Joslyn on Human Uniqueness

[Note from Gary Cziko: For some strange reason, Cliff Joslyn's notes often
don't make it to CSGnet but end up in listowner "problem mailbox." Cliff,
are you sending these to csg-l@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu?]

[from Cliff Joslyn 930509]

Rick Marken (930505.1230)

Gary Cziko (just a second ago) --

>Controlling perceptions through behavior is clearly not unique to humans.
>But I would venture to guess that the ability to control high-level
>perceptions such as principles or systems concepts is a uniquely human
>capacity.

In the Principia Cybernetica project we generally adhere to Val
Turchin's idea that the uniquely human level is the ability to control
the creation, and more importantly the assocation, of mental
representations. Thus we can "self-learn": by creating IMAGINED
perceptions the human can run mental simulations and run through
possibilities about future states, whether they have been previously
experienced or not. This is normally called thinking. Language etc.
follows, as does the morphological development of the vastly distended
human brain and cranium through the proposed Law of Branching Growth
of the Penultimate Level.

Now this sense of control may or may not be coherent w/that of PCT;
it's an interesting open question.

It also conflicts w/Bills idea about the necessary presence of
imagination at low levels of control systems.

I'm cc'ing this to the other PCP editors.

O----------------------------------------------------------------------------->

Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large, 327 Spring St #2 Portland ME 04102 USA
Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
cjoslyn@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu joslyn@kong.gsfc.nasa.gov

V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .