Discussions on cognitive science and computational theory

Communication send March 20, 2004

> Professor S (name removed per author’s request)

> I request your comment on the following

> http://www.ontologystream.com/beads/nationalDebate/fifty.htm

> Dr. Paul S. Prueitt

> paul@ontologystream.com

First reply from Dr. S

-----Original Message-----

From:

Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 7:24 PM

To: Paul S Prueitt

Subject: Re: computational inference

Paul,

I am very much confused about your web pages (after reading several pages, I was still lost). In a nutshell, what is the position you are trying to advance?

------------------------------------------------

Response…………

Dr. S

Well, I will try to start. Although, on the surface a great deal of our two foundational perceptions are at odds. But there is always a way to see why the differences exist.

The paradigm I work on assumes that cognition is not going to be understood using a strict rational viewpoint. For me, this means actually that one has to see memory store as not really existing as something that is "retrieved". Rather the phenomenon of remembrance is an emergent phenomenon that is consequent from a perturbation of various neural compositions. Like wise, anticipation is also not something “retrieved”. Rather anticipatory responses are interactions with an environment of the brain system.

The machine architecture called the Tri-level architecture thus sees ontological differences between memory, awareness and anticipation. Using this architecture one can produce a double articulation of “meaning” within a pragmatic/environmental context. The “metaphysics” is new and strange to those trained in classical system theory.

Awareness “exists” only the present moment. The causes of memory and the causes of anticipation are “from” two radically different organizational scales, and yet neither are existent in the present moment. One uses the work on Bell’s inequality, and the Heisenburg measurement gap to reinforce the notion that there are things that do not exist in the sense of having a location, substances requiring boundary conditions and initial conditions (Peter Kugler, personal communications).

One has to agree that the language is hard to conceive, and yet from this language comes a new paradigm in knowledge technology where the tools are simple and powerful, relying on Human-centric Information Production (HIP) rather than often vague, and yet elegant Hilbert or discrete mathematics. The mapping between the Hilbert and discrete mathematics into a Tri-level architecture is immediate and simple, thus allowing any data mining system over large data sets to be translated into structure that can be seen in small data sets. (There is more to say about this.)

These neurocognitive and quantum neurocognitive considerations leads to formal system on differential ontology and formative ontology that I invented in 2002 and 2003 while working on Total Information Awareness technologies for the intelligence community. These technologies are simple to understand the to use, but has not been understood by the program managers at DARPA up to now. This work is derived largely form Russian applied semiotics and quasi axiomatic theory.

I looked at your web site to see how to frame a presentation of the paradigm.

On your web site (link removed per author’s request) you say:

"My research interests span a diverse set of topics in cognitive psychology and cognitive science including semantic influences in recognition and recall, computational models for semantic representation, dynamic decision making models, causal reasoning, and Bayesian networks.

In each of these areas, I combine mathematical and computational modeling with behavioral experiments. The models and experiments are tightly coupled: I try to formulate empirical questions with the goals of constraining, developing, or testing between alternative computational models of how people learn, process, and represent information. In addition, although I consider my work to be basic science, I try to conduct research that has some potential for application in the real world. Towards that end, I focus on behavioral tasks that have some correspondence with the cognitive problems faced by real people on a daily basis, such as distinguishing false memories from true recollections, and on computational models that draw on state-of-the-art methods in artificial intelligence and machine learning, such as Bayesian networks."

I am interested in what your thought are on the influences of meaning on the perception and recognition process.

Since it will be very easy to misunderstand what I might say - as you have noted about your reading of the pages at my web site - perhaps you can send to me to something you have written regarding the "semantic influence in recognition and recall. I have a deep understanding and background in the neuroscience and mathematics. I have been one of Karl Pribram's students and have a personal friendship with him and with Walter Freeman.

Certainly others have positions that computational models are not powerful enough to precisely model how people learn, process and represent information.

My sense is that mathematics can be used to provide a means to understand how people learn, process and represent information.

Dan Levine,

Would you please make a comment about this point and perhaps tie it to your remark at {*}. Other remarks and additional comments form Dr. St will be posted from this link { + }

The research sent an unhappy note regarding my posting his name into the beads. The problem is that the computer science and information technology people have really gone off into a separate reality. It costs society and it costs our defense system greatly.

Request to remove identification out of the discussion:

Reply from Professor

While I appreciate your effort in explaining your thoughts, I certainly do not appreciate you putting my email on a public website without my consent.

Reply from Prueitt

I understand .. what do you propose?

Reply from Professor

very simple -- take my email off your website.

We have removed the identifying information except to say that this is a new Associate Professor of Computer Science in a leading West Coast university.

This behavior is typical of those who feel unable to response to a principled argument that computer science has developed a number of mythologies and have not been provided an education in the natural science sufficient to teach about science.

Additional note at [20]