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>Date: Thu, 12 Oct 95 15:48:42 09:22:00 -0300
>From: Postmaster at neubio.sld.ar>Message-Id: <9510101222.AA10586 at ics.inf.tu-dresden.de>
>To: ck at ics.inf.tu-dresden.de (Catharina Kennedy)
>Subject: Re: A confession and a plea to attract historians of ideas.
>X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII
>>>>Dear Catharina (Catharina Kennedy, ck at ics.inf.tu-dresden.de),
>>I was very glad in noticing that the contributions I sent (most of them not mine,
>indeed) were of your interest, and that they also seemed to you relevant
>for your area of research (AI and autonomous systems). I was really afraid
>that such relevance might have passed unnoticed due to the difference in the
>views, and historical emphasis, derived from the remoteness of our tradition, and
>to personal failures in my writings. So your words were stimulating for me and
>I thank you very much for them. Since you mention also other subjects that
>can be of interest for us all, I dare to make public the responses I try to provide.
>> < Would you say that the problem to be solved is the *autonomous* generation
> < of a context by a living or cognitive system? If so, I agree.
>>But before let me solely mention, now, that besides AI and autonomous systems,
>the physical means orchestrated by brained natural organisms to acquire general
>programmings so as to cope with non-Turing tasks are, too, relevant to several other
>disciplines (generally pointed out in the excerpt in English I sent). Among those
>disciplines I will select as, up to my understanding, directly relevant for the collea-
>gues netters in our Forum, the problems of saliency (of *individual* contents in an
>intramental object system) and that of the physicochemical production of different
>non-structural, one-witness characterizations UPON THEM.
>> < when we specify an algorithm i.e. Turing machine, we predetermine a context
> < and there is no room for its autonomous generation - any learning must take
> < place *within* this prespecified "universal" context.
>>The non-structural characterizations prespecify only a bias, not a mandatory course of
>action; so the brained natural organisms are labeled here as *non-Turing automata*
>since a lecture with such title given by Prof. Crocco here in 1966. If you glance upon
>our Prof. Jakob's *Von Tierhirn zum Menschenhrin* (Lehmann, Munchen, 1911) you
>shall find the recognizance of such physical mean -namely, the non-structural charac-
>terizations, that I pointed out are not recognized as physical by most physicists outsi-
>de our hylozoist tradition- as a physical variable intervening in the natural selection
>of brain morphologies. If this position is right, it means that by means of algorithms
>-or in general through any kind of structuring, to which programs also pertain- you can
>only bestow mandatory steps onto a system.
>>If you need *general* programming, you need non-mandatory agencies, of which nature
>employs one: the differential production of said one-witness, biasing non-structuralities.
>>(I understand that you, Catharina, at your Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Dresden,
>probably tries the same by attempting to implement fuzzy or chaotic modes of inserting
>indeterminations in practicable, still determined commands. Isn't true?).
>>This being a factual matter, it existence falls of course outside any discussion in the field
>of Logics; the issue is just if such physical mean exists, or exists not. Here we shall en-
>counter two kinds of difficulties to advance with our interest in this kind of research. The
>first difficulty, again of course, is the classified nature of some works in the field. I am
>personally prone to discuss all what I can in this regard, but cannot feign to ignore the
>interests existing in the field. So I think most useful for our Forum to be plain and frank
>when these *frontiers* chance to be approached in our discussions. About the second
>difficulty, I notice that I failed in signaling it clearly, since you inquiried if we:
>> < ... should criticize the tradition of predetermining (or prespecifying) a context
> < in which an intelligent system should operate (whether artificial or natural)?
>>Indeed, what our Argentinian-German Neurobiological School did was criticism of
>a syncretic myth, also introductorily mentioned, in the English excerpt I sent, as *the
>longest on stage of our theatre idols*. Such a myth is enormously powerful in the
>Western culture (patchily, also in others) and now widespread worldwide with the
>recent globalization of Western views. That myth is complex, but regarding our in-
>terests it supports, on extrascientific motives, the view that said physical mean to
>provide non-Turing automata with merely biasing context (to achieve their general
>programming) does not physically exist.
>>Such myth is not only complex, but we here found it also enormously insidious,
>because it is bolstered by many cultural redundancies supporting important
>extrascientific interests (economic, social and individual interests). And such a
>myth, that is supported by the traditions of the Pythagoric-Parmenidean thougth
>(let me only mention them here, for not complicating excessively this short notice)
>so influential among mathematicians and logicians, we cannot relinquish withouth
>significant social damage. So, on one hand, we need it socially, and on the other we
>should develop the non-Turing automata the industry need to meet also social ends;
>a development requiring discarding -perhaps painfully, in other regards- the tenets
>of said socially needed myth.
>>Here enters such a criticism, required to make room for our work. (To point out some
>other foreign, but parallel and easier to read, criticisms of this kind, I mind A.O.
>Lovejoy's *The Great Chain of Being* (Harvard U.P. 1936, 1966) and J.M. Allegro's
>*The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross* (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1970, the last
>having been also fiercely combatted by its contraposition with social interests). In
>our case, our task requires to put in evidence said physical means and develop their
>control, learning to limit what can be expected of the structuring algorithmizations
>(furnished even with the new mathematical techniques).
>>This is a practical use of the history of ideas, with which we are well acquainted in as
>deeply a humanist-naturalist transdisciplinarity as that featured by our remote tradition.
>But we understand it ought to appear as odd in the yuxtapositionative interdisciplinarity
>promoted in more widespread current academic trends. So, this is why I posted such a
>plea for all us trying to attract historians of ideas to our forthcoming discussions.
>>While hoping your opinions, I am sending to your particular e-mail some Spanish
>texts; in about a fortnight I shall scan and send a longer one.
>> Thanking you again for your help in developing clearly our ideas,
>receive the habitual Cheers! from
>> Mariela
>>>>
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Prof. Mariela Szirko,
<postmaster at neubio.sld.ar>
Centro de Investig. Neurobiologicas, Ministry
of Health & Welfare, Argentine Republic; and Lab. of
Electroneurobiological Res., Hospital "Dr. Jose Tiburcio Borda",
Municipality of Buenos Aires,
Office: Phone/Fax (54 1) 306 -7314
e-mail <postmaster at neubio.gov.ar>
Standard disclaimer: Las opiniones de este mensaje son personales
y no comprometen las dependencias a cargo de la firmante.
Reply to THIS message, ONLY to: <postmaster at neubio.sld.ar>
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