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From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
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Date: Fri, 6 Jan 95 17:12:06 GMT
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<3ej4mv$kbv@mercury.dur.ac.uk> Kentridge <Robert.Kentridge@durham.ac.uk> writes:

>There is a special issue of the journal Minds & Machines concentrating on 
>the question of the nature of computation and its relationship to cognition.
>It should be published any day now.I guess I could post my paper from it here,
>or email it to interested parties (about 700 lines).  My position is basically
>that systems which appear to do computation have autonomous dynamics which we
>understand well enough for us to map problems onto those dynamics and let their
>evolution 'solve' the problem for us.  Symbol manipulating rules are just one
>way of describing the process of computation.  They may not be the most
>appropriate way of characterising the brain dynamics underlying cognition.

Do you use any background from autopoiesis theory, a la Varela and Maturana?
They have some great stuff about biological autonomy, and how it is
inappropriate to view biological systems as input-output machines, even
though they can be interpreted as such. They also go into detail about
how, given biological structure, symbolic representationalism really
doesn't seem that appropriate for evolved organisms either.

If you want references, email me.

Greg Stevens

stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

