Since I'm not a practicing scientist, I don't presume to provide "specific, credible, referenced, scientific information". So, as an amateur philosopher, on a philosophy forum, I have to limit my posts to philosophical theorizing & speculation.If you have specific, credible, referenced, scientific information that describes or explains mental processes, please post it. That's what this thread is about. — T Clark
Human grammar is an example of a “discrete combinatorial system.” A finite number of discrete elements (in this case, words) are sampled, combined, and permuted to create larger structures (in this case, sentences) with properties that are quite distinct from those of their elements. — T Clark
I think I have some idea what he's talking about, but I didn't dig in to it in my response to him. — T Clark
I dont think Pinker’s approach is strictly compatible with Damasio. — Joshs
Let me try again in even simpler terms using the concepts of computational processes. — apokrisis
the Romantic and Enlightened conception of humans as Cartesian creatures. Half angel, half beast. A social drama of the self that you can't take your eyes off for a second. — apokrisis
That doesn't sound like anything I read in Pinker's book. — T Clark
It is about understanding the deep structure of the very thing of an organism. You can’t even see what counts as the right detail without having the right big picture. — apokrisis
When was it written? — apokrisis
I’d like to discuss what the proper approach to thinking about the mind is. — T Clark
You pissing on Pinker and others like him doesn't make your arguments more convincing. — T Clark
The brain models a self~world relation. That is why consciousness feels like something - the something that is finding yourself as a self in its world. — apokrisis
The computational paradigm boils down to a simple argument. Data input gets crunched into data output. Somehow information enters the nervous system, gets processed via a collection of specialised cognitive modules, and then all that results – hands starting to wave furiously at this point - in a consciously experienced display. — apokrisis
I appreciate you providing Lakoff's comments, although not much of what he has written seems to have much to do with language. As I noted, there is little discussion about reason in "The Language Instinct," and what there was wasn't included in the part I wrote about. — T Clark
Why can't this happen in the dark — bert1
They say there is no language instinct , but rather , out of which language emerged in different ways in different cultures. — Joshs
They say there is no language instinct , but rather innate capacities for complex cognition — Joshs
Why can't this happen in the dark
— bert1
But as I pointed out, the modelling relation approach to neural information processing says the brain’s aim is to turn the lights out. It targets a level of reality prediction where it’s forward model can cancel the arriving sensory input. — apokrisis
I think the question is, why can't a (super impressive, say mammal-imitating) neural network type machine be a zombie, just like a similarly impressive but old-style symbolic computer/android? — bongo fury
Artificial Life Needs a Real Epistemology (1995)
Foundational controversies in artificial life and artificial intelligence arise from lack of decidable criteria for defining the epistemic cuts that separate knowledge of reality from reality itself, e.g., description from construction, simulation from realization, mind from brain.
Selective evolution began with a description-construction cut, i.e., the genetically coded synthesis of proteins. The highly evolved cognitive epistemology of physics requires an epistemic cut between reversible dynamic laws and the irreversible process of measuring initial conditions. This is also known as the measurement problem.
Good physics can be done without addressing this epistemic problem, but not good biology and artificial life, because open-ended evolution requires the physical implementation of genetic descriptions. The course of evolution depends on the speed and reliability of this implementation, or how efficiently the real or artificial physical dynamics can be harnessed by non-dynamic genetic symbols
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221531066_Artificial_Life_Needs_a_Real_Epistemology
Possibly apokrisis is following that reading, and saying that, paradoxically, consciousness happens as the organism strives to avoid it. — bongo fury
I find it hard to understand what the nuances of difference are between 'innate capacities for complex cognition' and an 'innate , and therefore universal , computational module'. Sounds like different language for a similar phenomenon. — Tom Storm
An innate language module of the Chomskian sort specifies a particular way of organizing grammar prior to and completely independent of social interaction. Lakoff’s innate capacities for cognition do not dictate any particular syntactic or semantic patterns of language. Those are completely determined by interaction. — Joshs
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