Timeline for How could a computer acquire knowledge of its environment?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
8 events
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| Jan 5, 2023 at 1:01 | comment | added | CriglCragl | Hofstadter's definition is this: "an abstract loop in which, in the series of stages that constitute the cycling-around, there is a shift from one level of abstraction (or structure) to another, which feels like an upwards movement in an hierarchy, and yet somehow the successive 'upward' shifts turn out to give rise to a closed cycle". I think he identifies a specific subset of emergence and complex behaviour; a fruitful area of it; & one widely neglected because of issues with things like higher order logic & logic of self-reference. I'd look to Universal Constructor theory for future rigor | |
| Jan 5, 2023 at 0:53 | comment | added | CriglCragl | @JD: A strange loop involves specific criteria. Systems of cross-reference that form a tangled hierarchy. & sufficient complexity to include a self-model in decision making, & amend the actual self in relation to modelled outcomes, ie self-referential feedback; & so in at least a primitive way be able to form intentional states | |
| Jan 4, 2023 at 21:14 | comment | added | J D | @CriglCragl Is your use of GEB's Strange Loop just a poetic euphemism for emergence from complexity? | |
| Aug 26, 2018 at 0:40 | comment | added | CriglCragl | @DavidThornley We discussed it on here philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/22926/… I esprcially recommend the Wittgenstein-Nietzsche-Rorty article I posted there. If you seriously consider Munchausen's trilemma, strange loops are the only answer. There is no 'correct place to begin', there are only reinforcing movements through thought-structures using various modes, stepping in and out (axiomatising), unifying (regression), and looping (circular reasoning). | |
| Aug 26, 2018 at 0:30 | comment | added | CriglCragl | @Roddus Niether the brain nor the symbol. The culture of use is between the two. | |
| Aug 24, 2018 at 2:25 | comment | added | Roddus | @CriglCragl You say "Your premise that symbols are semantically vacant is untenable, in terms of viewing language in practice - they are imbued with it by use". So symbols are imbued with semantic content by virtue of use of the (those same) symbols. But isn't what really happens this: brains get imbued with semantic content by way of use of external symbols (and other things)? The content doesn't inhere in the symbol, rather it inheres in the brain? This issue of sensory semantic content seems much more primitive than any mathematical understanding of human processes and structures. | |
| Aug 22, 2018 at 17:58 | comment | added | David Thornley | You make some interesting statements about strange loops, their formation, and their use. Do you have some pointers to explication? | |
| Aug 22, 2018 at 15:56 | history | answered | CriglCragl | CC BY-SA 4.0 |