Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Neither Brain nor Ghost - Book Chapter Summaries 

Neither Brain nor Ghost - Book Chapter Summaries by Teed Rockwell.

In the post, Words (or URI) as Locations in the Fabric of Context, I speculated that a full interpretation of a name (or word, or URI in the semantic web) would require access to a web of associations extending out very far in computational space. But Teed Rockwell, in his book, Neither Brain nor Ghost, points to a solution.

"However, if the self is embodied by the brain/body/world nexus, rather than by the brain alone, there is no need for the world to get inside the head in order for the self to be aware of it. However, in order to avoid the vacuously mystical claim that “we are one with everything” , we need a very specific and technical definition of “world”. It would be trivial to claim that the entire causal nexus responsible for a mental state embodies a mental state. But once we see “world” as a biological concept defined by function, it can have borders that go beyond the brain without encompassing so much as to be meaningless or trivial. Every organism has a symbiotic relationship with specific aspects of reality in its immediate spatial vicinity. It is these elements which the science of ecology calls an organism’s environment , and which Heidegger and others have called a creature’s “umwelt”."

Then with respect to the problem of context, the extent to which attention to the web of associations needs to extend is limited by the purpose of the agent. Just as he does with "world", once we see "context" as "a biological concept defined by function", then its limits are potentially computable.

# posted by John Black @ 11:19 PM
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Prior Art

Socrates

"We are in the habit, I take it, of positing a single idea or form in the case of the various multiplicities to which we give the same name. Do you not understand?" "I do." "In the present case, then, let us take any multiplicity you please; for example, there are many couches and tables." "Of course." "But these utensils imply, I suppose, only two ideas or forms, one of a couch and one of a table." "Yes." "And are we not also in the habit of saying that the craftsman who produces either of them fixes his eyes on the idea or form, and so makes in the one case the couches and in the other the tables that we use, and similarly of other things? For surely no craftsman makes the idea itself. How could he?" "By no means."
Plato, Republic X, page 596a

David Hume

"This convention is not of the nature of a promise: For even promises themselves, as we shall see afterwards, arise from human conventions. It is only a general sense of common interest; which sense all the members of the society express to one another, and which induces them to regulate their conduct by certain rules. I observe, that it will be for my interest to leave another in the possession of his goods, provided he will act in the same manner with regard to me. He is sensible of a like interest in the regulation of his conduct. When this common sense of interest is mutually expressed, and is known to both, it produces a suitable resolution and behaviour. And this may properly enough be called a convention or agreement betwixt us, though without the interposition of a promise; since the actions of each of us have a reference to those of the other, and are performed upon the supposition, that something is to be performed on the other part. Two men, who pull the oars of a boat, do it by an agreement or convention, though they have never given promises to each other. Nor is the rule concerning the stability of possession the less derived from human conventions, that it arises gradually, and acquires force by a slow progression, and. by our repeated experience of the inconveniences of transgressing it. On the contrary, this experience assures us still more, that the sense of interest has become common to all our fellows, and gives us a confidence of the future regularity of their conduct: And it is only on the expectation of this, that our moderation and abstinence are founded. In like manner are languages gradually established by human conventions without any promise. ..." - A Treatise of Human Nature, Chapter 74 by David Hume

John Locke

"...Semeiotike, or the doctrine of signs; the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also Logike, logic: the business whereof is to consider the nature of signs, the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or conveying its knowledge to others. For, since the things the mind contemplates are none of them, besides itself, present to the understanding, it is necessary that something else, as a sign or representation of the thing it considers, should be present to it: and these are ideas. And because the scene of ideas that makes one man's thoughts cannot be laid open to the immediate view of another, nor laid up anywhere but in the memory, a no very sure repository: therefore to communicate our thoughts to one another, as well as record them for our own use, signs of our ideas are also necessary: those which men have found most convenient, and therefore generally make use of, are articulate sounds. The consideration, then, of ideas and words as the great instruments of knowledge, makes no despicable part of their contemplation who would take a view of human knowledge in the whole extent of it. And perhaps if they were distinctly weighed, and duly considered, they would afford us another sort of logic and critic, than what we have been hitherto acquainted with." - AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING by John Locke 1690