Dear John, Pat, Azamat and Doug, (01)
I think that trying to distinguish between
awareness (Doug's word) or consciousness (your
word) and more automatic or instinctual reactions,
is not observable. I suggested Pavlov's approach
before, but as John pointed out, Pavlov's work was
a century ago, and more recent work on
conditioning and stimuli have gone a lot deeper.
So I have abandoned that as a useful modeling
construct. (02)
But the point that convinced me to leave out the
distinction between conscious awareness and
reactive awareness is the impossibility of
measuring it, and therefore of observing it in
meaningful ways. Ideally, it would be useful to
have such a distinction, but I don't think it has
practical implementations; therefore I would
rather not have it cluttering up the ontology with
indistinguishable contexts that depend on
unobtainable data. (03)
HTH,
-Rich (04)
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2 (05)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Pat Hayes
Sent: Sunday, September 04, 2011 8:57 PM
To: John F. Sowa
Cc: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantics of Natural
Languages (06)
On Sep 4, 2011, at 10:27 PM, John F. Sowa wrote: (07)
> Pat, Rich, and Azamat,
>
> PH
>> I am finding this whole thread rather
bewildering.
>
> I don't blame you.
>
> Self interest is necessary for self preservation
in every species, (08)
Um. I can understand this in two ways, one of them
tautologous and the other clearly false. Either
way, it does not seem very useful. If we define
'self interest' (as I would be inclined to do) so
that it implies cognitive abilities, perhaps even
consciousness, then clearly this is not necessary
for survival in most species, since most species
(and until fairly recently in biological time, all
species) do not have the requisite cognitive
capacity to exhibit interest of any kind, let
alone self-interest. If on the other hand we so
define 'self-interest' that anything that competes
for survival is exhibiting it, then to say that
all species exhibit self-interest is just to say
that all species survive long enough to reproduce,
which is virtually a tautology, since any species
that did not exhibit this trait would rapidly
become extinct and cease to be a species. (09)
I would add that reading 'the selfish gene' leads
one to the idea that it is the genome that has the
'urge' to reproduce, rather than the individual.
On this view, it might be more accurate to say
that our DNA has self-interest, and we are simply
the means it uses to achieve its goals. (010)
Pat (011)
> and it would be part of any theory that includes
subjectivity.
> I have made some suggestions for generalizing
the project.
>
> RC
>> I chose the term self-interest because that
explains a huge
>> portion of the political scenarios that were
discussed
>> in the beginning of this thread.
>
> I have been trying to point out that the best
you can get out
> of an ontology is a clear and precise definition
of terms.
>
> To get any kind of testable predictions and
practical advice
> about politics (or any other subject), you need
to get some
> actual data -- i.e., facts. You won't get any
such thing
> from the definitions in an ontology.
>
> And judging from the discussions we've been
having, I believe
> that you can get better definitions more quickly
by consulting
> any off-the-shelf dictionary designed for human
consumption.
>
> AA
>> Perhaps the phylogenically attributed "virtues"
(self sacrifice
>> a la apoptosis, sexiness as viewed from the
opposite gender,
>> healthiness observables [power, wealth,
generosity a la peacock
>> displays.] as viewed from all genders .) are
the ones at the top
>> (nil end) of the lattice.
>
> Any ontology of self interest will involve all
subjective aspects
> including the ones you mentioned.
>
> Just one point: it's misleading to call the top
of the lattice
> the "nil end". It's true that the top has no
axioms (i.e., no
> constraints). That means it applies to anything
and everything.
>
> That point was noted as early as Aristotle: the
more axioms in
> a theory, the greater the constraints, and the
fewer individuals
> it applies to. Conversely, the fewer the
axioms, the fewer the
> constraints, and the greater the number of
individuals.
>
> Therefore, the top node, which has no axioms,
says nothing,
> and it's therefore true of everything. Rather
than call it
> the nil end, it's more appropriate to call it
the universal end.
>
> John
>
>
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