Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

[thompnickson2]

Dave,

Is this embodied mind?  Or Stygmergy? Or are they the same?  I just don't know. Josh?

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, May 6, 2020 7:07 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

An observation that might lead to a testable hypothesis of embodied mind:

High school students spent the morning, in a classroom, learning comparative fractions, taking tests that proved they could solve this kind of problem. In the afternoon the went across the street to the supermarket and asked to decide which was the better buy:  12 ounces at $2 or 18 ounces at $4. Individuals who score 100% in the classroom, were able to solve the problem in the grocery story less than 50% of the time.

Tailors in Morocco spend their days laying out patterns on bolts of cloth and are sufficiently skilled at this tiling problem their wastage is less than 2%. Removed from the bazaar, installed in a classroom, and given scaled paper cutouts and paper bolt of cloth, they could not do better than 15% wastage.

I remember reading about similar situations involving car mechanics and reading comprehension (ebook versus paper).

The material is in the anthropology literature - Jean Lave comes to  mind as possible author, Ettiene Wegner - but not at all sure I am remembering correctly.

The authors suggested that "knowledge" was somehow stored in "context" with context quite literally being the physical environment in which the person was learning.

How to design a controlled experiment???

davew


On Tue, May 5, 2020, at 4:04 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> Thanks. I've read the Chemero one. And I've read something by Hutto,
> but I don't think it was that. Regardless, my (maybe testable)
> hypothesis is what I'm interested in:
>
> If a black box demonstrates behavior that can't be captured by any
> (known) algorithm, then that would be an indication that something
> (unmodelable) was happening inside the black box. And that unmodelable
> thing might be called "thinking".
>
> We can extend that, I think, to "surprising behavior", which I think
> gets at what we usually mean by "thinking". If a black box
> demonstrates a long memory with not-quite-but-almost predictable
> behavior, then we might accuse it of thinking.
>
> Both would be counter-examples to Dave's assertion.
>
> On 5/5/20 2:55 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> > So, there are a few varieties of that right now, that are trying to
> > get along well together. Emobidied Cognition, Enactivism, Ecological Psychlogy, Extended Cognition, etc. As a starting point for that work, especially for the more mathematically inclined, I recommend "Radical Embodied Cognitive Science" by Tony Chemero <http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-reading-group-chemero-2009-radical.html>, for the more philosophically inclined, I recommend "Radicalizing Enactivism" by Dan Hutto <https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/radicalizing-enactivism>, and for the more general thinker interested in an overview of cool ideas I recommend "Beyond the Brain" by Louise Barrett <http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2012/01/beyond-brain-review-out.html>.
>
> --
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[gepr]

On 5/6/20 6:37 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> There's a paper by Shalizi or Crutchfield, maybe, that talks about tradeoffs between space and time in computation that I'm pretty sure was posted on this list at some point. That type of evaluation criteria applied to both the computational model of C. elegans and the actual worm would, I think, come close to testing this "holographic" principle expressed by EricC. I'll try to find that tradeoff paper.

Aha! Even better than Crutchfield's work (which always uses ε-machines), the paper I was thinking of is by Wolpert, Kolchinsky, and Owen:

A space–time tradeoff for implementing a function with master equation dynamics
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09542-x

Perhaps more relevant to testing this "holographic" principle might be a paper they cite (by the same authors):

Number of hidden states needed to physically implement a given conditional distribution
https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.00765


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[gepr]

Well, this goes back to the branch Jochen started a long time ago regarding path dependence and the hard problem. The question I asked was how do we partition the state? Some goes inside the *body*, some goes outside the body. I'd argue they're both stigmergic. It's obvious why the state accumulating outside the body is. But the state inside the body is also collectively built by different (though perhaps not independent) processes within the body.

Some of the state is mutually negotiated across the boundary between the inside and outside of the body. And the dynamism of that boundary can't be ignored. I don't think that is stigmergic, though. My sense of these boundaries is that they're steadily maintained/overturned by the other processes.


On 5/6/20 9:15 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Is this embodied mind?  Or Stygmergy? Or are they the same?  I just don't know. Josh?


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[Prof David West]

Nick,
 
Do not know for sure, just as I do not know off the top of my head how an experiment might be defined. Technically it would not be "embodied mind" as much as "supersized mind."  i tend to use "embodied mind" as a shorthand umbrella term for a continuum that begins with consciousness "in the head" to "in the body" to "in the environment" to "in the universe." The farthest extension of the continuum is the realm of "quantum consciousness" and mysticism.

Just as hormones produced in glands throughout the body affect cognitive circuitry in the brain, syzmergic mechanisms  in the environment might affect "thinking" via the senses instead of hormones in the bloodstream.

davew


On Wed, May 6, 2020, at 10:15 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

> Dave,
>
> Is this embodied mind?  Or Stygmergy? Or are they the same?  I just
> don't know. Josh?
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> [hidden email]
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>  
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
> Sent: Wednesday, May 6, 2020 7:07 AM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve
>
> An observation that might lead to a testable hypothesis of embodied mind:
>
> High school students spent the morning, in a classroom, learning
> comparative fractions, taking tests that proved they could solve this
> kind of problem. In the afternoon the went across the street to the
> supermarket and asked to decide which was the better buy:  12 ounces at
> $2 or 18 ounces at $4. Individuals who score 100% in the classroom,
> were able to solve the problem in the grocery story less than 50% of
> the time.
>
> Tailors in Morocco spend their days laying out patterns on bolts of
> cloth and are sufficiently skilled at this tiling problem their wastage
> is less than 2%. Removed from the bazaar, installed in a classroom, and
> given scaled paper cutouts and paper bolt of cloth, they could not do
> better than 15% wastage.
>
> I remember reading about similar situations involving car mechanics and
> reading comprehension (ebook versus paper).
>
> The material is in the anthropology literature - Jean Lave comes to  
> mind as possible author, Ettiene Wegner - but not at all sure I am
> remembering correctly.
>
> The authors suggested that "knowledge" was somehow stored in "context"
> with context quite literally being the physical environment in which
> the person was learning.
>
> How to design a controlled experiment???
>
> davew
>
>
> On Tue, May 5, 2020, at 4:04 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> > Thanks. I've read the Chemero one. And I've read something by Hutto,
> > but I don't think it was that. Regardless, my (maybe testable)
> > hypothesis is what I'm interested in:
> >
> > If a black box demonstrates behavior that can't be captured by any
> > (known) algorithm, then that would be an indication that something
> > (unmodelable) was happening inside the black box. And that unmodelable
> > thing might be called "thinking".
> >
> > We can extend that, I think, to "surprising behavior", which I think
> > gets at what we usually mean by "thinking". If a black box
> > demonstrates a long memory with not-quite-but-almost predictable
> > behavior, then we might accuse it of thinking.
> >
> > Both would be counter-examples to Dave's assertion.
> >
> > On 5/5/20 2:55 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> > > So, there are a few varieties of that right now, that are trying to
> > > get along well together. Emobidied Cognition, Enactivism, Ecological Psychlogy, Extended Cognition, etc. As a starting point for that work, especially for the more mathematically inclined, I recommend "Radical Embodied Cognitive Science" by Tony Chemero <http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-reading-group-chemero-2009-radical.html>, for the more philosophically inclined, I recommend "Radicalizing Enactivism" by Dan Hutto <https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/radicalizing-enactivism>, and for the more general thinker interested in an overview of cool ideas I recommend "Beyond the Brain" by Louise Barrett <http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2012/01/beyond-brain-review-out.html>.
> >
> > --
> > ☣ uǝlƃ
> >
> > .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .-
> > ... .... . ...
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn
> > GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam unsubscribe
> > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> >
>
> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .-
> ... .... . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam unsubscribe
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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>
>
> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .-
> ... .... . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
>

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