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From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
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In <3ehfrl$21c@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In <1995Jan5.171036.9836@galileo.cc.rochester.edu> stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens) writes:

>>.... "Every process is an embodiment of the underlying formal
>>description which describes it."

>While I can see your point, I am inclined to disagree.  Your way of
>describing things presumes that there is an underlying formal
>description.  But often we simulate when we do not have a formal
>description.  

First of all, saying "there exists a formal description" (as in "in
some platonic universe) is different from saying "we have a formal
description" (as in we have discovered it).

I might hypothesize that among the set of all possible formal systems there
is one that could be mapped onto actual process in the world X.  This is
true, I could hypothesize, for all X.

>There is another point to bear in mind.  We may talk of simulating
>X.  But in practice, we rarely simulate X.  Normally, we simulate
>certain aspects of X.  Often the aspects to be simulated may be
>unstated, and understood from context.

First of all, for any catagory X there may be some items which are
relevant to X being the description of a phenomenon and some not.
For example, in an actual election, there are characteristics of
the human instantiation, i.e. the color of the clothes being worn by
voters, the personalities of the booth monitors, the amount of dust
on the switches, the name of the street each voting location is on, etc.
However, for a formal description of the process of voting, this is
not a factor.  Thus, for some X, one could model all of the relevant
properties of it (my assumption, modeling such items as listed above
is NOT necessary to completely model the voting process).

>Now we might still argue that the simulation is different from the
>actual event.  But my point is that we have simulated a different set
>of aspects than we would have in a more convention numerical
>simulation of flight.

Once one defines the criterion for defining a particular physical process
AS that process, I think one knows what elements of the instantiation
are sufficient to model to say one has a "complete" model.

>>But *this* gets down to the idea of whether formal systems exist and re
>>prior to instantiations.

>There is a different question, as to the existence of mathematical
>entities.  Some people say that real numbers existed long before
>Peano or Dedekind, and were merely discovered.  That view is the
>essence of platonism.  

It is that essence I wanted to address in my next segment.

>>I have a question: Would you say that human beings are merely an "embodiment"
>>of a pre-existing algorithm which defines them?  Or is it more accurate to
>>say that we can invent an algorithm to describe human beings (even assuming,
>>for the moment, there there is some algorithm which could be taken as
>>corresponding to human function).

>I would be closer to the second alternative. 

Of course, I would assume that because you have not struck me as a platonist.
Pushing the platonist stance to an extreme, one can interprete the 
universe as being a grounded symbol system, where every physical process
is an embodiment of of some objectively "existing" formal system.

I tend to take the opposite stance, that we invent formal descriptions
of processes.  But it is interesting to me to think what can happen when
pushing the platonic view to an extreme.  

Of course, it is also interesting to me that no matter which of the
extremes you take about the priority of formal descriptions, artifical
intelligence is in theory possible.  Two interpretations:

1) All the physical universe as a physical instantiation of different formal
   systems that exist in the Platonic Universe of All Formal Systems.
   When we describe some underlying process, we are discovering what
   underlying formal system the physical process is an instantiation of
   (or we are coming close to pinpointing it, even if not exactly).  Thus,
   "intelligence" is an ascription for certain formal systems which humans
   are physical instantiations of.  Thus, any physical system which is a
   physical embodiment of that same formal system is equally a member of 
   that catagory, because they actually both share the necessary feature --
   embodiment of the "intelligence" formalism -- to be considered 
   "intelligent."

2) The physical universe is what it is and we invent different formal
   descriptions to approximate it.  Basically, every description we have
   of the world and every theory is a kind of curve-fitting, and we're
   trying to find the best curve.  Because terms are functions which
   cluster certain kinds of phenomena, and we attribute application of
   terms to the universe based on how well the physical evidence fits
   with our pre-defined function (i.e. we determine if something is a
   chair by fitting the requirements defined by our invented function
   "chair" with the perceptions we have of the thing), ANY phenomenon
   which fits the curve proscribed by the function is equally rightly
   a member of that catagory.  Thus, if intelligence is defined
   functionally (as opposed to "it needs to come from an organic brain")
   anything with the ability to be decsribed by the required functions
   is equally intelligent.

Greg Stevens

stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

