Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
On 11/27/2013 12:32 AM, Rich Cooper wrote:
> Peirce may have
gotten it from old Greeks also, but it seems
> too well known to
have been originated only so recently as Peirce.
Plato believed that the
real world was an imperfect approximation
to the purity of the
eternal ideas or forms. He was the ultimate
armchair philosopher who
believed that experiment was irrelevant.
I guess that lets him out
as the originator of the discovery square.
Aristotle's father was a
physician. That gave him a much better
appreciation for the need
to observe, experiment, and record
the results of the
experiments and observations.
The aforesaid cut and fit
method, which works a lot better for discovery.
Until the 13th century,
Neoplatonism dominated European philosophy.
Physicians followed Galen,
who was strongly influenced by Aristotle.
The big revolution
occurred when Thomas Aquinas made Aristotle safe
for Christianity.
Why has Ari not so safe
prior to TA’s appearance? Everything I have heard about TA’s
point of view is extremely logical defense of church dogma, kind of a super Jesuit.
In his day, the church still dominated political and economic life, such as it
was. How was Ari involved in that?
Roger Bacon and other
scientists influenced by
Aristotle developed the
scientific methods. Francis Bacon (16th -
17th c) missed the point
when he blamed Aristotle for the stagnation.
Well the old Greeks
certainly did stagnate, and the horrid Middle Ages wasted a lot of human
capital. But I thought it was the fall of the Romans as dictators to the
known world, thanks to pissed off Barbarians, that threw civilization off the
cliff.
Peirce's father had taught
him Greek & Latin as a child, and he was
familiar with all of the
above. He credited Aristotle with the three
methods of
reasoning: deduction, induction, and abduction.
I drew the diagram in
slide 32 of http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/goal5.pdf
which I used to relate
Peirce's cycle of pragmatism to the tools and
techniques developed in
AI.
The significant similarity
I wanted to emphasize was the brain regions
involved. The first
two steps of the OODA loop (Observe and Orient)
depend on the posterior
regions of the brain (parietal, temporal,
and occipital
lobes). But the last two steps (Decide and Act) depend
on the frontal
lobes. James Albus makes that point very strongly in
his diagram (and the paper
cited).
But remember that is
still only theory. We have some supporting evidence about what the
various regions do, and we are developing ever more refined theories about it
with fMRI every day. But our experiments are still contaminated by our theories
because we cannot deconstruct the brains we work on, at least not the human
ones, while they are still functional.
That could change in a
relatively near term way with all the advances, but we are not there yet.
For the OODA loop and the
Albus cycle, see slides 37 and 38 of
http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/goal2.pdf
. The earlier slides in
goal2.pdf go into much
more detail (as does the paper by Albus).
But my slides can be
useful background before reading Albus.
John
What would you suggest as an intro to
Albus? I found his YouTube on intelligence, but it didn’t present
any science or engineering, just a declarative definition of autonomous
vehicles and a few examples of current military vehicles.
-Rich