[Hans Blom, 951024]
(i.kurtzer (951023.1600))
On the contrary: by _labeling_ a phenomenon Lorenz started another
branch of scientific inquiry. Labeling a new phenomenon is little
but drawing attention to that something, in an attempt to
communicate it to -- and to communicate about it with -- others.
but this word "imprinting" implicitly refers to a partial
explanation.
Necessarily? Only if you think so. Can't you just accept the word as
a (maybe badly chosen, but so what?) label the choice of which in
itself is unimportant but which is useful because it refers to some-
thing that we want to talk about?
We _need_ labels, whether we like it or not. My operating system
demands that I give my files a name if I want to store them on disk.
You may not like the names that I use, and I may disagree with yours,
but if we want to share access to a certain file we will both need to
use the same name. Labels are as practical as that. They have no
"deeper" meaning, unless you give it to them.
That is what I understand from your use of the word (label) "im-
plicitly". _You_ perceive -- idiosyncratic -- connotations when you
hear the word. Then why not weed your brain map and cut off those
annoying connotations?
If you raise objections against a word, it doesn't (yet) make sense
for you;
or it could be simply objectionable like "imprinting", or
"reinforcement", or "sign stimulus", or the seeemily boundless melee
of words scientists have in their lexicon like "lexicon".
Objectionable words? Like sex, God, cancer? People complain all the
time that certain words have nasty connotations for them and should
therefore not be used. They need taboos. And they do have a point.
All words can have links in our brain map that connect to things we'd
rather not be confronted with. So let's not use words anymore...
In silence,
Hans
[Hans Blom, 951026]
(Bruce Nevin (951024.1200 EST))
Another way to distinguish terms like "imprint" from terms like
"control" and "reference signal" is in the precision and specificity
of their definitions.
Do you know the "paradox of the heap", that logicians are fond of
(and annoyed by)? Given a heap of pebbles, will it still be a heap
when you take one pebble away? "Yes, of course", you say. So do take
a pebble away and repeat the question and the action. At some point,
nothing is left, yet we still ought to have a heap, logically.
All concepts are, upon further consideration, equally "fuzzy", even
those of mathematics, according to the philosophers -- and my own
experience. Precision and specificity of definitions are impossible,
except within severely restricted domains of discourse.
Take the distinction between "control" and "influence", for instance.
Do I "control" my perceptions or merely "influence" them? Maybe the
latter, since I observe that I am frequently content with realizing
my goals only approximately, thus not removing _all_ of the disturb-
ances. So these terms are fuzzy as well.
Yet that doesn't matter much. We're still able to communicate. We
know sufficiently well what we mean when we use the terms "control"
and "influence". They may apply equally in a certain case, yet one
draws our attention to the fact that we realize a desire, the other
to the fact that there are other factors as well that govern how we
act. But because of the fuzziness of concepts we will probably never
be able to truly "understand" each other in all details.
Greetings,
Hans
<[Bill Leach 951026.20:42 U.S. Eastern Time Zone]
[Hans Blom, 951026]
Do you know the "paradox of the heap", that logicians are fond of
(and annoyed by)? Given a heap of pebbles, will it still be a heap
when you take one pebble away? "Yes, of course", you say. So do take
a pebble away and repeat the question and the action. At some point,
nothing is left, yet we still ought to have a heap, logically.
And this is essentially the same problem as the (joke) question about how
long it will take to complete a trip if you travel half the remaining
distance in each step.
The problem is not with the "reality" but with the analysis and/or
analytical framework.
I think that this is related to the problem that Peter Burke is
expressing in some of his postings. We don't have much beyond the rather
vague ideas concerning how reorganization might function to allow a
complex control system to organize itself such that it is capable of
controlling perceptions in such a fashion as to reduce error. We have
even less of an understanding concerning the specifics related to
reference signals.
The fact that the PCT working model with only two output signals, two
input signals, and a couple of references can actually provide accurate
prediction of how a control system with probably many hundreds of
thousands of such system will perform in a specific experiemental
situation (no matter HOW SIMPLE) is astounding almost beyond belief.
Though this is a "belief" or "religious" sort of idea... Such an amazing
feat should all by itself be sufficient for considerable "faith" in the
very concept that living systems are fundamentally closed loop negative
feedback control systems!
Some of Peter's questions are beyond anything more than a general
assertion that evidence suggests that a mechanism does exist to
accomplish precisely what he is asking about and can do so by organizing
control loops.
There other "feeling" that I get from some of his questions is that this
"process" somehow converges upon our ideas of what it "should be" as
opposed to what Isaac was explaining a day or two ago... that is, it
converges to whatever it is and our explainations are only good to the
extent that they match what exists.
-bill
[Hans Blom, 951024]
(i.kurtzer (951023.1600))
>but this word "imprinting" implicitly refers to a partial
>explanation.
Necessarily? Only if you think so. Can't you just accept the word as
a (maybe badly chosen, but so what?) label the choice of which in
itself is unimportant but which is useful because it refers to some-
thing that we want to talk about?
That is what I understand from your use of the word (label) "im-
plicitly". _You_ perceive -- idiosyncratic -- connotations when you
hear the word. Then why not weed your brain map and cut off those
annoying connotations?
yes i fully realize the associations between labels and concepts and
between themselves are mind dependent and can sometimes be replaced by
others. but i don't think that persons typically choose words as
"labels" willy-nilly, but that the word was chosen according to how it
somehow captured something important about the said observation--so
you can say things like "weed out my brain-map" where i'm fairly sure
that you beleive in such a brain-map though this is as conjectural as
conjectures come. come one you know that "imprinting" is a fine example
of a conjecture and that when persons use this word they are not simply
stating what has occured, albeit a poor conjecture.
>If you raise objections against a word, it doesn't (yet) make sense
>for you;
>or it could be simply objectionable like "imprinting", or
>"reinforcement", or "sign stimulus", or the seeemily boundless melee
>of words scientists have in their lexicon like "lexicon".
Objectionable words? Like sex, God, cancer? People complain all the
time that certain words have nasty connotations for them and should
therefore not be used. They need taboos. And they do have a point.
All words can have links in our brain map that connect to things we'd
rather not be confronted with. So let's not use words anymore...
goodness, i'm sorry but this appeal to brain-maps/world-models/etc. is
starting to annoy me as it is precisely the type of explanation that adds
next to nothing in understanding shuffling from "observation" to
"explanation" at whim. the examples you listed are objectionable
in so far as they as persons missuse them introducing labels
as a short-term observation that clearly appeal to something beyond
observation (i.e. its connections in that platonic brain-map you speak of).
simply put this is the type of seemimgly innocent beginning that becomes
so intricately a part of the body of knowledge (response, instinct,
information, spreading activation, neural net, etc.) that disintanglement is
near futile. i say we avoid this problem by using the most honest
labels possible, those not excessively tied to that happy brain-map of
ours, not to sit in silence.
i.
ยทยทยท
Hans Blom (J.A.Blom@ELE.TUE.NL) wrote: