[From: Bruce Nevin (Tue 920423 08:32:46)]
(Martin Taylor 920622) --
As I see it, the key problem is more like: third, how does the brain identify
that there exists N objects of a certain kind rather than one strong exemplar
of the kind.
One possibly fruitful way to approach this is by attributing
differentiating perceptions to the individuals in memory and
imagination. This is what we do with language ("the green one"), and is
kind of an inverse of how Penni's "say-elaborating" process works. What
I am proposing is that we do this prior to language (though we use
language to facilitate and elaborate it). Indeed, I have proposed that
it is out of a clustering of attributed perceptions that categorization
itself arises.
Suppose we have ECSs (elementary control systems) controlling for ways
to differentiate between like perceptions by identifying other
perceptions associated with them as attributes. Is there any reason
this is implausible? In such a way we might develop control of category
perceptions.
One way to track four dots that soon becomes intractible is using their
history ("the one that started in the northwest corner"). An ECS alert
for differentia might entertain various hypotheses ("the bounciest one")
and develop a history of them (". . . is tired now"). A story, not in
words but in remembered perceptions. A story often told becomes a
stereotype. A stereotype of remembered behavioral outputs, perception
of any part of which may result in the expectation of the remainder (or
the sequel).
I think one way we differentiate between likes is subsumed into another
process, one that is more general because it is not limited to like
perceptions, one whereby perceptions are construed as elements in a
structure or system. For example, if the movements of four dots among
others were not entirely random but were such that they always formed
some sort of quadrilateral with the same individual in the northwest
quadrant, etc., the tracking problem would be much easier. If from time
to time the higher level structure (in this simple case a configuration
perception) were to change, tracking by this means could continue by
controlling for the history of change at the higher level. One might
detect and control for a cycle or rhythm in these changes (I believe we
must have some inbuilt predisposition to control for cyclicity).
As we have discussed in the past, something that is structurally
superordinate is not necessarily superordinate in the perceptual
hierarchy. Two configuration perceptions going on concurrently, in
parallel, themselves each provide input to a third configuration ECS.
The interaction of the two sorts of hierarchy gives the appearance of
loops on the same perceptual level (we have configurations of
configurations, idioms are sequences of words, which are sequences).
There may be loops involving more than one level of the control
hierarchy. I don't want to open that can of worms now (we're so easily
distracted), just to put out the hunch that this proposal might provide
means for dealing with these coherently.
I believe that creatures evidently without language, such as
chimpanzees, possess these capacities. Language gives us not so much a
new capacity, as finer control of it because of (among other things)
longer, easier, and clearer retention in memory, elaboration of these
capacities to higher levels of the control hierarchy, and above all
transmissibility. It is because of the transmissibility of linguistic
information that we can be less constrained to re-enacting stereotyped
behavioral outputs for the sake of social cooperation, as compared with
primates and other critters.
Which broaches the question of the basis for trust. Trust is the
foundation of leadership in the functional sense and authority in its
non-coercive senses, and trust is the reciprocal of coercion, that is,
lack of trust is the occasion and "justification" for leadership and
authority in their coercive senses. The evidence that I have seen
suggests that trust depends strongly on those mammalian and more
primitive stereotypes and expectations being fulfilled, including things
studied as body language and gestural manners-of-use of ordinary
language (conversational style per Tannen, etc.). These are reliable
precisely to the extent that they are *not* subject to conscious
manipulation. Nor is there any especial need to "outgrow" them per se:
they are not to blame for abuses of social assymmetry by individuals
whose trust as children was abused by adults who were abused, ex
antiquo, and other ripples into our biological present from various
ancient social dislocations, ancestral experiences of expulsion from the
Garden where we all, did we but awaken to it, in fact still dwell.
Among the memories and imaginings by which we differentiate individuals,
it is those bad dreams that we need to outgrow. For that, trust is both
the key for opening and the key that is found upon opening--rather like
the nested "aha!"s of science, or of art.
And that is one reason we do so well here. So how does the HPCT
perspective engender trust? To say you can't do otherwise than let
other control systems control because they will do so anyway is not
exactly reassuring to those who live in fear and therefore want to
control others. I have some thoughts here, but I'll let them rest.