Bill Skaggs <skaggs at bns.pitt.edu> wrote:
>herwin at gmu.edu (Harry Erwin) writes:
>> > I'm beginning to suspect a primary function of the neocortex is the
> > maintenance of a non-symbolic, dynamic model of the environment. The
> > evidence seems fairly strong that bats live mostly in such a model
> > (Griffin, 1958), and the difficulty we have training bats to use
> > symbolic representations (yes/no tokens) in communicating with us,
> > suggests that their internal model is non-symbolic, possibly like the
> > analog models used in some contexts like wind tunnels and floatation
> > tanks.
>> Hi Harry!
>> I gather from this that you're having trouble training a bat to do a
> task.
Hi, Bill!
Bats can be trained to signal 'yes/no', but it's a pain and a half. It
doesn't come naturally to them.
>> Anyway, you may be right but I don't think the argument is convincing.
> Whatever sort of environment-model bats have, they certainly are
> capable of using it to make at least some binary distinctions (e.g.,
> moth/leaf).
>> -- Bill
If I had a convincing argument, I'd do some sort of experimental test
and publish a paper. I can e-mail you something speculative if you want.
--
Harry Erwin, PhD, <mailto:herwin at gmu.edu>,Computational Neuroscientist
(modeling bat behavior), Senior SW Analyst and Security Engineer, and
Adjunct Professor of Computer Science, GMU. Looking--CV available at:
<http://mason.gmu.edu/~herwin/CV.htm>
