Here is what Gardenfors said:
working out a system of
perceptual dimension, a system of kinds
of similarities, may be one
of the major intellectual achievements
of early childhood. [. . . ]
The basic developmental notion is one of
differentiation, from global
syncretic classes of perceptual resemblance
and magnitude to
dimensionally specific kinds of sameness
and magnitude.
"Syncretic" in a dictionary is defined as
"composed of differing and inconsistent beliefs".
So Gardenfors sees competing perceptual resemblances
(similarity) in a plurality of such perceptions when we are exposed to a
situation.
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: William Frank
[mailto:williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 2:23 PM
To: Thomas Johnston; [ontolog-forum]
Cc: Rich Cooper
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Fruit fly emotions mimic human emotions -
ontology discovery possible?
On 'anthropomorphism", a
doubtful concept.
Claiming that we have no way of
'knowing' what other species experience assumes we have a special relationship
with all human beings, and that we CAN know what THEY all feel and think, but
only them. I think we can, too, know what other people must be feeling,
except that we can know in the very SAME way what dogs feel, just not to the
same degree of accuracy. Believing that 'anthropomorphism' is a mistake
is a better idea than familyism, tribalism, nationalism, sexism or racism, but
I can see no more reason for speciesism to be the place to draw a hard line
than any of the others. I am pretty sure I can know what my brother
feels and my friends feel, better than I can know what some other people feel.
The Happiness of the Chimpanzee - A
Gabon Fable
The
two hunters Ntino and Iko were strolling one day through the forest. They
came across some chimpanzees who were playing in the branches of a mulemba
tree. “Look at the chimpanzees,” Nitino said. “Look how easily they swing
through the branches. This is the happiness of the chimpanzee.”
“How
can you know?” Iko said. “You are not a chimpanzee. How can you know if
it is happy?” “But you are not me,” Ntino said. How can you know if I can
know the happiness of the chimpanzee?”
My conclusions: 1. people have opinions about these matters
without having thought very deeply about them, 2. saying that it
'anthropomorphic' and so wrong to identify 'emotion' centers in the tiny brains
of fruitflies, if we can identify them in the brains of people, (or
chimpanzees, or dogs)
On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 11:23 AM, Thomas Johnston <tmj44p@xxxxxxx> wrote:
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.
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.
Chief Technology Officer,
MetaSemantics Corporation
MetaSemantics AT
EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
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 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.
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