[FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15

[uǝlƃ ☣]

On conflating definition with cause, I tried to build a spectrum between the two using the concept of constructive explanation. But my line of reasoning doesn't seem to provide you (or anyone else on the list) with any traction. So, maybe I should abandon that.

To take a different tack, I can also hearken back to our conversations about metaphor when you talk about models. I still reject the idea that metaphor underlies so much of thought. Instead I believe thought relies on analogy, the distinction being laden with sophistry, I'm sure. But when you talk about "building a 3D model of the world from a POV", you're implicitly talking about an analogy between the physiology triggered when *actually* looking at some thing analogized with the physiology triggered when imagining/remembering that thing. The analogy is between the two generating mechanisms, the two *different* neurological structures that generate the same phenomenon.

In analogical reasoning, there are 2 main types: behavioral versus structural analogy. 1 phenomenon can be generated by 2 completely different mechanisms to create a (nearly pure) behavioral analogy -- a simulation. And 1 phenomenon can be generated by 2 mechanisms that are somewhat similar in structure. In reality, of course, any 2 (somewhat dissimilar) mechanisms will always generate 2 distinct phenomena. So, we have to talk about 2 types of similarity, behavioral and structural. But atop the similarity measures, we can define equivalence classes such that any 2 mechanisms within a class are "the same" and if that class is coherent, we can find a behavioral class containing both of the phenomena generated. (Which is where we get concepts like "supervenience", "neutral networks", and Dave's nod to Korzibski.)

Lest your dualism alarm go off again, however, note that the similarity measures need not be different. I've made the argument in some publication somewhere that a phenomenon at one layer is a mechanism at the next layer out. And a generator is a phenomenon for the next layer in. So similarity measures may be recursively applied. And lest you think we're simply swapping level dualism (higher vs. lower) for container dualism (inside vs. outside), any boundary can be a transducer. So, any mediator of a signal can be swapped out for another mediator, carrying the *same* signal. And we even have things like catalysts (amplifiers) and such, which, in one context mediate and, in another context, compose signals.

What you end up with is a Holy Fabric ... an irregular froth of transducing boundaries. And that froth can take pretty much any shape, some of which look dualist (inside vs outside), but most of which look like complex ontic structures of many types of thing.

On 12/21/19 8:45 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> Here, I think, we are in danger of confusing definition with cause, or, more subtly, mediation.  I agree that among humans the visual cortex (among many structures) /mediates /vision  But that begs the question of what vision /is/. When a robot sees, it is doing the same thing as we do when we see, but the seeing is mediated in a different way.  Seeing, I assert, in my lovable, stubborn, old codgery way, is “building a three dimensional model of the world from a point of view.”  
> 
> Arising in the pitch dark, on a moonless, night, I still try to see the room (make a model of it), although my eyes are useless in the task, and sometimes even misleading.  In talking of a “model of the world” am I slipping into representation-talk?  BLAT BLAT BLAT!  Dualism alarm.  Eric, help me out, here!  I think a monist would say, “What I mean by a model is not a leetle internal pictchah but a rather large set of expectations of the form, “If I turn right, I will bump into a door; if I veer to the left, I will trip over the cardboard box full of Christmas presents.  Etc.

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☣ uǝlƃ