From: Chris Taylor (Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 01 May 2003 - 15:36:22 GMT
Wade T. Smith wrote:
>
> On Thursday, May 1, 2003, at 08:12 AM, memetics-digest wrote:
>
>> I mean that (for example) when catching a cricket
>> ball you _do not_ do the maths, you just match to your previous
>> experiences of catching (and the eidos of it you have refined over the
>> years - in effect a fully functional toy/model of the behaviour, built
>> by tuning though, not metrication).
>
>
> That _is_ 'doing the maths'. We are _built_ to 'do the maths'. We _do_
> the maths. We correspond with physical reality which has to follow
> physical laws. 'Maths' just explain what we do in another form.
Nah you're completely wrong I reckon. At no point is any maths done. If
I learn that when I see the shape '2+2=' that I should without question
make the shape '4' to the right of it, then I have answered the maths
problem without doing any maths. Catching is like that. Rote learning,
followed by abstraction to some extent (the trajectory is itself a thing
just as much as the ball following it). It is a bit like the Chinese
room thing in a way: You could match the arc of a ball to one of a
series of bezier curve templates, which then tell you where it will land
relative to the measurement point - again no maths is done (although in
this case the knowledge being exploited would probably've come from use
of maths rather than personal experience).
I think my knowledge of ballistic trajectories has more in common with
my knowledge of snakes, shoelaces and power cords, than with my
knowledge of calculus. What you're asserting is that because that
trajectory _can_ be described mathematically, therefore we _must_ have
made that description either explicitly, or codified somehow. But I see
pattern matching (which is what it is) as qualitatively different from
measurement.
Cheers, Chris.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu 01 May 2003 - 15:45:12 GMT