Re: nature -> "human brain" -> "language terms" ==>> knowledge ?
Chris,
I have not been hissing at you, I have been
ignoring you, for the simple reason that you
have been ignoring everybody else on this list.
Instead of addressing the issues that people
raise on this list, you simply repeat pet phrases,
many of which are reasonable in themselves, but you
don't relate them to the topic at hand.
On some issues, I agree with many of the points
you are trying to make. Following are some related
issues I have talked about many times:
1. The central problem that philosophers, logicians,
and computer scientists must face is what I called
"conceptual relativity" in my 1984 book and what
I later called "knowledge soup": the enormous
flexibility of the human brain in relating bits
of knowledge associatively and the inability of
of any of our current systems of mathematics,
logic, ontology, or knowledge representation to
come anywhere close to that kind of flexibility.
2. The compartmentalization of all academic departments
causes interdisciplinary projects to fall between the
cracks because each department focuses on what it calls
the "mainstream", which it jealously guards from its
neighbors. I have known a number of very good assistant
professors and even full professors who have not been
promoted or lost their jobs because they tended to make
waves that splashed across academic boundaries. For
that reason, they were considered "unfocused", "not fully
committed to their work", or "going off on a tangent".
3. Your remarks on quantum effects and neural science are
often well taken. Those are indeed very important areas
of research, which I believe are likely to revolutionize
much of science over the next 10 to 50 years. It's
important to maintain some familiarity with those fields
and to be able recognize how and when any new developments
in those fields can be usefully applied to the current
problems we are working on. On the other hand, those tools
are not yet available, and there are problems to be solved
today, many of which can be addressed today.
For an example of statements that make no useful contribution,
I'll quote your latest version:
JS> The point that the nature of the human brain
> is irrelevant to the truth of a scientific
> theory is the foundation for all of science.
CL> delusion derived from ignorance.
My claim is that the truth of any statement, ranging from a
single sentence, such as "There is no hippopotamus in this room"
up to a theory as complex as general relativity, is totally
independent of how it was derived -- by a human brain, by
a computer program, or by a message from an alien planet.
You have a right to dispute that point, but then you have
an obligation to support your claim by providing at least
one example to the contrary.
To support my point, I gave the following example:
JS> A theory of chemistry, for example, is tested by chemical
> experiments, whose results are evaluated by chemists. No one
> would claim that a neurophysiologist would have any special
> insights that would be relevant to the evaluation.
Nobody disputes your first sentence: "the tools and methods
used in chemistry are DETERMINED by the general method used
by the brain in processing information."
I will grant that neural science might lead us to design better
tools that take into account human abilities and limitations.
But that does not affect the original claim that the truth or
falsity of a theory in chemistry is determined by *chemistry*,
not by neural science.
Then you wrote another note talking about chemical bonds and
metaphors with human bonds. That is another observation of
the importance of metaphor in expanding and developing the
vocabulary of any language. I completely agree that analogies
and metaphors are the foundation for human thinking. I have
written papers on that point and worked with Arun Majumdar
in developing programs that build on that idea.
But that does not affect the basic point: the truth of any
statement does not depend on how it was derived or whether
the words used in the sentence were derived by metaphorical
or metonymic extensions from some more concrete terminology.
Among your other pet words are recursion, XOR, and AND.
We've used those things for years. If you think that you
have some special ways of using them that are relevant to
the topic of any note, do it. Don't just throw words around.
There's nothing wrong with being a generalist. But if you
want to respond to a note, respond to what it says. Don't
pile up a cloud of generalities that nobody disagrees with.
John Sowa