than commutable aspects, more than information type operations and I seem to be aware of non-informational aspects of the process in sensing. At the sense organs, at the interface with the external world information is converted and phenomenological aspects of sensation are eliminated. (An important question here is : Is the cortex , or the nervous system in total, an information (only) system or not.)

((Note that we think that are visual world perceptions or experiences mirror or reflect in some sense optical reality or that they reflect actual aspects of it, e.g., spatial relations, colors, depth of field. Are their analogous views for the other modality? ))

Can brain stimulated people know that their current experience is different from that which occurs due to external stimulation? They can figure it out by consideration of their total situation –“I’m in an operating room now, not out in the woods listening to a bubbling brook”, but can they sense the difference?.

This is the best argument yet for the ghost in the machine, but the ghost has to have a really great home entertainment system for presenting the external world show. Introducing the ghost here really only ends the explanation; metaphysics as the terminator of enquiry rather than as an initiator- a god of the gaps introduced at some electro-physiological level.

The problem again is that it is not clear what sort of account of the variations in neurological activity, and especially in neural network activity could be seen as sufficient explanation for IMPD. IMPDs are as different as different gets, comparisons are impossible, yet the underlying physiology does not seem to admit to this order of qualitative difference.

Sense Data

A casual inspection of sense data theory suggests that the IMPD problem is not central, nor perhaps even considered. Does any one ask why sense datum have the secondary properties they do?

Dualism will not survive on quantum-mechanical tricks (Popper –Eccles), little miracles going on inside our heads against an informative theory of network function. Network operation is the key problem, especially the problem of syntactic (timed, structured, sequenced, controlled) behavior. The problem with the single photon response example is that in order to get this sensitivity, a whole lot of other things have to be going on, everything else has to be shut down or inhibited. Banging on a single receptor on a single neuron won’t do it, this selectivity, concentration, focus, whatever has to be generated by a whole lot of other activity. Focus or sensitivity has to be dialed in, that’s the problem, the system is too sensitive and has to be globally inhibited, that’s why we have GABA all over the place.

( The theory ((a theory?)) of IMPD is important because this will be the last refuge of serious mentalism (dualism). But the theory –I am the sensation; not I have the sensation- must accommodate other aspects of our mental life.)

Information and Qualia

Information has no qualia, no phenomenal properties, it is pure causation. More specifically, in the case of the aptly named action potential, it is a causation vector, a potential cause of a particular origin. This is another aspect of the problem of IMPD, since the information stream in the brain has no phenomenal characteristics, it cannot explain how variations in them can arise. It can have no phenomenal characteristics as a matter of empirical fact because action potentials of different sorts, say visual and auditory can impinge on single cell and we don’t have a see/hear sensation, we see and hear at the same time, but we don’t see/hear. Seeing is because of visual tract activity, but it is not that activity, this because seeing is more than having the information associated with seeing, it is an experience.

Not only can’t information theory explain IMPD, it can’t explain why qualia very within the modality. It can’t explain why orange is different from red, much less why red is different from loud or sweet. The problem is not that we know their different, the problem is that they look or are experienced as different. The problem isn’t that we can know, say or think they’re different; the problem is the difference in the qualia. Saying, knowing, realizing, acting as though, being aware of…these are cognitive, information based, cortical. Orange and red are different wavelengths, this can be picked up by the nervous system, but the fact that they look different is not a CNS phenomenon. Knowing that they’re different is CNS, seeing them differently is not..

We are Process

2008-02-29T09:52:00.000-08:00

We are process although we tend not to realize it. This is one of the problems we have in understanding sensory experience. We tend to view ourselves as discrete entities with essentially episodic existences. This because memory and reactive (conscious?) experiences involve discrete and non-continuous incidents Understanding ourselves as ongoing processes is physiology, modern and not inherent to a natural language. Saying we are process, if metaphysics be damned- no mentalism- is trite. The question is: What are the philosophical implications of this scientific insight.

So to say we are the experience (of) as opposed to saying we have the experience (of) sounds strange. So what? It’s a philosophical insight. But does it explain anything? We have all the information, at least in terms of kind, that we are ever going to get concerning IMPD. It is hard to see how greater understanding of transducer operation , network operations, information flow or details of the biomechanical processes would be of any explanatory value. Somebody might say that some new facts explain it, but why should we believe them? We would have to adopt so new sort of criteria, but based on what? Do we have a theory of possible criteria? It seems silly to say we do, but again, epistemology is primary. It tells us what can be said by things like us. ( It’s always about the driving functions.)

Information and Qualia

2008-02-21T09:18:00.000-08:00

Information has no qualia, no phenomenal properties, it is pure causation. More specifically, in the case of the aptly named action potential, it is a causation vector, a potential cause of a particular origin. This is another aspect of the problem of IMPD, since the information stream in the brain has no phenomenal characteristics, it cannot explain how variations in them can arise. It can have no phenomenal characteristics as a matter of empirical fact because action potentials of different sorts, say visual and auditory can impinge on single cell and we don’t have a see/hear sensation, we see and hear at the same time, but we don’t see/hear. Seeing is because of visual tract activity, but it is not that activity, this also because seeing is more than having the qualia of seeing..

Not only can’t information theory explain IMPD, it can’t explain why qualia very within the modality. It can’t explain why orange is different from red, much less why red is different from loud or sweet. The problem is not that we know their different, the problem is that they appear different. The problem isn’t that we can know, say or think they’re different; the problem is the difference in the qualia. Saying, knowing, realizing, acting as though, being aware of…these are cognitive, information based, cortical. Now, noting the difference assumes there’s a difference to be noted. But this difference is not the phenomenal difference, this difference associated with the qualia it is the difference in the physical phenomenon. Orange and red are different wavelengths, this can be picked up by the nervous system, the fact that they look different is not a CNS phenomenon. Knowing that they’re different is CNS, seeing them differently is not.

“Ought” is Subordinate to “Is”

2008-02-14T11:49:00.000-08:00

Epistemology is subordinate to ontology, because “ought” is subordinate to “is” . The question of primacy in epistemology is settled easily –ought is again subordinate to is (possible) , or to what can or could be. Any word must have a driving function whose fundamental nature can be delineated. For words not immediately related to experience of the external world, the menu is limited to neurological operations, to combinations and variations of parameters related to various neurological and neurological system states. There are only so many things I can put behind words such as true, explanation, knowledge etc., the question then becomes what are these things now, and what should they be.

A given speakers epistemology then becomes a question involving an individual lexicon at a given moment.

How does language work? As it is internalized either visually or audibly we convert from the sensible to the neurological. What is the next level- syntactic? Notice that “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. “ is at some sense comprehensible just as it is simultaneously meaningless. What is the evidence that semantics follows syntax? That the processing isn’t simultaneous? Syntax and semantics maybe logical as opposed to neurological distinctions. There maybe some neuro- research on this. Fmri’s on the difference.

Grant that I comprehend a proposition and that it is meaningful, e.g. it is syntactically and semantically acceptable. Does it convey information? Can it do so outside of a wider context? “The cat is on the mat.” Is this informative unless I know what cat and what mat is being talked about? I need to know something about the referenced entities. “Lincoln was a great president.” Maybe, maybe not, perhaps I have a theory to the effect that he could have prevented the civil war, or that he put the union above the abolition of slavery and thus was morally deficient.

The Lincoln proposition is a value judgment, I understand it as such if I know English and importantly, history. I know that somebody who asserts it, if I understand that they are asserting it; they could be doing something else; is making a value judgment and is probably in their view representing a fact.

How Does the Nervous System Work?

2008-01-22T10:43:00.000-08:00

I know what the brain does, I just don’t know how it does it. Why is it not enough to know what the brain does- namely generates behavior and determines experience? Why do we have to know how it does it? I don’t have to know how my car or computer works to know what they can or will do based on my controlling inputs; this because they are not agents. I know or can determine all behaviors, capacities, performance limits, modes of operation… based on experience, and a few fundamental realizations. I don’t really have to know how they work. I know that my car can’t fly, and probably won’t float well, and I don’t have to be an expert to know this. The ”fly in the bottle” problem for philosophy is that we haven’t applied this simple observation to human beings.

The fact that people are agents reduces predictability and allows for novelty, but it doesn’t introduce transcendent possibility. You will never fly by flapping your arms, swim like the dolphins naked or jump into outer space. We simple haven’t realized that same biologically based limits apply to cognitive activities also. Nor do we understand what these limits are.

Information Based Science

2008-01-16T12:15:00.000-08:00

Can an information based science do analysis, prediction, or cosmology? How far can we get without invoking rules, principles or laws or mathematical analysis.. Consider the rollbar problem –does the rollbar fail on ground contact?. Contemporary multiphysics- FEA computes stresses on an itinerative basis using geometric constraints mechanical principles and kinematics. Can I get the same results without mathematical analysis?

Engineering issues can always ((?)–what about space craft?) be resolved by testing, indeed the point of modern simulation techniques is ultimately to eliminate testing. But I could test until I got close enough from some point of view. Can I adequately determine performance without mathematical analysis however? How much testing would I have to do to establish performance on the basis of comparative results?

An information based epistemic technology comparable to our science and engineering would have to know something about the properties of materials. This could be gotten experimentally, but how do you normalize it ? E.g., how do you get something like our nominal tensile strength numbers in pounds per square inch. You could adopt a particular sample as a norm or standard unit and work from that- scale up or down. (Note this systems information is not limited to the visually apparent- it has chemical knowledge/information extraction techniques also or it can’t do much steel metallurgy.)

What’s the information based alternative to itinerative mathematical analysis? It probably depends on the required level of accuracy or certainty. If were smart we can do a worse case scenario. Proof it doesn’t fail (e.g., exhibit plastic hinge failure ) in the most difficult case and you have a successful design. But I still want to optimize- so I work backwards, reducing weight and cost. Most engineering can be done this way. Analysis is more an economic consideration than an epistemic one in applied science. The “understanding” aspect is psychological. Why can’t my understanding be based on countless experiments and observations?

Still, analysis is quicker and more cost efficient, but this doesn’t mean epistemic exclusivity.

Aspects of the Theory of Agency

2008-01-14T09:25:00.000-08:00

So what are agents, and why do we need a theory of them? We need the theory for ethical, meta -ethical , social and political philosophy and the theory of history. We need the theory as a meta- theory for psychology. Psychology as an aspect, a derivative of the theory of agency. What must be the case –agency- how its done, what is the case for human beings- psychology. Different paradigm, if we know what agents are, what they require. Then the question becomes: How do human beings effect their agency? ( Another question: Is human nature exhausted by the concept of agency, is that all there is to it?) This apposed to the current approach which lacks a theory of what is to be done. Saying you want to explain something is not enough, the concept of an explanation is not enough to determine a would be science.

So, what a are agents? Agents are a type of system (another definition), systems which are self determining, self regulating, information sensitive, and effective, capable of changing the exterior world. Humans and multi-cellular animals are agents. Are plants? Computers, a species of potential artifact agents, are not today anyway. The fundamental science of agency is physics, chemistry and biology may or may not be relevant for artifact agents.

The theory of artifact agents is different from a theory of automaton or robots. Agents don’t have to be spatially contiguous, they might have parts all over the place connected by information technologies.

Agents have de-facto desires, they try to do things or act like they are trying to do things. And their desires have more than one object.- e.g., maintaining operational status and performing a task.

Agency and Ethics

2008-01-10T11:39:00.000-08:00

We have to distinguish between evolved and manufactured agents (those produced by evolved agents). They don’t necessarily have the same features, e.g., no reason to think a manufactured agent comes with a survival instinct. This is a fundamental distinction in ethics and political theory. While a manufactured agent, an automaton or really smart computer, might have some “rights”, these aren’t necessarily the same as those of an evolved system even if the cognitive and overall capabilities are the same.

This might seem obvious, but it really isn’t. When C3PO or R2D2 got smashed up, everyone was upset, More so perhaps with R2D2 than C3PO, the latter was kind of annoying, even while R2D2 was less anthropomorphic. While it was OK, i.e., not troubling, to destroy the Imperial Storm Troupers who were evidently human, at least while there faces weren’t visible; bashing the droids was disconcerting. (Wasn’t it?) Ethics may start in sentiment, but we really have to go beyond it.

Star Wars as a morality play is troubling and problematic. While I may be disturbed by the wanton slaughter of the Imperial forces, most of whom were probably unwilling conscripts, and view their destruction as being in fact a more serious ethical issue than killing the droids; this is a reflected view, a personnel prejudice, and something which must be defended, at least from the point of view of the droids. Why do I hold it? Why do children not hold it?

Information Systems- Causation- Meaning

2008-01-05T13:49:00.000-08:00

Design or intention do not determine what is or is not an information system, it’s a matter of function. A broken computer is a paper weight, not an information based system.

Verbal behavior, even prepositional behavior, is not information, it’s a potential source of information, it can be converted into information, may contain information but is in itself not information at the cortical level. This because not ever causal event in an information based system is an information caused event. Suppose I hear a proposition in a language I don’t understand. My auditory system will function pretty much as usual, especially if the phonemes of the language are similar to those of a language I do understand, but after auditory processing everything is different. Conventionally we would say that I didn’t know the meaning of the utterance. What we need is an information theoretic explanation of the difference.

The response envelope for the uncomprehended utterance is different. In particular, the cognitive response envelope (non emotional component ) is different. (Quine’s radical translation –how is this done? Certainly below the level of ontological commitments it has been done. Consider the problems of the first European arrivals on American shores. The natives point at a rabbit, yell “gavagi”, “gavagi”, and then shoot it with their bows and arrows, you get the idea quickly. “Gavagi” is rabbit or food or something, they throw it into a pot with other edibles with apparently different names. So “gavagi” is not target, or animal or food ….it means rabbit

Consciousness

2008-01-02T08:53:00.000-08:00

We deny that all consciousness is consciousness of something. There is consciousness and the current content of consciousness. It is possible but unlikely that I would be conscious but conscious of nothing. (Holding your breath in a flotation tank is probably as close as you can get without artificiality.) Consciousness is the underlying background, non-specific cortical neurological activity that is necessary for experiential and behavioral processes.

Thus anything with a nervous system is conscious. But consciousness is of no particular significance in and of itself, it is merely a biological substrata for awareness, a powering up of the system so that it can be aware and reactive. What distinguishes organisms is not consciousness, but its content. The difficult question is why we associate consciousness with cortical activity.

I don’t seem to be conscious of what’s going on in my cerebellum or lower brain centers even if they serve as more than relay centers, i.e., they do information processing or are involved in the production of syntactic behavior.

CNS Information

2007-12-31T08:15:00.000-08:00

Suppose I monitor a major sensory nerve, of type unknown. Would I be able to determine the information in that nerve’s activity without knowing the source or destination of that activity? If line labeling is the correct theory of information content and transport through the specific nervous system then I can not. Perhaps the quantity of excitation or some temporal pattern variations will prove to be a clue, to determine, e.g., whether the signal is auditory or visual. But I can’t know much unless I know the source or the destination of the sigmal.

IMPD again, there is no “you” inside your head, and the above consideration is one of the reasons. We don’t know and can’t control and certainly can’t monitor our own cognitive processes. They just happen, we know the input and the output, nothing in between

The Theory of Propositions (Judgment)

2007-12-16T10:40:00.000-08:00

Traditional (medieval) theories of propositions resolve the issue into two components: meaning and truth. We resolve prepositional knowledge into two different components: information content and evaluation.

Declarative behavior,. e.g., propositional performance (saying, writing, thinking…) has an informational content independent of meaning, it tells us about the performer independent of any consideration of meaning. The evaluative element resolves itself into additional issues: Truth/Falsity, Informative/Uninformative, Interesting/Uninteresting, Provable/Unprovable, any and all characteristics or attributes of declarative statements and related behaviors. We include not only the traditional epistemic issues but also those evaluations that consider the behavior in a wider context, e.g., social or historical.

All declarative behavior can be divided into two categories: internally and externally determined according to whether the behavior is determined by the performers current sensory situation or not. Judgments involving past sensory experiences are internally determined even though the behavior is ultimately related to sensory experience. The point of this internal/external distinction is that the totality of internally based driving functions can be delineated scientifically. We can thus say what it is possible to say when the declarative behavior is internally determined. This is what epistemology is really all about, saying what can be said, and then selecting among the possibilities. But according to what criteria?

While it is impossible to generate a theory of possible experience, or then a theory of possible externally determined prepositional behavior, (I might see a Martian tomorrow, or develop a new scientific theory, a theory of possible experience is a theory of history); we can generate theories of possible internally determined performance, this is cognitive psychology, evaluating them is philosophy.

What is Recognition?

2007-12-05T10:51:00.000-08:00

It seems to be assumed that sensory recognition requires feature extraction- the “bends and wrinkles” theories of identification. Feature extractors have been found in the visual cortex at least. So what? What is recognition actually?

Recognition is essentially knowledge of prior experience, memory at its most basic level. ( Knowing that you have seen or heard something before without any further identification.) Recognition is deja vue at its most basic level. On top of this we may have more elaborate responses which are associated with the stimulus: naming, running away, shooting at it etc., but these are not required for recognition.

Higher level recognition processes still don’t necessarily require feature extraction, they don’t require resolution of sensory aspects or variations. What is required is a unique result in the output space, a response unique down to some semi-arbitrary level of resolution of the stimulus. Recognition requires discrimination, not feature extraction or identification. Universals require resolution, counter intuitively, otherwise everything is a particular. The essence of universals is “close enough”.

How do you generate unique outputs without feature extraction? Time could be an important parameter. Time tags on each element in the output space. But what about similarities? Knowing this is like that requires knowing how they are similar, what features they have in common, or does it? Can stimuli, different at some level of information contact or resolution, wind there way through the sensory cortex and wind up at the output side in similar locations without feature extraction?

(Imagine a future dictionary that not only gives verbal definitions but samples, i.e., sensory stimuli to explain or illustrate the word. For red you get the definition plus a flash of red light. For pineapple you get the whole works including the olfactory and taste sensations. What subset of nouns would benefit here?).

Really Smart Things (RSTs)

2007-12-04T10:40:00.000-08:00

Mnemonic RSTs (MRSTs) work on information processing alone, by reduction and comparisons, no calculations allowed, except for statistical data processing and related manipulations. They might do this digitally or by analogue mechanisms, e.g., they might use brains or similar biological systems. They lack concepts like causation, causal process, natural law, functional relationship…Chiefly they remember and compare very large and intricate data sets. They use time lines in effect, but have no concept of time or temporal process.

They work like this : Given a problem: “Determine what happens next….” for a particular system they predict the next element(s) in the data set by referencing only the previous elements, and data sets like the current one but acquired on different occasions. The old data sets could have been generated by the same system (defined, say in terms of system components) or by other “similar” systems. They use old data to produce the new data set, using a variety of mathematical techniques to relate system states only along parametric flow lines, old data produces new data, no theories of “Why” or “How” involved. No “Scientific” laws or theories involved. (This is beginning to sound a lot like a chartist approach to trading stocks- “technical analysis”, but they assume causation even though they don’t know or care what it is.)

The contrast between MRSTs and RSTs is really the difference between high and low information levels. Today’ computational analysis uses low information itinerative analysis (e.g., Multiphysics software) and physical laws, it’s RST type of analysis.

Cognitive Paradigms

2007-11-28T14:06:00.000-08:00

Science is an epistemic technology (not the only one) that allows us to successfully interact with the world. The real issue is what counts as success? Explanation, prediction, control… these could all be part of a successful paradigm. Is simplicity part of the epistemic paradigm? The real reason today we prefer Copernican to Ptolemaic astronomy is that the former makes physical sense because it accommodates gravitational theory. ( Was either a scientific theory? Or where they mathematical or kinematic descriptions only?)

The paradigm for serious science today is mathematical system analysis. It looks as though in the future, really smart things are going to do computational multiphysics and related activities (computational chemistry and biology), to really figure out the external world. But is this the only way- the paradigm of laws, principles, relations and occasionally (only ) heuristics? Can an intelligent system with enough information gathering power, enough memory, enough experience and sensory sensitivity (resolving power?) work on a different paradigm? Can it be intelligent if it only knows that the current situation is like a previous situation and that thus that the future course of the system is likely to be the same?

Really smart things (RSTs), as the future looks now, will be doing simultaneous ( to save time) multiphysics simulations which interact or are combined under or during conditions of peripheral contact or engagement. In other words, they won’t calculate the whole world or even large pieces of it but rather they will work on different relevant sections at the same time and then integrate these pieces of the puzzle. A key problem here is this little word “relevant”. How do the RSTs know what’s relevant? (Think about climate models. City in an earthquake might be the paradigmatic case here).

We know more or less how computational RSTs work, some thing close is around today. Are there any other kind of RSTs?

Psychology

2007-11-24T08:42:00.000-08:00

Can human psychology be derived from or modeled on a more general theory, a generic theory of agency ( as a derived or normative version of the current concept)? Such a theory would serve as a template or organizational structure for psychological data or sub-theories. But what does a theory of agency look like?. It would have to be a theory of functions and functional relationships rather than a theory of structures or components that support these functions. It is about a defined class of entities, the chief questions concerning which are the defining elements and identifying members of the defined class.

Among the defining functions that would have to be explained are a capacity for action or effect, such as by generating or at least relaying information, information sensitivity and information processing and a cognitive or “intelligent” element. Normative or control elements combined with a motivational or cybernetic modulator elements area also necessary. Roughly, agents are multi-cellular animals or higher up the food chain. Immediately a problem: While the capacity for action or influencing the external world are necessary for agency, this mechanism for doing so has no theoretical importance, could be musculature, hydraulics, pneumatics, electro-mechanical etc.

Maybe agency should be defined in terms of autonomy, of autonomous action, where again “action” may be defined in terms of information control.

Imagining Imagination

2007-11-21T11:17:00.000-08:00

Why can’t I see clearly the eagle putt I made on the 2^nd ? It was 12’-15’, I don’t keep my head down that long, I should have seen it. Sometimes I think I can see it, but I’m not sure. I can see the second green, I think I can see the putt, a right breaker to the front and on the front of the green. Do I have too many recollections of a putt like this? Why am I not sure that it was “the” putt and not all the putts like that one? Sometimes I imagine that I have this imagination- the recollection of seeing that particular putt, sometimes I’m not sure. I’m very sure of Tiger’s chip, of Seve’s 4 iron into the pond, of Gary Player’s 9 iron from 142 (?) but not my own shots. I can’t even see my own 8 iron hole in one although I can recall I think that the ball mysteriously disappeared on the green. ( I thought initially that it was over, I recall the puzzlement and confusion.) You would think that the emotional tags associated with important personnel events would make the recollection’s content more certain.

If memories were like computer files, each separate even if similar or identical, I should be able to distinguish them and recall them separately, especially if they are time stamped. But it .seems as though if there are potentially too many of a single or similar type we have trouble distinguishing between them. It’s the different content that separates and distinguishes them, which separates the recognition networks. Supports the notion that sensory memory is in the sensory cortex –neural reminiscence.

Visual Imagination

2007-11-17T10:22:00.000-08:00

(The theory ((a theory?)) of IMPD is important because this will be the last refuge of serious mentalism (dualism). But the theory –I am the sensation; not I have the sensation- must accommodate other aspects of our mental life.)

I can imagine, “See in my head”, the 12^th hole at Augusta National. I see the angled green, but I can’t quite make out its shape. I see the pot bunker on the short right side of the green, the longer bunker on the long left side of the green. As I think about it, I’m sure of the bunker long left, because the shot out of it is dangerous and might get wet (pond in front of the green). The right front bunker is less clear, this shot is easier but is the bunker really there? Tall trees and magnolias to the left, I can imagine nothing past the green on the right. I see the bridge on the left and the steep bank short of the green. I’ve never seen the green in person, but I’ve seen many images of it on TV in April, and I used to have a picture of the 12^th in my computer.

How is this possible? Where is the neurological activity that supports this report, what are the driving functions? One would assume that the truly visual reporting aspects of the above recollection were driven by visual memory, by activity in 17, 18, 19 that mimicked the original visual experience. Probably the same networks that were activated during the original visual experiences. But is this enough? The visual recollection seems to have phenomenal aspects! It is something like seeing again but in a weaker, colorless manner. If the phenomenal, qualitative aspects of sensory experience are manifestation of sense organ operation and only exist there, how is imagination possible?

It may be that the description of the 12^th was driven by something I’ve heard; certainly I’ve heard about everything I think I recall seeing above. Certainly the identification of the flowers as magnolias is a recollection driven by auditory memory, I can’t tell magnolias from other kinds of flowers on TV, probably not in vivo either. But I am aware of this, I know that I don’t recall seeing magnolias, only seeing flowers and knowing that they are magnolias.

I can see that dangerous shot out of the left rear bunker, I see it from the right rear of the green ( camera position), looking parallel to the line of play to a pin in the right front of the green- the Sunday pin position. I’ve never heard it described like this before, I see it.

I see Tiger’s fist pump after he holed the chip shot on the 16^th , I can see Steve Williams holding the pin in his left hand (?), behind Tiger on the left side of the green. Tiger seems to be in black, is this a color recollection or something else? Tiger was probably wearing red. A mistaken visual recollection, but not a hallucination. I’m not sure if this is the fist pump at that time or another one, maybe even a composite. I can even see the arc of the ball, I think I can see the ball hang up on the lip momentarily. Do I really see movies, or just a succession of stills?

Could this be only the activity of complex or hyper-complex cells higher up in the higher levels of the visual system? This is information processing, processing of the phenomenal aspects. Can it contain them in some sense or another? How far back does the retrograde activity go? Can the cortex excite retinal cells? I have visual and auditory sensory recollection, none for the other senses. Why?

The “Game” of Poker

2007-11-07T14:32:00.000-08:00

Solitaire is a card game, poker is a card game. But while I play solitaire to kill time, poker is frequently played to make money. Serious poker is hard work, even if it is played for fun. And serious poker is basically boring, a serious player may not voluntarily play a single hand in an hour. Can games be generally boring? If I play a boring game, I must be doing it for something other than entertainment. Is it still a game?

In the $1000 -$2000 hold’em game the other night there were 4 players playing at 2 different tables at the same time with about $900,000 on the tables. The average pot was $10,000. This is (only) a “game”? How would we decide?

The buy in was $40,000, but you probably need $100, 000 the way they were playing – quickly and fast. ( Quick = speed of play. Fast = Amount bet in each hand.) Even if these are trivial amount of money for some people, was this a game? Nobody is too amused when loosing $ 50,000, in the space of a few minutes, regardless of how rich they are. Rich action players do it for excitement, pros do it for money. Are they doing the same thing? Are they both playing a game?

The rules are the same regardless of whether your playing for play chips or real money. Does this make it a game? Hypothesis: Games are rule governed activities engaged in for amusement. (The dictionary thinks competition is involved, but clearly not. ) Children’s play games may have no rules, but must have goals. (?) Revision : Amusing activities with defined goals or end states.

Play chip poker can be semi –serious, we try to acquire play chips, build our stacks. Is acquisition the essential feature of the “game “ of poker? Yes, but this essential feature doesn’t make it a game- other activities are similar, e.g., investing to make money. None of the essential defining features of the poker playing activity make a game, gaming is a matter of attitude, of reasons for engaging in the activity, for “playing” instead of some other type of doing.

If this is correct, how does his become manifest or defining in the English word “game”? Did some members of the English speaking community look at every “game” or putative or potential game and apply these presumed criteria? Did these fathers of the word “game” assess or deduce the mental states of all past players to determine that their motives were as prescribed by the concept in question?

Learning a language is not a conscious, rational activity. Neither is talking generally very reflective or analytical. “Game “ has many driving functions as do most words, the connections between them are tenuous and historical, not principally cognitive.

Language Acquisition as Indoctrination

2007-11-07T10:37:00.000-08:00

Much of our conceptual schema is inherited when we learn a language and thus historical in origin. If asked to give a list of games, I might include baseball. But I never decided nor even seriously considered the question of the “gameiness” of baseball. I heard the term ”baseball game” or the phrase “game of baseball” and just went along with it. How much of our categorical or classification language is like this? How many factual or value judgments are inherited in language acquisition?

The mistake here is to think that the “referents of universal terms” are arrived at individually, each speaker decides on his or her own, by their own cognitive acts.. I didn’t decide on my list of games, I didn’t deliberate on the question of whether or not baseball, football, tennis , golf etc., were games or not, the view was inherited, socially inculcated. I might think about the classifications, and change my mind, but generally I do not. I do not judge, I acquiesce to historical precedent..

Is darts a sport or a game? The question of “sport” is more difficult than the question of “game”. Sport seems to inherently involves physical activity in the outcome, the quality or nature of the physical activity is the deciding factor or at least important. Darts is then a sport, although this sounds a little funny.

So you think "game" is an easy word?

Epistemic Terms

2007-11-05T08:38:00.000-08:00

“ The mind taking notice of its own operations…” (Hume?) The brain creates driving functions related to transient operational states and other aspects of its own operations –what are they?

The other problematic terms of epistemology: Truth, knowledge, explanation….are themselves nothing but concepts, i.e., words, i.e., noises or marks on paper with their own driving functions. An information based epistemology tells us what driving function they can have, limits due to inherent nature of our neurological machinery.. The philosophical question then becomes not what truth or knowledge is, but what it should be given the possibilities of our cognitive machinery. Not definition but selection among well defined and determined possibilities with a well developed cognitive psychology

Meaning vs. Information

2007-10-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Critical differences:

I can determine the information in a response by extra- linguistic methods. To grasp (understand ) the meaning I need to understand the utterance or have it translated into a language I do understand. The information can be determined by purely scientific, ie., technical, non-linguistic methods. This is how the fly gets out of the bottle, non linguistic understanding of language. Information extraction from neurological systems is high tech in practice, but we only have to do it in principal, that’s why our efforts are philosophical.

Meaning can involve some non-cognitive, emotive elements, information concerns only the cognitive elements if there are any. (Ow!). Meanings relate to other meanings by way of synonyms. Information relates to information by virtue of type or quantity, or driving functions.

“Aboutness” or reference: If I know what an utterance means, I know what it’s about, if it’s a proposition say. Similarly if I know the information producing an utterance I know what its about, this is where the two concepts come together. The difference between the two is that if I know the information content of an utterance, I don’t have to understand it to know what it is about.! ( Here to know the information content is to identify the driving function(s)).

Being, the Absolute…..

2007-10-28T11:54:00.000-07:00

“Being is, being is what is, being is the other of nothingness.” (Sartre? I seem to remember this from somewhere.) “The absolute takes part in evolution but does not itself evolve.” (Hegel?) Instead of asking what these statements or others like them mean, or how we would determine if they are true or not, let us ask another question: What information is being conveyed in propositions like these?

Suppose we were to wire up these mighty brains while they were penning this sort of stuff and trace the neurological activity back through their nervous systems. What would we find? The Absolute or Being itself banging on their nervous systems? Or would we find patterns of activity in their auditory cortex related to their previous auditory (reading is auditory finally) experiences,
modified and re- rendered following only syntactic constraints to emerge as a new metaphysical proposition. (I assume statements like these are not the result of visual or other sensory mode hallucinations.) The information contained in or represented by propositions like these concerns only the states of the brains that produce them

INFORMATION BASED EPISTEMOLOGY

2007-10-21T15:29:00.001-07:00

Suppose we monitor the motor cortex, tracing back from the Betz cells ( the output layer to the lower nervous system, everything later is “mechanical”) to try to determine the information in a linguistic response. We trace the excitation back to the pre-motor areas and then perhaps to the sensory regions of the brain. We could determine then, for example, that the information was sensory in origin and that the motor response was produced in part by a driving function in the associative visual cortex for example, say a “grandmother cell” in Broadmann’s 19 for example.

We need not be concerned about the general supporting activity that makes any motor response possible, or about the exact nature of the recognition or recall process that produces the driving function and specific information in the response, these are psychological problems, our epistemological concerns or only with the type of information in the response. Neither are we concerned with the specifics of the response, what phonemes are produced or what marks are made on the paper, the language and all particulars of the method of rendition are epistemologically irrelevant.

This is an important advance over current “input side” empirical epistemology. Now we can say what the content or information in an element of verbal behavior really is, where it comes from, what sort of information it contains. It is all sensory or noise related to sensory information in the broadest sense.

What about thoughts? Do we have any metaphysical thoughts that we cannot express in language, that is in motor behavior? If not, the above analysis works. But even if I have my non- expressible transcendental notions, they are patterns of activity in the auditory cortex (neural reminiscence), and the information that produces them is likely either auditory or obscurely rendered noise in the system.

IMPD3

2007-10-19T13:19:00.000-07:00

It is necessary to say that we can have experiences, at least their phenomenal aspects without knowing it. Awareness is not necessary for experience.

Sensory experience has two aspects: Phenomenal and informational. Once you get past the transducer level the experience is reduced to pure information. IMPD can only exist at the transducer level, after that it’s all streams of line labeled (for the specific information) action potentials. Its all the same inside our heads, and even in the post- transduction neurological events outside our heads. The basic problem is this: It’s hard to explain why seeing is seeing and hearing is hearing by just looking at the optic and auditory nerve activity and subsequent upstream activity inside our heads.

Phenomenal aspects of experience exist only at the transducer level: retina, organ of Corti, skin sensors etc. Yet we are aware of it, this is what we actually experience, not the information content. But all responses to the sensation require information and a functioning nervous system in back of the peripheral sensors. Knowing that I have a sensation is a brain operation, having the sensation is a transducer function.

Information

2007-10-17T13:33:00.000-07:00

Information is causation by variation, when the variation is causative in the effected system. Information is causative not because of the fundamental aspects of the medium of transmission, i.e., energy, momentum, mass etc., but because of some other aspect of the transmission. Information involves a signal, not simply mechanical, fluidic, or even basic electro-magnetic influences.

Information is causal, in part but not totally, in the causal nexus of the processes the information generates. Information is about process, about activity in information sensitive systems. ( “The stone is thinking about Vienna. “ We want to show that this is false on information theoretic grounds and not simply on psychological- physiological grounds. Stones can’t think because they aren’t information sensitive systems.)” Information storage” is a problem in particular technologies, e.g. hard drives, but is not a fundamental problem in information epistemology. Information is transient process, its origins and causes.

The most fundamental idea in epistemic information theory is “conversion with conservation.” The informative media can be coded, converted, changed, altered, translated, yet something is conserved: the information. This is a new idea, an invariance despite gross physical change, a continuity across process, a causal influence that changes form

EMPIRICISM

2007-10-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

Why is empiricism true? Why should we believe that all knowledge of the external world is developed through sensory experience, or has it’s origins in sensory experience? (This second formulation is more interesting.) What precisely is wrong with metaphysics?

Modern versions of “traditional” empiricism are concerned with only the input side of cognition. The inputs to the black box. The workings of the box were irrelevant: science-psychology. But stopping at the input is an arbitrary position, and the opposition’s position is based on theories of what’s going on inside the box. Rationalism is about more than input. Metaphysics depends on a theory of what’s happening in the box, on mentalism, in fact on interactive dualism, although proponents may not always admit it or even realize it.

Empiricism needs a reformulation in terms of information theory.

Ancient Smarts

2007-10-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

Archaeologists apparently think that ancient stone builders produced close fit in their building stones for aesthetic reasons, Actually the reasons were probably structural. Rough, irregular contact surfaces lead to high localized stresses, local crumbling failures, dust (lubricant), structural instability. Did they figure this out, a rather sophisticated technical notion? Maybe they were going on a theory of geometric stability –easier to stack bricks than boulders.

All the ancients did it, Mayans, Egyptians etc. almost certainly an engineering consideration. You can’t use the same set of tools for determining flatness or smoothness over thousands of years on different continents. You need concepts, and they can’t be operationally defined. Flatness and smoothness can be tactilely or visually determined, but you have to relate the knowledge of what is to be done, not just how to do it.

(( Write Transport Canada, mention Ca Zev experience -$400kk, new occ. kinematics, new performance criteria. Can they cooperate with other commonwealth members, Aussies, Anzies?. Determine total global market share we could influence, NA share?))

Sense Data

2007-10-09T13:41:00.000-07:00

A casual inspection of sense data theory suggests that the IMPD problem is not central, nor perhaps even considered. Does any one ask why sense datum have the secondary properties they do?

If a sufficient amount of GABA is lacking, however, the system goes out of whack, and tens of thousands of neurons send messages rapidly, intensely and simultaneously, resulting in a seizure. http://www.sfn.org/index.cfm?pagename=brainBriefings_epilepsyAndGABA

IMPD-2

2007-10-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

Moving the experiential level out to the sensors does no good. Its still the same sort of neuro- biochemistry out there. Moving it to the interphase level would seem to be required.

This is the best argument yet for the ghost in the machine, but the ghost has to have a really great home entertainment system for presenting the external world show. Introducing the ghost here really only ends the explanation, metaphysics as the terminator of enquiry rather than as an initiator- a god of the gaps introduced at some electro-physiological level.

The problem is that it is not clear what sort of account of the variations in neural network activity could be seen as sufficient explanation for IMPD. IMPDs are as different as different gets, comparisons are impossible, yet the underlying physiology does not seem to admit to this order of qualitative difference

CONCEPTS

2007-10-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the closest conventional notion to a driving function is denoted by the term “concept”. Most (all?) concepts are universals, so we are dealing with the notion of universals or universal terms. But there is a problem. “Red”, phonetically, may denote a color, a communist, or the past tense of “read (ing)”. Alphabetically, the choices are fewer, but the problem still remains. Concepts are not motor engrams, neither are driving functions.

Driving functions select but do not generate motor behavior (alone), in this they are like concepts. They are cognitive (i.e., including or using specific, situational information ) determinants of behavior. Concepts are conglomerations of driving functions Note that my concept of the color red may include my capability to visually perceive and recognize it, as well as my understanding that it is associated with light of a certain wavelength and the fact that ripe apples are frequently red. The first aspect of my mastery of this concept is determined by the operation of my visual system and a driving function that involves color detection/ recognition processes. The later two aspects are part of a knowledge base probably stored in auditory memory. Different brain areas, different driving functions, but all part of the same concept.

DRIVING FUNCTIONS

2007-10-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

The nervous system seems to work by disinhibition (Deutche). To keep very sensitive electro-chemical elements from going off at random due to noise or even thermal effects and still maintain sensitivity the whole system must be under constant inhibition. Function then requires disinhibition, How does this work?. Does the nervous system inhibit the inhibitors? But for a response the causal information must be in some sense specific, the recognition network at least must effect its own disinhibition. Or is the disinhibition more global? Perhaps a visual stimulus disinhibits the entire visual cortex, the specific recognition network activated depending on the precise nature of the stimulus. But what about motor output? Several possibilities: 1. the entire motor system is disinhibited, 2.the specific response network is disinhibited by its own activity, 3. the recognition network disinhibits the specific response network due to a previous learning process.

" The cortical motor system of primates is formed by a mosaic of anatomically and functionally distinct areas. These areas are not only involved in motor functions, but also play a role in functions formerly attributed to higher order associative cortical areas. In the present review, we discuss three types of higher functions carried out by the motor cortical areas: sensory-motor transformations, action understanding, and decision processing regarding action execution. We submit that generating internal representations of actions is central to cortical motor function. External contingencies and motivational factors determine then whether these action representations are transformed into actual actions.. "Rizzolatti G, Luppino G., The cortical motor system. Neuron. 2001 Sep 27;31(6):889-901.

What is an “ internal representation” of an action? Consider a simple verbal response to a question: “What color is it?” – “Red” We can say the response, sign the response, write the response with either hand, scratch it in the dirt with a stick, trace it in the sand with our feet. The motor responses are highly variable potentially. What do they all have in common?

Many of these responses are similar from a motor behavior point of view –writing or scratching or tracing- yet not identical from a mechanical point of view. There are at least two different response modalities- vocal, mechanical. Is there, can there be a common neurological element after the visual recognition process, that is common to all of them? Something which is producing the response, or driving the response network, a driving operation or “driving function”?

IMPD

2007-10-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

Neurological activity is all basically sodium cations flowing through semi- permeable membranes. The patterns may change, but so what? Is this suppose to account for IMPD? Why is a pattern of activity in the auditory cortex so different at the experiential level from a pattern of activity in the visual cortex? The sensory organs are different off course, but we are not aware of the states of our sensory organs without higher level neurological activity. Further, from brain stimulation experiments, it looks like we can have sensory experience without sensory organ simulation. (Is there retrograde activity out this far with direct electrical simulation of the brain?)

Am I directly aware of the state of my sensory organs? This would seem hard to maintain. It would seem that I am the sensation in that having the sensation is a state that I’m in, I am the sensing thing and the sensation. The total state of the organism is that of having or being aware of the sensation. If –sense organ stimulation and central neurological activity apart, each separately, are not enough for experience , which seems likely.