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From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Re: Greg Stevens Re: THE BRAIN AND THE BIRTHRIGHT OF A CHILD
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Date: Wed, 28 Dec 94 14:45:19 GMT
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<3drm5m$dse@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> roose@ix.netcom.com (Richard Roose) writes:

[I am abbreviating your post greatly.  If at some point you feel I have
truncated an important part of misunderstood the context of something 
because of a deletion, I am sorry]

>Lets consider the subject of references?  If put to the challenge, I 
>can go to the Stanford library and find a reference supporting or 
>refuting almost any outrageous claim anyone cares to make about 
>anything.

I understand this.  But, considering that on certain topics debate is wider
spread than others, I think it is important in writing that addresses
contraversial issues to note that the issues are, in fact, contraversial.

You say you write for the common person.  You criticize my paragraph
(as follows) for being not understandable to the common reader. And yet you
seen content, when influencing the common reader, to misinform about the
current state of academic knowledge.

[slightly paraphrased from my posting:]
>there is very little consensus (in Fransisco Varela's (co. w/ Elanor 
>Rosch and Evan Thompson) _The Embodied Mind_, they discuss different 
>approaches within congitive science, ranging from the "conservative" 
>cognitivism, where intelligence is symbol-manipulation referring to 
>external objects, to emergentism, where intelligence is an interplay of 
>feature-extraction from input to arrive at "relevant" properties 
>(connectionism falls here) to enaction (the philosophy they espouse) 
>where organisms make differentiations relevent to themselves as 
>structures independant of "objective" properties.  The wide range of 
>approaches, not to mention the wide range of inclusion/exclusion 
>criterion for when a computerwould be considered intelligent (i.e. some 
>people still go along with the Turing Test, some people work from 
>modifications of it (Paul Churchland, or at least he did in an earlier 
>book), some people feel it should be abandoned completely.

You say,
>While this is very well written and probably an excellent summation of 
>the current state of scholarly debate on the subject of intelligence , 
>to the general public it is totally meaningless. 

which I understand MAY be true.  However, is it somehow better to, instead
of taking the content of something important, like the fact that in cognitive
science there is no consensus about what intelligence is or the relationship
between it and the brain, to write a message to the common man that humanity
has figured it out, and that the ACTUAL anser is <insert your opinion here>?

If you are on a crusade to EDUCATE the common people about the state of
understanding of intelligence, the mind and the brain, then it seems
imperitive that they be educated accurately -- not infused with one
opinions and told that it is right.  It makes me sad whenever I see a
book which is written for the "common people" which says, "it has been
proven and is widely accepted that..." when in fact that is not the case.
Such texts seem like propaganda.  If science is confused, the "common people"
should know about such confusion.

You later in your article say that you in fact think that there IS a consensus
about what intelligence is (I believe -- I could be misreading), yet
still have not addressed the CONTENT of my above paragraph.  Perhaps I
could have written it more lucidly for a nonspecialized audience, but the
points there remain -- people disagree about what intelligence is and its
relationship with the brain.

Not that I think back to what I have read of yours, perhaps you are not
in fact saying that everyone DOES agree with yout view of intelligence,
but that everyone SHOULD.  If this is, in fact, the case, I still think that
you should address the views of those who disagree to show WHY people should
believe your view rather than others.  Don't you think you would merly confuse
the "common person" more by writing "Everyone accepts X" if they were to
later come across some book stating "Not everyone accepts X, in fact, some
people think *not* X."  Don't you think it would be more EDUCATIONAL to the
common person interested in the subject of consciousness and intelligence
to say, "Look, so-and-so thinks this, but I think they are wrong because..."
rather than merely saying, "This is what I think and it is accepted."

> I sometimes write an essay simply to redefine a single 
>word, as I have with the words Reality and intelligence because 
>there is so much confusion about the meaning of these words.  

Here you indicate your intent to RE-define, and yet in your essays I see
little allusion to alternate definitions you are deviating from or any
real reason WHY we should accept your definition.  I bring as an example 
again -- there is a great bulk of literature out there concerned with
questioning the validity and purpose of connectionism in cognitive modelling.
Many people think it has very little to do with any important approach to
understanding intelligence.  Neuroscientists don't like it (in general)
because it oversimplifies.  Cognitivists don't like it because it doesn't
have propositional structure and referent, and enactivists don't like it
because it still assumes that there are objective properties in the
outside world to be modelled.  Maybe what I have just said is mumbo-jumbo
to the common person, but if YOU are taking as YOUR responsibility talking
to the common person, I do not see what you do not take it as your 
responsibility to also inform accurately, describe the fact that there are,
not just fringe authors, but large chunks of the scientific community who
do not, in fact, agree with your assertion that neural networks are the
key to modelling intelligence and cognition.

>What has been almost totally lacking in both the private and public 
>responses is any rational debate.  

This is what I have attempted to start, but you seem more intent on criticizing
the emotionality of my outburst than addressing any of my valid points.  I
have apologized for getting irritated so quickly.  I assume we can move on
from that now.

>It is to me, frightening that here in the last decade of the 20th 
>century, while research into the manipulation of human DNA  (with mind 
>boggling potential for both good and evil) is ongoing, the vast majority 
>of humanity cannot define, or even grasp, the concept of Reality.

People have folk models.  Maybe they cannot grasp your reality, but many
people who think about such things (or have thought) as their profession
disagree.  WHY should one take your view of reality rather than, for example,
Merleau-Ponty's?  Or Maturana's?  Or Fodor's?  Or Churchland's?

I got into a debate on comp.ai.philosophy last summer where I was advocating
the assertion that "There is an objective reality, but it has no
*characteristics*, because characteristics are by necessity perceptual and
therefore subjective, because it is the perceiving organism that makes
distinctions within objective reality."  I had people arguing against me from
every angle -- from solipsism to stark objectivism ("a table is a table whether
there are people areound or not").  Who should the "common person" believe?
Why?  Do you not think it is important to justify your redefinition of
reality IN LIGHT of these other arguments?  Don't you think it is important to
ADDRESS these other kinds of arguments, even if written in a style for the
layperson?  Paul Churchland wrote and EXCELLENT book, written for the
layperson, on philosophy of consciousness.  In _Matter and Consciousness_
he goes through and one by one, in language anyone could understand, defines
the different standpoints, and tells what he thinkgs of them.  Do you see no
value to such an approach?

>I would suggest that by writing and posting that statement you have lent 
>support and urgency to everything I have written and posted over the 
>past two months.  If it is true, then all of humanity is in deep shit 
>and without a way out.  

Please take this following question seriously: WHY is it so important for
humans to come to a consensus about what "reality" is?  Buddhists and
Christians have a RADICALLY different view of "reality" and yet both can
exist within our culture.

>You were not born to be clueless, you were born to be rational.

I do not believe I was born to be either.  Rationality is limited, bounded
by emotionality which precedes rationality both developmentally and
(if you are to believe that limbic structures mediate emotion)
phylogenetically.  Was it not you who said that the idea of rationality
separated from emotion is nonsense?  Maybe I am confusing you with someone
else, but if I am right -- why are you so hung up on the "rationality" you
have already decried as nonsense?  You say,

> Had 
>you been properly cared for and nourished and educated as a child, you 
>would be able to recognize both the value and fallacy of your emotions, 
>and be able to act wisely rather than emotionally.  

and yet I thought you were the one who said that the dualism between
emotions and rationality was a myth, that people learn through emotional
association. If that is the case, why would you expect anyone to act
rationally "rather than" emotionally?

If you are interested in the work I do, I have made available for you to get
via anonymous ftp a paper I have co-authored.  It is available by ftp to
psych.rochester.edu in /pub/stevens/emerge.txt    In that paper we (T. Smith
and myself) address biological foundations for theorizing under what 
conditions rationality is impossible, and under what kinds of parameter
conditions arousal response and "emotionality" necessarily precede
cognition.

Greg Stevens

stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

