Re: [ontolog-forum] Fruit fly emotions mimic human emotions - ontology d

[Thomas Johnston <tmj44p@xxxxxxx>]

Rich,

Your Gardenfors quotation is very consistent with what I'm (re-)reading in his Conceptual Spaces: the Geometry of Thought. 

However there, "dimensions" is a more technical concept, used to define "domains" which in turn are used to define "conceptual spaces". 

His distinction between convex and non-convex conceptual spaces is crucial to the explanatory force of his theory (which he explicitly posits as an intermediate theory which can reconcile connectionism and mental representation theories like Jerry Fodor's). 

Any two points in a convex domain can be connected by a straight line; not so in any non-convex space. And so representing concepts as points in domains, he has a way of distinguishing "essentially related concepts" from all the others. 

In his Chapter 6, he uses this distinction to explain the distinction between projectable and non-projectable properties. This distinction (besides having connections to The Frame Problem) lies at the heart of the "riddle of induction" (how do you distinguish properties you can base good inductions on, from other properties)? This is most famously expressed as Nelson Goodman's grue/bleen paradox.

I noticed John Sowa's name in Gardenfor's acknowledgements in that book. Perhaps John would have some insight to offer on this subject.

On Wednesday, May 20, 2015 1:30 PM, Rich Cooper <metasemantics@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Here is a quote from Gaerdenfors, who is using a class word "dimension" to describe all the ways in which attributes (sensor input and output) are processed neurologically:

 

For example, the input variables of a robot may be a small number of physically measured magnitudes, like brightness, delay of a radar echo, or the pressure from a mechanical grip. With the aid of the programmed goals of the robot, these variables can then be transformed into a number of physical output magnitudes as, for example, the voltages of the motors controlling the left and the right wheels.  To give an example of the distinction, consider color. The distinction introduced here is supported by Gallistel (1990, p. 518–519) who writes: The facts about color vision suggest how deeply the nervous system maybe committed to representing stimuli as points in descriptive spaces of modest dimensionality. It does this even for spectral compositions, which does not lend itself to such a representation. The resulting lack of correspondence between the psychological representation of spectral composition and spectral composition itself is a source of confusion and misunderstanding in scientific discussions of color. Scientists persist in referring to the physical characteristics of the stimulus and to the tuning characteristics of the transducers (the cones) as if psychological color terms like red, green, and blue had some straightforward translation into physical reality, when in fact they do not. 

 

From page 14 of:

http://musicweb2.ucsd.edu/~sdubnov/Mu206/gaerdenfors.pdf

 

As you can see from the above, anthropopathy is rife in all of science, art, religion, finance, technology and entertainment.  That is because we project our own personal ontology, with emotional value weighting, onto the world we sense.  We retrieve our relevant stored ontology (interconnections, IMHO) and memories in an effort to relate it to our prior experiences recorded in our brains.  We can only make interpretations of the present through a filter of our past emotionally similar experiences. 

 

A clinical psychologist friend of mine once told me that memories are retrieved by associating the present emotional state with similarity to emotionally similar memories that surface in the brain.  Also, he said that there are only a few factors that participate in each memory. 

 

So there is a reason to study emotions seriously, even though our tools are rough at the moment. 

 

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

 

From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rich Cooper
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 9:02 AM
To: 'Thomas Johnston'; '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Fruit fly emotions mimic human emotions - ontology discovery possible?

 

Dear Thomas,

 

You wrote:

TJ: 1. How would the Cal Tech scientists know what the basic "emotional neurochemicals" are? That would depend on knowing what fruit fly behavior resulted from what emotions.

 

From their publications I've read, they are using the same biochemicals known to have function in the human brain - Dopamine, Epinephrine, Norepinephrine, and the others known to be associated with human emotional expressions. 

 

As you might note, that still is basing observations of emotional behavior on the psychological filter of the observer.  I don't see a way around that fact at this point, but as deeper knowledge is gained from experiments (those we can't do on people who might object), the researchers might expand their list of biochemicals through the usual discovery process, like the one I described in my '923 about unstructured text interpretation. 

 

TJ: Also, my word-play on Venus fly traps was intended to make a serious point. On what grounds would the Cal Tech scientists interpret fruit fly behavior, but not interpret Venus fly trap behavior, as mediated by "emotional chemicals"? 

 

On funding grounds; they are only studying fruit flies for now.  Venus fly traps will have to await a new project with funding for them.  But if the fruit fly has relationships with Venus fly traps, it might show up when the fruit fly is exposed to them but not eaten. 

 

TJ: If it's the assumption that neurons are required for emotions, then what about the famous neurons in the snail Aplysia, the study of which led to Eric Kandel's receiving the Nobel prize?

 

I didn't see that explicit assumption in their work (neurons required for emotion), but it seems that both neurons and neurochemicals would be involved in any physiological action that so strongly affects the body as emotions do. 

 

What is an Aplysia?  Do you have references to the Eric Kandel work?  That sounds like a good reference.  I found the following paragraph on wiki at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aplysia_gill_and_siphon_withdrawal_reflex

 

Wiki: Nonassociative learning is a change of the behavior of an animal due to an experience from specific kinds of stimuli. In contrast to associative learning the behavioral change is not caused by the animals learning that a particular temporal association occurs between the stimuli. There are three different forms of nonassociative learning examined in Aplysia: habituation, dishabituation and sensitization. Eric Kandel and colleagues were the first to demonstrate that Aplysia californica is capable of displaying both habituation and dishabituation.^[1]

Habituation in Aplysia californica is when a stimulus is repeatedly presented to an animal and there is a progressive decrease in response to that particular stimulus.^[1]

Dishabituation in Aplysia californica is when the animal is presented to another novel stimulus and a partial or complete restoration of a habituated response occurs.^[1]

Sensitization in Aplysia californica is the increase of a response due to the presentation of a novel, often noxious, stimulus.

 

A deeper response than that would be useful if you think it bears on the issue.  But the problem of essential attribution of emotions is something I can't see any way around at this point.  Can you?

 

TJ: When Aplysia withdraws from a stimulus, are the neurochemicals involved "emotional neurochemicals"? If the Cal Tech scientists said they are, wouldn't they be guilty of your charge of anthropomorphizing? And if that is true, aren't they already guilty of that charge by doing research on the "emotional neurochemicals" of Drosophilia?

 

Yes, the Cal Techies would certainly be anthropomorphizing, and yes, they are already guilty of such behavior on this project.  But can you suggest an alternative that is within reasonable research budgets for opening up neurological research into emotions, short of trying to track all the millions of active chemicals in the brain?  Given the very limited state of knowledge in this area, and the vast amount of missing knowledge in front of us, it seems a reasonable next step.  But yes, the knowledge gained will be extremely inexact and filtered by the researchers' biases.  We have to live with that for now. 

 

Thanks for the O'Shea reference.  I found a PDF here in case anyone else is interested:

http://zung.zetamu.net/Library/Education/Education_Neuroscience/OShea_Brain_2006.pdf

 

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

 

From: Thomas Johnston [mailto:tmj44p@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 8:24 AM
To: Rich Cooper; '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Fruit fly emotions mimic human emotions - ontology discovery possible?

 

Hi Rich,

 

Your questions and comments are very much to the point. My response, in brief, is this:

 

1. How would the Cal Tech scientists know what the basic "emotional neurochemicals" are? That would depend on knowing what fruit fly behavior resulted from what emotions. And, as you said:

 

<<<<< 

That depends on the observer's interpretation.  Why would flying indicate anything emotional?  You are anthropomorphizing flying with human-interpreting events. 

>>>>>  

 

Indeed. Why would any fruit fly behavior indicate the presence of "emotional neurochemicals"? That's my point. It isn't me, but the Cal Tech scientists, who appear to be "anthropomorphizing flying with human-interpreting events".

 

Also, my word-play on Venus fly traps was intended to make a serious point. On what grounds would the Cal Tech scientists interpret fruit fly behavior, but not interpret Venus fly trap behavior, as mediated by "emotional chemicals"? 

 

If it's the assumption that neurons are required for emotions, then what about the famous neurons in the snail Aplysia, the study of which led to Eric Kandel's receiving the Nobel prize? When Aplysia withdraws from a stimulus, are the neurochemicals involved "emotional neurochemicals"? If the Cal Tech scientists said they are, wouldn't they be guilty of your charge of anthropomorphizing? And if that is true, aren't they already guilty of that charge by doing research on the "emotional neurochemicals" of Drosophilia?

 

For a very good short introduction to these neurological issues, I highly recommend:

 

Michael O'Shea. The Brain: a Very Short Introduction (2005). 

 

2. "Draining the concept of concept of meaning" simply means being willing to attribute concept possession on the basis of very little evidence. What meaning the concept of concept has, that could be drained away, is evidenced in the immense body of literature in philosophy of mind. One might best begin looking up topics like "concepts", "theories of meaning" and "mental representation", not to mention "externalism" and "internalism", and the connectionist vs. representationalist debate between, among others, Paul Churchland and Jerry Fodor.

 

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy are open sources, and both are peer-reviewed. But in getting started, the IEP is usually best, with the SEP for a deeper dive.

 

Regards,

 

Tom

 

 

On Wednesday, May 20, 2015 10:44 AM, Rich Cooper <metasemantics@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

 

Hello Thomas,

 

Thanks for your comments:

 

TJ: I don't know how we could derive ontological categories from observations of fruit files, even from observations correlated with identifiable patterns of stimuli in identifiable regions of the fly's brain (something, anyway, which I doubt can be reliably done). 

 

If a fruit fly flies off in one direction, is it flying towards a desired object (a mate, food) or away from a feared object (a bird, any other large moving object)? If it is flying towards a mate, that's how we would describe what it's doing. But in what sense does the fly itself have the concept of a mate?

 

That depends on the observer's interpretation.  Why would flying indicate anything emotional?  You are anthropomorphizing flying with human-interpreting events.  The real value of the Cal Tech work is in having access to the fly's central emotional neurons, which are hypothesized to be in a tiny area of the brain.  So the "meaning" of a stimulus is only organized in the fly brain, not in the observer brain.  The "meaning" of any stimulus depends on the fly, not on the observer.  The observer's attribution of meaning is simply wrong.  Get the basic emotional neurochemicals first, then hypothesize an emotional reason that fits with the fly's actions after the stimulus is presented.   

 

TJ: If we drain the concept of concept of enough meaning, than any pattern of behavior could be said to manifest the use of a concept in making a judgment (the judgment to carry out that behavior). And the concept we attribute, in those attenuated cases, will be very much a product of our own interpretative prejudices. The fruit fly ontology we come up with will be more or less an Alice in Wonderland ontology.

 

And if we drain the concept of concept of enough meaning to attribute concepts (ontological categories) to fruit flies, then I think it's not a very big step beyond that to attribute desire and hunger to Venus fly traps!

 

How does one "drain the concept of meaning"?  I don't understand your statement.  Could you please elaborate on how that is possible given that the "meaning" is in the fruit fly, not in the observer.  The observer's attributed "meaning" would be completely unrecognizable to the fruit fly. 

 

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

 

From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Thomas Johnston
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 7:06 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Fruit fly emotions mimic human emotions - ontology discovery possible?

 

I don't know how we could derive ontological categories from observations of fruit files, even from observations correlated with identifiable patterns of stimuli in identifiable regions of the fly's brain (something, anyway, which I doubt can be reliably done). 

 

If a fruit fly flies off in one direction, is it flying towards a desired object (a mate, food) or away from a feared object (a bird, any other large moving object)? If it is flying towards a mate, that's how we would describe what it's doing. But in what sense does the fly itself have the concept of a mate?

 

If we drain the concept of concept of enough meaning, than any pattern of behavior could be said to manifest the use of a concept in making a judgement (the judgement to carry out that behavior). And the concept we attribute, in those attenuated cases, will be very much a product of our own interpretative prejudices. The fruit fly ontology we come up with will be more or less an Alice in Wonderland ontology.

 

And if we drain the concept of concept of enough meaning to attribute concepts (ontological categories) to fruit flies, then I think it's not a very big step beyond that to attribute desire and hunger to Venus fly traps!

 

 

 

 

On Tuesday, May 19, 2015 12:02 PM, John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

 

On 5/18/2015 7:44 PM, Rich Cooper wrote:
> I am interested in the emotions, their interrelationships,
> and math models of how they work in a library of situations.

There have been many, many such models over the centuries.
For a model developed by the psychologist David Matsumoto and
applied to "human intelligence", see
http://www.humintell.com/macroexpressions-microexpressions-and-subtle-expressions/

That page has 7 sample faces that express his "universal facial
expressions of emotion":  Happy, Surprise, Contempt, Sadness, Anger,
Disgust, and Fear.  It also cites some publications that describe
applications of that classification.

> I am looking for an algorithm that could, with sizeable numbers
> of fruit flies, and sizeable numbers of situations experimentally
> simulated to the flies, elicit the ontology of the fruit fly's
> response CLASS TYPEs through observing the behavior of the fruit flies.

I got that message from your previous note.

JFS
> Don't expect a "unified theory" based on a simple combination
> of features or components.

RC
> But do use a simple framework of combinations of the common
> components to explore the emotion space.

Philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists
have devoted many person-millennia to exploring the "emotion space"
with a huge number of simple and complex frameworks.

If anybody comes up with a really good combination, I would express
something between Happy and Surprise.  But I'm not holding my breath.

John

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