[FRIAM] constructive explanations 2 (was: A pluralistic model of the mind?)

[uǝlƃ ☣]

I didn't see this contribution, either. Thanks, Nick. Since Nick, Frank, Dave, and Doug (NFDD) took the question in a different direction, I'll branch the thread differently.

Could you *describe* what the flower looks like? Obviously, yes. Could you give a constructive explanation of it? Maybe. In the other branch, NFDD have gone down the road of circumscription and *definition* [†], relying on, factoring out, that most of us share similar construction (human to human, visual cortex, eyeballs, skin, etc.). 

So to show how the NFDD attempt to factor construction out of the question might fail, we can change the question to:

  Could you give a constructive explanation for a flower's appearance to a bird?

I've raised this point before cf cross-species mind-reading. Imagine 2 behaviors: "smiling" and "feeling pain". When your dog "smiles" at you, can we inversely map from the dog's and your smiling phenomena to a *common* underlying mechanism that generates the smiling? I'd answer "No." But when we inversely map "feeling pain" to underlying mechanisms, I'd answer "Yes."

I can argue those answers, or not. But if we go back to the modified question of whether or not you can give a constructive explanation of a flower's appearance to a bird, I think it's safe to say "pretty much, though not completely constructive." That's because a bird has eyeballs and a neural structure fairly similar to ours. For a bee, on the other hand, any such description you gave to the bee would be MUCH less constructive.

[†] It would take some persuasion to convince you that "definition" is non-constructive. I tried to do that back when Lee posted his definition of "computation". But I suspect I failed.

On 12/11/19 12:44 PM, Bruce Simon wrote:
> Birds and bees see ultraviolet light but I don't.  Flowers give off UV but I can't have the experience of it.  A spectrophotometer can detect UV and I can see the dial move but that is not the same as experiencing it.  Suppose God gave me the ability to see like a bird.  Could I describe to you what the flower looks like (re. UV?).  


-- 
☣ uǝlƃ