All, here is a 5th installment of my very many critiques of this paper.
Again, not all issues will resonate with everyone so pick and choose what
you find
interesting to debate pro/con and I will defend any of my comments, and
even
Dreyfus if
your critique is weak.
I first put the paragraph(s) I have a comment about, and highlight the
particular words at issue by enclosing them between "***" characters.
Below
that are my critiques open for comment. I also include any citations in
the
quoted section of the paper at the end of this post.
I seek (intelligent and informed) technical/theoretical/philosophical
critique or feedback from anyone on the issue(s) presented/raised.
See page 14, line 1:
Wheeler, however, hopes he can combine these approaches by appealing to
the
account of involved problem solving which Heidegger calls dealing with the
unready-to-hand. Wheeler's point is that, unlike detached problem solving
with its general representations, the unready-to-hand requires
situation-specific representations. But, as we have seen, for Heidegger
all
un-ready-to-hand coping takes place on the background of an even more
basic
nonrepresentational holistic coping that allows copers to orient
themselves
in the world.
Heidegger describes this background as "the background of... primary
familiarity, which itself is not conscious and intended but is rather
present in [an] unprominent way."[i] In Being and Time he speaks of "that
familiarity in accordance with which Dasein ... 'knows its way about'
[sich
'auskennt] in its public environment" (405). This coping is like the
ready-to-hand in that it does not involve representations. So Heidegger
says explicitly that our background being-in-the-world, which he also
calls
transcendence, does not involve representational intentionality, but,
rather, makes intentionality possible:
***Transcendence is a fundamental determination of the ontological
structure
of the Dasein..Intentionality is founded in the Dasein's transcendence and
is possible solely for this reason-transcendence cannot conversely be
explained in terms of intentionality***[asb1] . [ii]
To be more exact, background coping is not a traditional kind of
intentionality. Whereas the ready-to-hand has conditions of satisfaction,
like hammering in the nail, background coping does not have conditions of
satisfaction. What would it be to succeed or fail in finding ones why
around in the familiar world? The im****tant point for Heidegger, but not
for
Wheeler, is that all coping, including unready-to-hand coping, takes place
on the background of this basic non-representational, holistic, absorbed,
kind of intentionality, which Heidegger calls being-in-the-world.[iii]
This is not a disagreement between Wheeler and me about the relative
frequency of dealing with the ready-to-hand and the unready-to-hand in
everyday experience. True, Wheeler emphasizes intermittent reflective
activities such as learning and practical problem solving, whereas I, like
Heidegger, emphasize pervasive activities like going out the door, walking
on the floor, turning on and off the lights, etc. The question of the
relative frequency of the ready-to-hand and the unready-to-hand modes of
being is, Wheeler and I agree, an empirical question.[iv]
But the issue concerning the background is not an empirical question. It
is
an ontological question. And, as we have just seen, Heidegger is clear
that
the mode of being of the world is not that of a collection of independent
modules that define what is relevant in specific situations. It seems to
me
that Wheeler is on the right track, ***leaving modular solutions and
action
oriented representations behind***[asb3] , when he writes:
[W]here one has CRC [***continuous reciprocal causation***[asb4] ] one
will
have a non-modular system. ***Modularity is necessary for homuncularity
and
thus, on my account, necessary for representation of any kind***.[asb5]
To
the extent that the systems underlying intelligence are characterized by
CRC, they will be non-representational, and so the notion of
action-oriented
representation won't help explain them. (Personal communication.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MY CRITIQUES indexed by my initials "ASB" followed by the number of my
comment above:
[asb1]I must say, with due respect, this sounds like psychobabble.
Representational intentionality verses a system that makes intentionality
possible is a false dichotomy as I see it. Simply put, model driven AI
(al
la Brooks, et. al) is representational intentionality driven and data
driven
AI (e.g., Neural networks, Genetic algorithms, Fuzzy logic, etc.) are
systems that make intentionality possible. So what? None of this seems
new, and misses the real problem (some of which are exemplified in my
prior
comments). Data driven "coupling" methods do not magically avoid the
frame
problem, they just ignore information they were not designed to capture
and
result in systems that cannot capture context. Implementing the right
"gestalt" and computational framework is much more to the issue, not which
direction intentionality is driven from.
[asb3]I really think you are mixing up centralized verse distributed
architectural schemes. Modular solutions and action oriented
representations are not excluded from nature, so why should you exclude
them
from the human cognitive condition? Indeed, if life is based on anything
it
is based on Modular solutions and action oriented representations, which
are
encoded by the DNA and acted upon by environmental context. Again, it
seems
like you are creating/identifying problems that do not exist.
[asb4]as I see it is defined by Clark and Wheeler, CRC is "causation that
requires multiple, simultaneous interactions and dynamic feedback loops.
such that a) the causal contribution of each component in the system of
interest is determined by, and help to determine, the causal contributions
of other components, and b) those contributions may, as a result, change
quite radically as the process evolves."
Question: Is a hologram a CRC system? Because it is a captured
interference
pattern each node has a distributed part of the image, to reconstruct the
represented image (a causal representation), "multiple, simultaneous
interactions" of each hologram node's phase information and the causal
contributions of any node depend entirely on "the causal contribution of
each component in the hologram system". If one thinks of the
reconstruction of a stored hologram as a spatiotem****al evolving process
by
which the contribution of various nodes occurs as a dynamic process over
time and space and completely depends on the space-time evolution and the
coherence of the reconstructing light source, then " those [hologram node]
contributions may, as a result, change quite radically as the
[illumination
and causal image reconstruction] process evolves ". In this way it seems
that a hologram satisfies the CRC definition. If you disagree, please be
specific and then I'll further refine the analogy to caption missing
behaviors you may identify.
[asb4]If so, then a hologram is clearly a very modular system. You can
cut
away massive parts of the system and still reconstruct the image to
various
levels of granularity. Because the phase information is stored in a kind
of
distributed fractal scheme it is inherently modular, as any fractal
structure is by definition. Thus, a hologram is a CRC system that is
extremely modular. So, how do you reconcile that with "[W]here one has
CRC
[continuous reciprocal causation ] one will have a non-modular system "?
Thus, if "systems underlying intelligence are characterized by CRC
[holograms], they [will be representational], and the notion of
action-oriented representation [could help] explain them " This is just
one
kind of counter example. I think this further illustrates how your whole
philosophical cognitive logic ignore distributed representation systems,
and
just focuses on typical centralized system like Brooks, et. al. It seems
to
me you and Wheeler are fighting windmills... an interesting
philosophical/academic duel, but it does not seem to further the practical
issues of AI as a whole, especially not the frame problem.
On an aside, moreover, a hologram is the exact opposite of a homonuclear
system.
[asb5]Really? Classical Neural networks are certainly not modular, but
they certainly represent information/meaning in a very definite (if not
describable) fa****on. How do you reconcile that?
CITATIONS MADE IN THE ABOVE QUOTED SECTION OF THE PAPER:
[i] Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time , Trans. T. Kisiel,
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 19850), 189.
[ii] Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. A.
Hofstadter, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982), 162.
[iii] Moreover, the background solicitations are constantly enriched, not
by
adding new bits of information as Wheeler suggests, but by allowing finer
and finer discriminations that show up in the world by way of the
intentional arc.
[iv] We agree too that both these modes of encountering the things in the
world are more frequent and more basic than appeal to general-purpose
reasoning and goal oriented planning.
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