Why depth/thickness matters

[gepr]

  Natural selection and veridical perceptions
  Justin T. Mark, Brian B. Marion, Donald D. Hoffman
  http://cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/PerceptualEvolution.pdf

> For the weak type, X ⊄ W in general, and g is a homomorphism. Perception need not faithfully mirror any subset of reality, but relationships among perceptions reflect relationships among aspects of reality. Thus, weak critical realists can bias their perceptions based on utility, so long as this homomorphism is maintained.

To me, this evoked RRosen's "modeling relation", wherein he assumes the structure of inferential entailment must be similar to that of causal entailment (otherwise "there can be no science" -- Life Itself, pg. 58).

> For the interface (or desktop) strategy, in general X ⊄ W and g need not be a homomorphism.

This more closely resembles what I (contingently) believe to be true.  Hoffman goes on to define and play some games, the results of which (he thinks) show that the interface strategy, under evolution, can demonstrate how fake news might dominate.  But my interest lies more in the idea that one's internal structure does matter with respect to whether or not one's likely to _believe_ false statements.  And I'm arguing that flattening that internal structure in a kind of holographic principle simply doesn't work with this sort of machine.

An interesting potential contradiction in my own thought lies in:

1) I reject Rosen's assumption of the modeling relation (i.e. inference ≉ cause), and
2) I still think intra-individual circularity is necessary for biomimicry.

--
☣ glen

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[Stephen Guerin-5]

The opening of this article would be a complete counter position for an Ecological Psychologist:

  "Students of perception often claim that perception, in general, estimates the truth. They argue that creatures whose perceptions are more true are also, thereby, more fit. Therefore, due to natural selection, the accuracy of perception grows over generations, so that today our perceptions, in most cases, approximate the truth."

As an alternative to the Evolutionary Psychology perspective bias of this paper, Eric Charles may chime in on how Ecological Psychology and the Neo-Gibsonians (Michael Turvey et al) would be aligned with your stance as they also seek to minimizing the reliance on internal representations of "the truth"/reality when explaining perception and action.

I'd further be interested to think about how Eric's example of the Aikido perspective (which Critchlow would appreciate) in his paper could be applied to responding to alt-right attacks in contrast to direct confrontation:

  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44571452_Ecological_Psychology_and_Social_Psychology_It_is_Holt_or_Nothing

Not sure what Holt would say about Rosen's modeling relation.

  

-S

On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 1:05 PM, glen ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

  Natural selection and veridical perceptions
  Justin T. Mark, Brian B. Marion, Donald D. Hoffman
  http://cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/PerceptualEvolution.pdf

> For the weak type, X ⊄ W in general, and g is a homomorphism. Perception need not faithfully mirror any subset of reality, but relationships among perceptions reflect relationships among aspects of reality. Thus, weak critical realists can bias their perceptions based on utility, so long as this homomorphism is maintained.

To me, this evoked RRosen's "modeling relation", wherein he assumes the structure of inferential entailment must be similar to that of causal entailment (otherwise "there can be no science" -- Life Itself, pg. 58).

> For the interface (or desktop) strategy, in general X ⊄ W and g need not be a homomorphism.

This more closely resembles what I (contingently) believe to be true.  Hoffman goes on to define and play some games, the results of which (he thinks) show that the interface strategy, under evolution, can demonstrate how fake news might dominate.  But my interest lies more in the idea that one's internal structure does matter with respect to whether or not one's likely to _believe_ false statements.  And I'm arguing that flattening that internal structure in a kind of holographic principle simply doesn't work with this sort of machine.

An interesting potential contradiction in my own thought lies in:

1) I reject Rosen's assumption of the modeling relation (i.e. inference ≉ cause), and
2) I still think intra-individual circularity is necessary for biomimicry.

--
☣ glen

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[Nick Thompson]

All,

 

I am throwing this in so Eric C. will chew on it when he chews on S.G.’s point. 

 

For a proper PRAGMATIST, the question is not whether an understanding corresponds to some ephemeral external reality; the question is whether it proves out in future experience.  When state engineers approve a garage construction (see this week’s New Mexican), they in effect make a bet that future experience will show it to have been sound.  When the garage starts to sink into the ground in four years, we say they were wrong to make that bet.  “Reality” in the sense of something outside experience has nothing to do with it. 

 

The problem perhaps with Holt and Gibson is that they took Peirce’s monism in the opposite direction.  Instead of being experience monists, they became “outside world” monists.  Their Consciousness is just the outside world as described from a position in the outside world.  Truth, for them is just a correspondence of the outside world as seen from all different angles.  The world as seen from 4 years ago turned out to be not the world as seen from today.  Mind has nothing to do with it.  The truest statement is one that doesn’t change when one changes one’s position in the world. Cf, vonUexkull?  I call this the “extentionless dot” theory of consciousness.

 

Note that neither Holt, nor his mentor’s mentor, Peirce, would endorse the idea that truth is a correspondence between a mental representation and a world outside human experience that it represents, Peirce because human experience is all we got, and Holt because the outside world is all we got. 

 

Eric knows a lot about this stuff, having edited a book about Holt, and read a lot more James than I have.  But I wanted to give him a chance to contradict me. 

 

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2017 8:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Why depth/thickness matters

 

The opening of this article would be a complete counter position for an Ecological Psychologist:

  "Students of perception often claim that perception, in general, estimates the truth. They argue that creatures whose perceptions are more true are also, thereby, more fit. Therefore, due to natural selection, the accuracy of perception grows over generations, so that today our perceptions, in most cases, approximate the truth."

 

As an alternative to the Evolutionary Psychology perspective bias of this paper, Eric Charles may chime in on how Ecological Psychology and the Neo-Gibsonians (Michael Turvey et al) would be aligned with your stance as they also seek to minimizing the reliance on internal representations of "the truth"/reality when explaining perception and action.

 

I'd further be interested to think about how Eric's example of the Aikido perspective (which Critchlow would appreciate) in his paper could be applied to responding to alt-right attacks in contrast to direct confrontation:

  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44571452_Ecological_Psychology_and_Social_Psychology_It_is_Holt_or_Nothing

 

Not sure what Holt would say about Rosen's modeling relation.

  

-S

_______________________________________________________________________
[hidden email]

CEO, Simtable  http://www.simtable.com

1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505

office: <a href="tel:(505)%20995-0206" target="_blank">[phone] mobile: <a href="tel:(505)%20577-5828" target="_blank">[phone]

twitter: @simtable

 

On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 1:05 PM, glen ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

  Natural selection and veridical perceptions
  Justin T. Mark, Brian B. Marion, Donald D. Hoffman
  http://cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/PerceptualEvolution.pdf

> For the weak type, X ⊄ W in general, and g is a homomorphism. Perception need not faithfully mirror any subset of reality, but relationships among perceptions reflect relationships among aspects of reality. Thus, weak critical realists can bias their perceptions based on utility, so long as this homomorphism is maintained.

To me, this evoked RRosen's "modeling relation", wherein he assumes the structure of inferential entailment must be similar to that of causal entailment (otherwise "there can be no science" -- Life Itself, pg. 58).

> For the interface (or desktop) strategy, in general X ⊄ W and g need not be a homomorphism.

This more closely resembles what I (contingently) believe to be true.  Hoffman goes on to define and play some games, the results of which (he thinks) show that the interface strategy, under evolution, can demonstrate how fake news might dominate.  But my interest lies more in the idea that one's internal structure does matter with respect to whether or not one's likely to _believe_ false statements.  And I'm arguing that flattening that internal structure in a kind of holographic principle simply doesn't work with this sort of machine.

An interesting potential contradiction in my own thought lies in:

1) I reject Rosen's assumption of the modeling relation (i.e. inference ≉ cause), and
2) I still think intra-individual circularity is necessary for biomimicry.

--
☣ glen

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[gepr]

Thanks for pointing that out.  I found this other article of Eric's more helpful:

  The (Old) New Realism: What Holt Has to Offer for Ecological Psychology
  http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12124-008-9075-6

But I've only skimmed them too quickly.  It seems to my impoverished understanding that Eric's description of ecological psychology assumes a larger dimensionality to the world out there than Hoffman assumes.  I infer from phrases like "extracting information from ambient energy arrays that specify our surroundings (sometimes referred to as resonating with the structure of the arrays)" that the world is fairly rich.  Hoffman's conception seems to suggest that there can be a very tiny, perhaps even simple, kernel of the world that would exist entirely _without_ the organisms, but that the majority of the medium through which the organisms swim is co-constructed by the organisms.

It's a game of "logic, logic, who's got the logic?"  If you place more logic in the environment, then the actors will be more likely to find paths to a common semantic ground.  But if you place more logic in the actors, then they'll be more likely to find meaning in whatever communities they're in (and have been in, given structured memory).

If I've read that difference right, the key to Hoffman's "results" that fake news will dominate lies in the logic ratio medium:organism.  Perhaps there's even a tipping point below which fake news will dominate and above which truth will dominate.  And this would allow us to consider the role of technology (extended phenotype) like Twitter or even investigative journalism as well as deeper concepts like argument from authority.

I tend to think of things like calculators and Google as parts of my brain. (Was it Einstein that said "never memorize what you can look up"?)  As we delegate our logic out to the medium, perhaps we can preserve the Progressive Agenda?  The election of Trump and such might seem to argue against that.  But perhaps it's a counter-intuitive result that _because_ we're getting closer to the Truth as technology advances, the morons come out of the woodwork in a reactionary backlash against the progression?



On 02/08/2017 07:41 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote:

> As an alternative to the Evolutionary Psychology perspective bias of this
> paper, Eric Charles may chime in on how Ecological Psychology and the
> Neo-Gibsonians (Michael Turvey et al) would be aligned with your stance as
> they also seek to minimizing the reliance on internal representations of
> "the truth"/reality when explaining perception and action.
>
> I'd further be interested to think about how Eric's example of the Aikido
> perspective (which Critchlow would appreciate) in his paper could be
> applied to responding to alt-right attacks in contrast to direct
> confrontation:
>   https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44571452_
> Ecological_Psychology_and_Social_Psychology_It_is_Holt_or_Nothing
>
> Not sure what Holt would say about Rosen's modeling relation.

--
☣ glen

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[gepr]

The way you worded this confuses me.  Did you mean "truth is a correspondence between"?  Or did you mean something like "truth can be corresponded with"?  I typically use the word "truth" to mean the outside, alone, not a map between the outside and inside.  The map between them would be the grounding.  Granted, Hoffman et al's use of the label "truth" to mean a particular strategy was more like the map.

But if you did mean to talk specifically about the inside ⇔ outside map, then you're saying that neither Holt nor Peirce would accept Rosen's assumption of his modeling relation (that inference ≈ causality).  That's interesting.  Another thread from Eric's paper follows from his #2 highlight from New Realism: "Relations are real, and hence detectable".  This also evoked Rosen's evocation of Nicolas Rashevsky and relational biology (cf: https://ahlouie.com/relational-biology/ "Relational biology, on the other hand, keeps the organization and throws away the matter; function dictates structure, whence material aspects are entailed.").

It's entirely reasonable to think of edges vs vertices in a graph as perfect duals, to study one is to study the other.  But what Eric seemed to be saying was that relations were elevated to the same status as the organisms, not a flip-flop like we think of as duals.  So studying just the organisms or just the relations would be inadequate.


On 02/08/2017 08:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Note that neither Holt, nor his mentor’s mentor, Peirce, would endorse the idea that truth is a correspondence between a mental representation and a world outside human experience that it represents, Peirce because human experience is all we got, and Holt because the outside world is all we got.  

--
☣ glen

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[Eric Charles-2]

Late to the party, but still lots to chew on!

It is unfortunate that everyone wants to throw the simulation/representation/modeling wrench into the middle of what might otherwise be a very sensible story about about dynamic systems. (And if you like the dynamic systems side of things, Tony Chemero's "Radical Embodied Cognitive Science" does an excellent job explaining why "representation" talk ads nothing to serious models of perception-action.) 

While I digest, the posts above, and try to make a more focused response, I can offer a contrasting view of how I think evolutionary theories of perception should look (attached, forthcoming, pending miner revision).

Best,

Eric

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 2:26 PM, glen ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

The way you worded this confuses me.  Did you mean "truth is a correspondence between"?  Or did you mean something like "truth can be corresponded with"?  I typically use the word "truth" to mean the outside, alone, not a map between the outside and inside.  The map between them would be the grounding.  Granted, Hoffman et al's use of the label "truth" to mean a particular strategy was more like the map.

But if you did mean to talk specifically about the inside ⇔ outside map, then you're saying that neither Holt nor Peirce would accept Rosen's assumption of his modeling relation (that inference ≈ causality).  That's interesting.  Another thread from Eric's paper follows from his #2 highlight from New Realism: "Relations are real, and hence detectable".  This also evoked Rosen's evocation of Nicolas Rashevsky and relational biology (cf: https://ahlouie.com/relational-biology/ "Relational biology, on the other hand, keeps the organization and throws away the matter; function dictates structure, whence material aspects are entailed.").

It's entirely reasonable to think of edges vs vertices in a graph as perfect duals, to study one is to study the other.  But what Eric seemed to be saying was that relations were elevated to the same status as the organisms, not a flip-flop like we think of as duals.  So studying just the organisms or just the relations would be inadequate.


On 02/08/2017 08:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Note that neither Holt, nor his mentor’s mentor, Peirce, would endorse the idea that truth is a correspondence between a mental representation and a world outside human experience that it represents, Peirce because human experience is all we got, and Holt because the outside world is all we got.

--
☣ glen

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[Nick Thompson]

Glen,

 

Sorry, I missed this earlier in the day.

 

See larding below.

 

N

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2017 12:27 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Why depth/thickness matters

 

 

The way you worded this confuses me.  Did you mean "truth is a correspondence between"?  Or did you mean something like "truth can be corresponded with"?  I typically use the word "truth" to mean the outside, alone, not a map between the outside and inside.  The map between them would be the grounding.  Granted, Hoffman et al's use of the label "truth" to mean a particular strategy was more like the map.

[NST==>Uh…. The dualist account, a thought is a true thought when it matches the state of affairs outside of thought.  <==nst]

 

But if you did mean to talk specifically about the inside ⇔ outside map, then you're saying that neither Holt nor Peirce would accept Rosen's assumption of his modeling relation (that inference ≈ causality).  That's interesting.  Another thread from Eric's paper follows from his #2 highlight from New Realism: "Relations are real, and hence detectable".  This also evoked Rosen's evocation of Nicolas Rashevsky and relational biology (cf: https://ahlouie.com/relational-biology/ "Relational biology, on the other hand, keeps the organization and throws away the matter; function dictates structure, whence material aspects are entailed.").

 

It's entirely reasonable to think of edges vs vertices in a graph as perfect duals, to study one is to study the other.  But what Eric seemed to be saying was that relations were elevated to the same status as the organisms, not a flip-flop like we think of as duals.  So studying just the organisms or just the relations would be inadequate.

[NST==>I confess I have never understood what Friammers mean when they start talking about “duals”.  I would say only that on my understanding of the new realism,  everything real consists of matter AND ITS RELATIONS.  Thus, to be conscious, is to stand in relation; to be conscious of another’s consciousness is to stand in relation to that standing in relation.  And so forth.  Eric and I struggled with this in a review of a book by James Laird which a group of FRIAMMERS read together a few years back.  Our solution was a kind of hierarchical materialism in which everything is material relations among material relations, ad infinitum.  Tortured.  <==nst]

 

Not sure where eric has disappeared to.   Hope to hear from him soon 

 

Nick

 

 

On 02/08/2017 08:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Note that neither Holt, nor his mentor’s mentor, Peirce, would endorse the idea that truth is a correspondence between a mental representation and a world outside human experience that it represents, Peirce because human experience is all we got, and Holt because the outside world is all we got.  

 

--

☣ glen

 

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[Eric Charles-2]

Alright.... some more sensible responses, hopefully hitting all the prior comments:

1) Mark, Marrion, & Hoffman, like almost all biologists interested in perception, conflate two types of question. The first, is whether there is sufficient structured energy (for lack of a better term) that reaches the organism, in order to specify the interesting states of the world. The traditional answer to this in "no", Gibson's answer is "yes", and that changes all sorts of things about how the problems of perception must be approached. The second, is how well organisms can attune (for lack of a better term) with the available information (via evolutionary and developmental processes). The authors also port in the suspect assumption that seeing correctly takes more time and energy. This is because they have no theory of ambient energy or perceptual systems, which flows from their having answered "no" to that first question. (As a rough metaphor: A well-kept radio doesn't take more time or energy to get a clear resonance with a station than a poorly-kept radio takes to get a crappy resonance with the same station.)  The simulation they ran is interesting for what it is, another demonstration of the potential benefits of heuristic decision making (see "Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart") but it doesn't have the implications for perception that they think it does. And.... as a final parting shot.... why they thought "choice of a territory" based on difficult-to-detect-food-and-water-resources was a good modeling context for basic questions about "perception", is pretty dumbfounding.

2) Regarding responses to alt-right attacks, I think the fundamental problem is thinking that the truth of the matter is what is at issue. We need to be looking to Orwell regarding the destruction of language and the need to stick up for the basic meaning of terms. We need to stop thinking that the most clever answer is the winning one, or that acts of "rebellion" like reading a statement in a hallway after the cool kids kicked you out of the senate "sure showed them." The retreat isn't to high-ground, it is to salt-of-the-earth folksiness, which in the U.S. has always carried a bite. Holt's ethics (from "The Freudian Wish and its Place in Ethics") would be quite helpful. The fundamental question there is whether you are acting with respect to the actual world. To act ethically is to act with respect to what is really happening, and to act unethically is to act without respect to what is really happening. For that to work, you need to believe that there are things that are really happening, and you need to call it like you see it in bare ways. 

3)  The philosophical argument about "relations" is hard to appreciate outside of the obvious context at the time (though that context continues to influence today, it is now much more subtle and nefarious). The context was that many old fashioned empiricists, and even some idealists, admitted that certain things could be known, while claiming that the relations between things were entirely "mental". The most well known attack along these lines was the assertion that causation was entirely inferred from observed correlation, i.e., that all perceived causation was ipso facto imaginary. However, it can get much more dramatic, i.e., if you believe that people can only know sense impressions, then even the clumping of those sense impressions into an "object" --- which entails relating some sense impressions to, say, the desk I am typing on, and other sense impressions to the surrounding room --- would be seen as entirely an additive mental act (i.e., you "mind" added more to what was available to it).  Given the recently (at the time) discovered projective geometry, even a judgment regarding whether one thing is above the another (a seemingly external relation), could be viewed as completely, dualistically, mental in nature. The assertion that external relations were real, and detectable, was thus a very big deal.

4) Gibson did some very interesting writing during and shortly after the WWII period about social psychology and perception which, unfortunately, he never really followed up on later in his career. It is a small number of publications regarding race relations and other such things. It would seem that his view was that social processes shaped what we did or did not pay attention to in the world. Also, following Holt, he believed that the truth was out there, ready to be detected (cue X-files music). For example, if were told that certain races were less than human, all you would have to do was observe to see the error of such a claim. However, depending on the circumstances of the claim (who made it, etc.), the claim itself might lead you to ignore the evidence, even when it was right in front of you. He seemed very much to view this with the exact same logic he would use in more straightforward perception-action situations, i.e., in the same way the instructions "don't look down" could, if followed, get you to ignore the perceivable danger or safety inherent in a situation. This work has been almost entirely ignored by ecological psychologists, even those interested in social stuff. The only recent paper I know about that covers the topic is by Harry Heft, and will be published shortly (I'll get a copy to the list after it is out).  

Holy cow that's a wide variety of stuff..... How did this all start again? Where are we going? Did I miss anything crucial?

 

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 8:14 PM, Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:

Late to the party, but still lots to chew on!

It is unfortunate that everyone wants to throw the simulation/representation/modeling wrench into the middle of what might otherwise be a very sensible story about about dynamic systems. (And if you like the dynamic systems side of things, Tony Chemero's "Radical Embodied Cognitive Science" does an excellent job explaining why "representation" talk ads nothing to serious models of perception-action.) 

While I digest, the posts above, and try to make a more focused response, I can offer a contrasting view of how I think evolutionary theories of perception should look (attached, forthcoming, pending miner revision).

Best,

Eric

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 2:26 PM, glen ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

The way you worded this confuses me.  Did you mean "truth is a correspondence between"?  Or did you mean something like "truth can be corresponded with"?  I typically use the word "truth" to mean the outside, alone, not a map between the outside and inside.  The map between them would be the grounding.  Granted, Hoffman et al's use of the label "truth" to mean a particular strategy was more like the map.

But if you did mean to talk specifically about the inside ⇔ outside map, then you're saying that neither Holt nor Peirce would accept Rosen's assumption of his modeling relation (that inference ≈ causality).  That's interesting.  Another thread from Eric's paper follows from his #2 highlight from New Realism: "Relations are real, and hence detectable".  This also evoked Rosen's evocation of Nicolas Rashevsky and relational biology (cf: https://ahlouie.com/relational-biology/ "Relational biology, on the other hand, keeps the organization and throws away the matter; function dictates structure, whence material aspects are entailed.").

It's entirely reasonable to think of edges vs vertices in a graph as perfect duals, to study one is to study the other.  But what Eric seemed to be saying was that relations were elevated to the same status as the organisms, not a flip-flop like we think of as duals.  So studying just the organisms or just the relations would be inadequate.


On 02/08/2017 08:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Note that neither Holt, nor his mentor’s mentor, Peirce, would endorse the idea that truth is a correspondence between a mental representation and a world outside human experience that it represents, Peirce because human experience is all we got, and Holt because the outside world is all we got.

--
☣ glen

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[Nick Thompson]

Eric,

 

Much to chew on here.  Medical stuff this morning, then friam, so later!

 

N

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2017 6:06 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Why depth/thickness matters

 

Alright.... some more sensible responses, hopefully hitting all the prior comments:

1) Mark, Marrion, & Hoffman, like almost all biologists interested in perception, conflate two types of question. The first, is whether there is sufficient structured energy (for lack of a better term) that reaches the organism, in order to specify the interesting states of the world. The traditional answer to this in "no", Gibson's answer is "yes", and that changes all sorts of things about how the problems of perception must be approached. The second, is how well organisms can attune (for lack of a better term) with the available information (via evolutionary and developmental processes). The authors also port in the suspect assumption that seeing correctly takes more time and energy. This is because they have no theory of ambient energy or perceptual systems, which flows from their having answered "no" to that first question. (As a rough metaphor: A well-kept radio doesn't take more time or energy to get a clear resonance with a station than a poorly-kept radio takes to get a crappy resonance with the same station.)  The simulation they ran is interesting for what it is, another demonstration of the potential benefits of heuristic decision making (see "Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart") but it doesn't have the implications for perception that they think it does. And.... as a final parting shot.... why they thought "choice of a territory" based on difficult-to-detect-food-and-water-resources was a good modeling context for basic questions about "perception", is pretty dumbfounding.

2) Regarding responses to alt-right attacks, I think the fundamental problem is thinking that the truth of the matter is what is at issue. We need to be looking to Orwell regarding the destruction of language and the need to stick up for the basic meaning of terms. We need to stop thinking that the most clever answer is the winning one, or that acts of "rebellion" like reading a statement in a hallway after the cool kids kicked you out of the senate "sure showed them." The retreat isn't to high-ground, it is to salt-of-the-earth folksiness, which in the U.S. has always carried a bite. Holt's ethics (from "The Freudian Wish and its Place in Ethics") would be quite helpful. The fundamental question there is whether you are acting with respect to the actual world. To act ethically is to act with respect to what is really happening, and to act unethically is to act without respect to what is really happening. For that to work, you need to believe that there are things that are really happening, and you need to call it like you see it in bare ways. 

 

3)  The philosophical argument about "relations" is hard to appreciate outside of the obvious context at the time (though that context continues to influence today, it is now much more subtle and nefarious). The context was that many old fashioned empiricists, and even some idealists, admitted that certain things could be known, while claiming that the relations between things were entirely "mental". The most well known attack along these lines was the assertion that causation was entirely inferred from observed correlation, i.e., that all perceived causation was ipso facto imaginary. However, it can get much more dramatic, i.e., if you believe that people can only know sense impressions, then even the clumping of those sense impressions into an "object" --- which entails relating some sense impressions to, say, the desk I am typing on, and other sense impressions to the surrounding room --- would be seen as entirely an additive mental act (i.e., you "mind" added more to what was available to it).  Given the recently (at the time) discovered projective geometry, even a judgment regarding whether one thing is above the another (a seemingly external relation), could be viewed as completely, dualistically, mental in nature. The assertion that external relations were real, and detectable, was thus a very big deal.

 

4) Gibson did some very interesting writing during and shortly after the WWII period about social psychology and perception which, unfortunately, he never really followed up on later in his career. It is a small number of publications regarding race relations and other such things. It would seem that his view was that social processes shaped what we did or did not pay attention to in the world. Also, following Holt, he believed that the truth was out there, ready to be detected (cue X-files music). For example, if were told that certain races were less than human, all you would have to do was observe to see the error of such a claim. However, depending on the circumstances of the claim (who made it, etc.), the claim itself might lead you to ignore the evidence, even when it was right in front of you. He seemed very much to view this with the exact same logic he would use in more straightforward perception-action situations, i.e., in the same way the instructions "don't look down" could, if followed, get you to ignore the perceivable danger or safety inherent in a situation. This work has been almost entirely ignored by ecological psychologists, even those interested in social stuff. The only recent paper I know about that covers the topic is by Harry Heft, and will be published shortly (I'll get a copy to the list after it is out).  

 

Holy cow that's a wide variety of stuff..... How did this all start again? Where are we going? Did I miss anything crucial?

 

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician

U.S. Marine Corps

 

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 8:14 PM, Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:

Late to the party, but still lots to chew on!

It is unfortunate that everyone wants to throw the simulation/representation/modeling wrench into the middle of what might otherwise be a very sensible story about about dynamic systems. (And if you like the dynamic systems side of things, Tony Chemero's "Radical Embodied Cognitive Science" does an excellent job explaining why "representation" talk ads nothing to serious models of perception-action.) 

While I digest, the posts above, and try to make a more focused response, I can offer a contrasting view of how I think evolutionary theories of perception should look (attached, forthcoming, pending miner revision).

Best,

Eric

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician

U.S. Marine Corps

 

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 2:26 PM, glen ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

The way you worded this confuses me.  Did you mean "truth is a correspondence between"?  Or did you mean something like "truth can be corresponded with"?  I typically use the word "truth" to mean the outside, alone, not a map between the outside and inside.  The map between them would be the grounding.  Granted, Hoffman et al's use of the label "truth" to mean a particular strategy was more like the map.

But if you did mean to talk specifically about the inside ⇔ outside map, then you're saying that neither Holt nor Peirce would accept Rosen's assumption of his modeling relation (that inference ≈ causality).  That's interesting.  Another thread from Eric's paper follows from his #2 highlight from New Realism: "Relations are real, and hence detectable".  This also evoked Rosen's evocation of Nicolas Rashevsky and relational biology (cf: https://ahlouie.com/relational-biology/ "Relational biology, on the other hand, keeps the organization and throws away the matter; function dictates structure, whence material aspects are entailed.").

It's entirely reasonable to think of edges vs vertices in a graph as perfect duals, to study one is to study the other.  But what Eric seemed to be saying was that relations were elevated to the same status as the organisms, not a flip-flop like we think of as duals.  So studying just the organisms or just the relations would be inadequate.


On 02/08/2017 08:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Note that neither Holt, nor his mentor’s mentor, Peirce, would endorse the idea that truth is a correspondence between a mental representation and a world outside human experience that it represents, Peirce because human experience is all we got, and Holt because the outside world is all we got.

--
☣ glen

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[gepr]

On 02/10/2017 05:05 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
> How did this all start again? Where are we going? Did I miss anything crucial?

I started it because of the sentiment that we don't talk much about complexity on the list.  I think you've done a great job addressing the Hoffman paper in your/Holt/Gibson context Stephen appealed to.  But what concerns me most is that Hoffman (by virtue of games and simulation) has made some of the complex systems aspects of the problem explicit.  Of course, I'm a simulant (or "simulationist" if you must).  So I'll _always_ throw the M&S wrench into the middle of it. 8^)  The tool is always more important than the use to which the tool is put.

Thanks for addressing it from that context.  I'll try to comment constructively after others weigh in.

--
␦glen?

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[Eric Charles-2]

Glen,

Thanks for the reorientation! If you want to discuss complexity, I think an interesting question regarding perception-action systems is how much of the complexity has to be inside the organism, and how much of it can be encapsulated in the larger organism-environment system. The more the complexit is spread across the system, the more the organism can get by with much less "mental" complexity that it might originally seem. That tension is at the heart of Gibson vs. traditional theories, though, of course, Gibson described the tension in different terms.

A classic example is the problem of catching a fly ball. To simplify, let the ball be flying in a vertical plane, and let the outfielder be already on that plane (there are very similar solutions to how to get onto the relevant plane, so being off-plane is just a distraction). One could imagine that the catching the ball entailed calculating a parabola-like function, based on the start point and the speed with which the ball meets the bat, then moving to the point where the calculation requires you to stand. However, a much easier solution is available: Look at the ball, if the ball is optically accelerating (i.e., moving up the visual field at an increasing speed) step backwards, if the ball is optically decelerating step forward, if the ball is moving at an optically constant speed, stay where you are and put your hand in front of your head. Everything you need to "know" what to do, is "out there" in the ambient light, and if you are a well-designed tool, getting to the right point doesn't require modeling the trajectory of the ball at all.

A more modern example is in locomotive robotics. Companies like Boston Dynamics are showing that you can get basic walking movements with very little "internal computation" if you design a system that mechanically (through tension cords, springs, and the like) accomplish much of the balancing and coordination. Such robots perform much better than robots who try to handle the same types of problems in an entirely computational "central control" fashions.

However, that doesn't necessarily speak to our ability to jettison "representation" and replace it with dynamic-systems accounts more generally.  

For that , we would probably want to go to Tony Chemero's book, which I mentioned earlier. In chapter 4 (summarized here), Tony presents two key examples: The first is the example of the "Watts steam governor", which helped stop steam engines from exploding by releasing steam. It spins when steam goes through it, the spinning creates centerfugal force which raises some weighted arms, which in turn open the release valve more, keeping the internal pressure of the engine relatively constant. The second example involved an evolutionary robotics experiment at the university of Sussex, where allowed robots to "evolve" solutions to a problem, and then determined how they had done so after the fact. In both cases, Tony shows that some aspect of the system is a reasonable candidate for the label "representation", but points out that such post-hoc labeling adds nothing to the dynamic model.  As Andrew and Sabrina summarize in their blog:

Regarding the steam governor,

"Chemero is convinced that, according to the theory of representation from Chapter 3, θ [angle of spinning arms] is a representation of ω [steam pressure] and thus there is a legitimate representational account of the governor.... Chemero is happy, however... because it is not clear the representational story adds anything to the dynamical account. Critically, the dynamical account must come first; you can't tell a traditional representational story without some idea of the function of the system, which in this case comes from the dynamical account. Given that it doesn't add anything, you might simply wish to stop with the dynamical account and not concern yourself with the representation that is in the system"

And regarding the evolved robots,

"Under the [old system] there is still a representational account for this robot. The system contains visual input nodes ('representation producers') which produce activations across intermediate nodes ('representations') which affect the behaviour of motors via three other nodes ('representation consumers') to produce the tracking behaviour ('adapting the system to some part of the environment'). But Chemero describes (p.77) how this representational gloss doesn't help - it could only be constructed after we had the dynamical account, and the dynamical account already provides a complete characterisation of all possible behaviours: we can use it to predict behaviour with no reference to the representational story. Taking the dynamical stance has 'paid off', and while it remains an ongoing task for dynamical systems cognitive science to actually produce these types of models, there are already numerous examples in the literature of dynamical accounts of complex behaviour which make no reference to representation.

So, to recap: The questions for the list are 1) Where will we look for the complexity in question? In the organism, in the environment, or in the system that includes both? 2) Once we have a decent account of that complexity, is anything added by inserting representation-talk in the middle of it?

On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 10:31 AM, ┣glen┫ <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 02/10/2017 05:05 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
> How did this all start again? Where are we going? Did I miss anything crucial?

I started it because of the sentiment that we don't talk much about complexity on the list.  I think you've done a great job addressing the Hoffman paper in your/Holt/Gibson context Stephen appealed to.  But what concerns me most is that Hoffman (by virtue of games and simulation) has made some of the complex systems aspects of the problem explicit.  Of course, I'm a simulant (or "simulationist" if you must).  So I'll _always_ throw the M&S wrench into the middle of it. 8^)  The tool is always more important than the use to which the tool is put.

Thanks for addressing it from that context.  I'll try to comment constructively after others weigh in.

--
␦glen?

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[Vladimyr Burachynsky]

This iconoclast appreciates this thread simply because symbols are only approximations of reality constrained by  our limited knowledge and language.

 

The Fly Ball imagery is startlingly profound and played a major role in my own coding efforts. I never believed that our brains contained a calculus engine of any kind.

It seemed extraordinary that evolution would invest so much in this area and so little into our knees. But then I have my doubts about evolutionary design being in any way driven by idealistic precepts. I tend to think all life is driven by the needs of gut bacteria, so yes we are no more than mobile fermentation tanks.

 

Self-flattering Representational theories have dominated academic discourse for decades and have consequently encouraged distain for the dynamical investigations in some ways slowing down innovation.

 

It appears as if we are emerging from Nicean metaphysical debates about representational models and hurling accusations like cannon balls  at any fact that alarms people. The more that is invested in representational models the more effort is funnelled into the denial of reality.

vib

 

Our neurons can only fire at rather slow intervals and only for short periods of time so human perception is a kind of peep show at best.

vib

Sewage systems do not require anything more elaborate.

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: February-14-17 11:52 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Why depth/thickness matters

 

Glen,

Thanks for the reorientation! If you want to discuss complexity, I think an interesting question regarding perception-action systems is how much of the complexity has to be inside the organism, and how much of it can be encapsulated in the larger organism-environment system. The more the complexit is spread across the system, the more the organism can get by with much less "mental" complexity that it might originally seem. That tension is at the heart of Gibson vs. traditional theories, though, of course, Gibson described the tension in different terms.

 

A classic example is the problem of catching a fly ball. To simplify, let the ball be flying in a vertical plane, and let the outfielder be already on that plane (there are very similar solutions to how to get onto the relevant plane, so being off-plane is just a distraction). One could imagine that the catching the ball entailed calculating a parabola-like function, based on the start point and the speed with which the ball meets the bat, then moving to the point where the calculation requires you to stand. However, a much easier solution is available: Look at the ball, if the ball is optically accelerating (i.e., moving up the visual field at an increasing speed) step backwards, if the ball is optically decelerating step forward, if the ball is moving at an optically constant speed, stay where you are and put your hand in front of your head. Everything you need to "know" what to do, is "out there" in the ambient light, and if you are a well-designed tool, getting to the right point doesn't require modeling the trajectory of the ball at all.

 

A more modern example is in locomotive robotics. Companies like Boston Dynamics are showing that you can get basic walking movements with very little "internal computation" if you design a system that mechanically (through tension cords, springs, and the like) accomplish much of the balancing and coordination. Such robots perform much better than robots who try to handle the same types of problems in an entirely computational "central control" fashions.

 

However, that doesn't necessarily speak to our ability to jettison "representation" and replace it with dynamic-systems accounts more generally.  

 

For that , we would probably want to go to Tony Chemero's book, which I mentioned earlier. In chapter 4 (summarized here), Tony presents two key examples: The first is the example of the "Watts steam governor", which helped stop steam engines from exploding by releasing steam. It spins when steam goes through it, the spinning creates centerfugal force which raises some weighted arms, which in turn open the release valve more, keeping the internal pressure of the engine relatively constant. The second example involved an evolutionary robotics experiment at the university of Sussex, where allowed robots to "evolve" solutions to a problem, and then determined how they had done so after the fact. In both cases, Tony shows that some aspect of the system is a reasonable candidate for the label "representation", but points out that such post-hoc labeling adds nothing to the dynamic model.  As Andrew and Sabrina summarize in their blog:

 

Regarding the steam governor,

"Chemero is convinced that, according to the theory of representation from Chapter 3, θ [angle of spinning arms] is a representation of ω [steam pressure] and thus there is a legitimate representational account of the governor.... Chemero is happy, however... because it is not clear the representational story adds anything to the dynamical account. Critically, the dynamical account must come first; you can't tell a traditional representational story without some idea of the function of the system, which in this case comes from the dynamical account. Given that it doesn't add anything, you might simply wish to stop with the dynamical account and not concern yourself with the representation that is in the system"

 

And regarding the evolved robots,

"Under the [old system] there is still a representational account for this robot. The system contains visual input nodes ('representation producers') which produce activations across intermediate nodes ('representations') which affect the behaviour of motors via three other nodes ('representation consumers') to produce the tracking behaviour ('adapting the system to some part of the environment'). But Chemero describes (p.77) how this representational gloss doesn't help - it could only be constructed after we had the dynamical account, and the dynamical account already provides a complete characterisation of all possible behaviours: we can use it to predict behaviour with no reference to the representational story. Taking the dynamical stance has 'paid off', and while it remains an ongoing task for dynamical systems cognitive science to actually produce these types of models, there are already numerous examples in the literature of dynamical accounts of complex behaviour which make no reference to representation.

 

So, to recap: The questions for the list are 1) Where will we look for the complexity in question? In the organism, in the environment, or in the system that includes both? 2) Once we have a decent account of that complexity, is anything added by inserting representation-talk in the middle of it?

 

 

 

 

 

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician

U.S. Marine Corps

 

On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 10:31 AM, ┣glen┫ <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 02/10/2017 05:05 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
> How did this all start again? Where are we going? Did I miss anything crucial?

I started it because of the sentiment that we don't talk much about complexity on the list.  I think you've done a great job addressing the Hoffman paper in your/Holt/Gibson context Stephen appealed to.  But what concerns me most is that Hoffman (by virtue of games and simulation) has made some of the complex systems aspects of the problem explicit.  Of course, I'm a simulant (or "simulationist" if you must).  So I'll _always_ throw the M&S wrench into the middle of it. 8^)  The tool is always more important than the use to which the tool is put.

Thanks for addressing it from that context.  I'll try to comment constructively after others weigh in.

--
␦glen?

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[gepr]

On 02/14/2017 09:51 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Thanks for the reorientation! If you want to discuss complexity, I think an interesting question regarding perception-action systems is how much of the complexity has to be inside the organism, and how much of it can be encapsulated in the larger organism-environment system. The more the complexit is spread across the system, the more the organism can get by with much less "mental" complexity that it might originally seem. That tension is at the heart of Gibson vs. traditional theories, though, of course, Gibson described the tension in different terms.

Yes, and that's exactly what the Hoffman article is about, too, with their exploration of simpler or more complex environments.  Your criticism of their (rather common) concept that seeing more takes more energy also exists in the "fly ball" and locomotive examples.  And the well-kept or poorly-kept radio metaphor simply raises the spectre of "adaptation" and the target of selection pressures.

In other words, the boundary between the organism, the environment, and the organizational relationship between them is nowhere near as crisp as we assume.  It's that assumption that is the target of Hoffman's (anti-realism) project.

And that brings me back to my original point about loopiness.  We not only have the problem of distributing the logic beetween organism and environment.  We also have the problem of how to grade/categorize the spectrum _between_ the two.  E.g. to what extent is, say, a pair of eyeglasses a part of the organism?  E.g. to what extent is the eye's cornea part of the environment?

Computations over the organism strike me as one layer.  Computations over an objectively extant landscape are another layer, perhaps of similar complexity than those over the organism.  Computations over both are another layer.  Computations over a collection of organisms, with a purely co-constructed "environment", is another.  Computations over all 4 (each organism, extant environment, organism-extant-env couplings, multiple organisms in extant environment) is yet another layer.  Loops within loops.

> However, that doesn't necessarily speak to our ability to jettison "representation" and replace it with dynamic-systems accounts more generally.  
> [...]
> So, to recap: The questions for the list are 1) Where will we look for the complexity in question? In the organism, in the environment, or in the system that includes both? 2) Once we have a decent account of that complexity, is anything added by inserting representation-talk in the middle of it?

It's not clear to me why you focused on a juxtaposition of representation vs. dynamical systems.  It sounds a lot like Marcus' argument in the loopiness thread.  You seem to be arguing that we can "flatten" the system to a dynamical systems account, with some exogenous accuracy and precision or error.  (By "exogenous", I mean typical sources like however we measure it or purely mechanical noise caused by a kind of "simple" uncertainty ... things like how well a nut fits a bolt, etc.)

By arguing that some types of loops within loops are only amenable to lossy compression, I'm asserting that _some_ of the loss is due to non-isomorphic mappings across boundaries.  The interfaces between actors are somehow smaller than what's on either side of the interfaces.  (Hence my comments about the holographic principle.)  In that sense, the question isn't merely about _where_ the complexity is (organism, environment, both), but also to what extent that complexity would be invariant if it were a) moved or b) modeled by something on the other side of a (smaller, lossy) interface.

This raises questions like: to what extent do organisms model their environment or vice versa?  Or to what extent are co-constructed scientific theories validated?  How to falsify them?  Etc.

--
☣ glen

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[Vladimyr Burachynsky]

I am an iconoclast as a consequence of trying to use statistical modelling during earlier stages of my life. zThese statistical models were generally very poor when applied to field work in animal distributions until someone accepted that truth and started admitting "clumpiness in distributions".

Then after a time in engineering studying simulations of material behaviour and failure I realized that the models we were using were based on unreal assumptions again.

In FEM studies we used convenient algorithms to model stress distribution across discreet very small elements based on older concepts and only approximated reality
to various levels. These approximations were often mistakenly assumed to constitute a "reality" by novices. In part because no engineer was prepared for Quantum Mechanics. They still used Hooke's laws where ever possible.

Representation is simply a tool to facilitate exploration of Dynamical systems. Representation should always be prepared to adapt when needed. Like sharpening a steel blade every so often.
The iconoclast in me loves sharp tools and every Monday morning I instructed my team to clear their benches and methodically sharpen tools.
Just because you sharpened a tool on Monday don't expect it to be sharp on Thursday unless it was idle.
Eventually all knives wear down and need to be replaced. Representation is only an ideal target used only as long as it is functional.
I do not dispute the value of good representational models but accept that they may not always be appropriate.

I look to biology and its solutions as having a temporal legacy far back in time but even evolution fails occasionally. Death seems the reward for guessing wrong.

Biology does seem to be a cheapskate recycling shitty solutions very often and does not seem to care about occasional extinctions.

As long as the advocates of representational models acknowledge their place in the real world we can tolerate each other.
vib

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: February-15-17 1:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Why depth/thickness matters

On 02/14/2017 09:51 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Thanks for the reorientation! If you want to discuss complexity, I think an interesting question regarding perception-action systems is how much of the complexity has to be inside the organism, and how much of it can be encapsulated in the larger organism-environment system. The more the complexit is spread across the system, the more the organism can get by with much less "mental" complexity that it might originally seem. That tension is at the heart of Gibson vs. traditional theories, though, of course, Gibson described the tension in different terms.

Yes, and that's exactly what the Hoffman article is about, too, with their exploration of simpler or more complex environments.  Your criticism of their (rather common) concept that seeing more takes more energy also exists in the "fly ball" and locomotive examples.  And the well-kept or poorly-kept radio metaphor simply raises the spectre of "adaptation" and the target of selection pressures.

In other words, the boundary between the organism, the environment, and the organizational relationship between them is nowhere near as crisp as we assume.  It's that assumption that is the target of Hoffman's (anti-realism) project.

And that brings me back to my original point about loopiness.  We not only have the problem of distributing the logic beetween organism and environment.  We also have the problem of how to grade/categorize the spectrum _between_ the two.  E.g. to what extent is, say, a pair of eyeglasses a part of the organism?  E.g. to what extent is the eye's cornea part of the environment?

Computations over the organism strike me as one layer.  Computations over an objectively extant landscape are another layer, perhaps of similar complexity than those over the organism.  Computations over both are another layer.  Computations over a collection of organisms, with a purely co-constructed "environment", is another.  Computations over all 4 (each organism, extant environment, organism-extant-env couplings, multiple organisms in extant environment) is yet another layer.  Loops within loops.

> However, that doesn't necessarily speak to our ability to jettison "representation" and replace it with dynamic-systems accounts more generally.  
> [...]
> So, to recap: The questions for the list are 1) Where will we look for the complexity in question? In the organism, in the environment, or in the system that includes both? 2) Once we have a decent account of that complexity, is anything added by inserting representation-talk in the middle of it?

It's not clear to me why you focused on a juxtaposition of representation vs. dynamical systems.  It sounds a lot like Marcus' argument in the loopiness thread.  You seem to be arguing that we can "flatten" the system to a dynamical systems account, with some exogenous accuracy and precision or error.  (By "exogenous", I mean typical sources like however we measure it or purely mechanical noise caused by a kind of "simple" uncertainty ... things like how well a nut fits a bolt, etc.)

By arguing that some types of loops within loops are only amenable to lossy compression, I'm asserting that _some_ of the loss is due to non-isomorphic mappings across boundaries.  The interfaces between actors are somehow smaller than what's on either side of the interfaces.  (Hence my comments about the holographic principle.)  In that sense, the question isn't merely about _where_ the complexity is (organism, environment, both), but also to what extent that complexity would be invariant if it were a) moved or b) modeled by something on the other side of a (smaller, lossy) interface.

This raises questions like: to what extent do organisms model their environment or vice versa?  Or to what extent are co-constructed scientific theories validated?  How to falsify them?  Etc.

--
☣ glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove