Thanks for the comment, Rick.
Yes, “anthropomorphic analogies” can be dangerous and misleading things – yet it seems the science of such things remains quite wobbly – maybe even at CalTech.
Maybe the study of analogy itself will help “get the hook in the fish”.
*
I liked the old paper by Amos Tversky – “Features of Similarity” –
http://www.cogsci.northwestern.edu/Bayes/Tversky1977.pdf
mostly, I guess, because it is very linear – as I would define “linear”
(My radical postulate: “All order is linear”)
According to this very hopeful methodology of linearity everywhere – all complex composite abstractions floating out there in intuition and holism can ultimately be reduced to a 100% strictly linear analysis with something like numeric measurement at the bottom of the cascade. I think this is consistent with a programming lesson I got from Google recently affirming that “everything on the internet is a box”.
But this is very ambitious, and as far as I know, the full potential of this kind of model has never been realized. It’s just too hard to conceptualize, too many moving parts, going around some mysterious dimensional bend that seems to hold the whole thing together…
My highest flash on this general theme was something like (speaking of conceptual structure):
“Everything is made out of dimensions, and dimensions are made out of dimensions”
So, this is a kind of bottomless recursion – that I tend to suppose is a key to a fully integral and “sealed” ontology that might hope to encapsulate the full dimensionality of conceptual form within a single linear algebraic container.
What is down at the bottom of this, and how is everything built up from it? This question resonates with the metaphysical explanation, “It’s turtles all the way down”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
My guess is – this idea can be contained within something like Douglas Hofstadter’s ideas on Strange Loops to form a sealed ontological/taxonomic unit – containing “everything” from the infinitesimal to the infinite – both of which are defined as “unbounded”. Maybe why this has been so hard to prove has to do with something like the “one-sided” quality of a Moebius Strip. I like the idea of building all conceptual structure from the concept of “distinction” – and perhaps the single “edge” of a Moebius Strip is the endless single cutting distinction that a circle drawn in a two-dimensional plane would define as “everything inside the circle” and “everything outside the circle”. So, that “edge” is analogous to or identical with the continuum – “the unbroken one” envisioned by mystics – that fragments into “duality” because of our limited/immediate perspective and becomes the world of conceptual form with all its arbitrary/stipulated boundaries. Computer science – based on “bits” – the essence of 2-state non-ambiguity – 0/1 – seems like the right framework to contain a model like this (rather than, say, a bunch of algebra drawn on a piece of paper or held as reasonable in some human mind). So, maybe something like this framework – ultimately extremely simple, but hard to conceptualize – will emerge as an integral framework for the endlessly alternative ways humans can conceptualize reality, and the vast power of the internet might emerge as a way to hold civilization together….
Apologies for wandering. This is an occasional nervous tic with me – maybe it’s seasonal, like hay fever. When Lindsay Graham announces that he is running for President “because the world is falling apart”, some survival instinct in me seems to kick in. I keep thinking somebody is supposed to wake up and figure this out. Just a chronic reaction….
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/lindsey-graham-i-am-running-because-the-world-is-119274762516.html
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/29/gop_sen_lindsey_graham_the_world_is_%E2%80%9Cliterally_about_to_blow_up%E2%80%9D/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros
http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~coulson/203/tvgati.pdf
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rich Cooper
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2015 3:10 PM
To: '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Fruit fly emotions mimic human emotions - ontology discovery possible?
Bruce,
Thanks for the critique; you clearly see the linguistic complications of interpreting fruit fly behavior in anthropomorphic terms. Everything you said about defining, describing, naming, enumerating, and even architecting the emotions in easily communicable ways appears to be beyond the current state of the art. But the Cal Tech study seems to put a hook in that fish which we hope to reel in over the next few years of research. (Nice analogy, huh?).
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper,
Rich Cooper,
Chief Technology Officer,
MetaSemantics Corporation
MetaSemantics AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
( 9 4 9 ) 5 2 5-5 7 1 2
http://www.EnglishLogicKernel.com
No doubt I should restrain myself in this present august company, but having spent the last two days transversing the mysteries of website database migration, with ample illustration of semantic ambiguity along the way, and having searched this discussion for some reference to this old joke and not found one, I just can’t help it.
Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like a banana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_flies_like_an_arrow;_fruit_flies_like_a_banana
So what is the meaning of “mimic”
What is or is not an “emotion”
Are we talking about “analogy”
If so, in what dimensions? Can those be measured? Maybe we’re talking about “homomorphic attribute mapping?”
Or maybe “metaphor”
Or perhaps “synonym”
Or “comparison”
Or “similarity”
Or “simile”
Or “homomorphism”
Maybe we claim that in the end, there is no such thing as definition (except by hand-shaking agreement?)
Because all this stuff floats in a plastic sea of ungrounded dimensionality substantiated by soft statistical processes like Facebook likes….
No absolute foundation for defining anything?
No one best way to build information structures
No primal directives from a universal ontology
No absolute simplification by absolute data compression
Adhocery and sword-fighting forever…
Or – a new foundation that makes civilization workable…. ????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy
Ok, I really do know better, my apologies, but this old joke about the banana has been out there forever, and it seems so relevant….
Bruce Schuman, Santa Barbara
Here is a TEDx talk by the same professor (David Anderson):
http://tedxcaltech.caltech.edu/content/david-anderson
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper,
Rich Cooper,
Chief Technology Officer,
MetaSemantics Corporation
MetaSemantics AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
( 9 4 9 ) 5 2 5-5 7 1 2
http://www.EnglishLogicKernel.com
Ontologists All,
If fruit flies can and do indeed exhibit all the "component" emotions that humans can and do exhibit, then the fruit flies could be investigated as subjects in experiments about emotions, and about possible pharmaceutical candidates, related to emotional disturbances.
Here is a quote from a Cal Tech lab report:
"These experiments provide objective evidence that visual stimuli designed to mimic an overhead predator can induce a persistent and scalable internal state of defensive arousal in flies, which can influence their subsequent behavior for minutes after the threat has passed," Anderson says. "For us, that's a big step beyond just casually intuiting that a fly fleeing a visual threat must be 'afraid,' based on our anthropomorphic assumptions. It suggests that the flies' response to the threat is richer and more complicated than a robotic-like avoidance reflex."
The report doesn't identify which emotional "components" they "observed" in fruit flies after simulating existential threats to the flies. But I would expect Cal Tech professors to get their ducks in a straight row fairly often since Pasadena is so far from the surf. Here is the report from their web site:
http://www.caltech.edu/news/do-fruit-flies-have-emotions-46769
Would it be possible to automate an evoked response that demonstrates each emotional state designated by the professor as a "component"? If so, would it then be possible to write an ontology discovery program that explores that space using a buncha fruit flies crossed with a buncha experimental situations?
It would only have to start with the observed components' emotional effects. Then that information could be used to design specialized and generalized experiments to produce more organized behaviors. The experiments, specializations and generalizations would, of course, form some kind of lattice in the end if all components can be observed.
That could also be a way to work on identifying which of the emotional "components" are truly fundamental to those of us who are descended from the fruit fly. Perhaps even emotional illnesses, such as schizophrenia, OCD, bipolarity, etc. could be matched to new drugs based on this emotion research in flies.
But the first step is in creating an ontology that might be observed in other fruit flies, but varied due to their individual genetic divergences.
Suggestions anyone?
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper,
Rich Cooper,
Chief Technology Officer,
MetaSemantics Corporation
MetaSemantics AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
( 9 4 9 ) 5 2 5-5 7 1 2
http://www.EnglishLogicKernel.com