We have to use concepts to think about other concepts. The concepts that we use while thinking about a subject group of concepts will illuminate the subject and shape the subject concepts that we are thinking about. Someone once actually argued against this idea but I had no idea what he was thinking about since he did not give any illustration of his ideas or provide any conversational reasons supporting his views.
Another dismissal of this point of view was that AI had always been aiming at solving these kinds of problems. In other words, there is no reason to think about them because it would be the product of intelligence anyway. (!?!) (At least that was my best guess about their point of view since they were unwilling to discuss the problem or even acknowledge it in an insightful way.) When I can't get people to discuss this I start to wonder if I have a piece of knowledge that they don't. Because if most other people are missing something this simple and this basic then I might have had a strategic advantage that I don't realize that I possess. And all these things seem to be composed of generalizations. A goal is a generalization of different kinds of things. Measuring a goal using something about the sub goals is one strategy that may work in some cases, but again it is a generalization that does not define how it might be used in anything that has some practical use. For example, are the sub goals objectives that seem as they might be correlated to the goal or are they definitive steps to the goal? Are the sub goals methods that can be used to examine the progress toward the goal or are they objectives or steps toward the completion of the goal? We can think about the strategy only by thinking about relatively more specifics of the generalization and by examining the way they interrelate and can be varied when used by other methods and by looking at various alternatives. Jim Bromer On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 6:50 PM, Mike Archbold <[email protected]> wrote: > Jim, I think about the issue you emphasize of no 'independent concepts' > frequently. It plays a role in my latest approximate design. Mike A > > On Tuesday, October 7, 2014, Jim Bromer via AGI <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Some years ago I kept mentioning my idea that concepts are relativistic >> hoping that someone would discuss the effects of this relativism with me. >> Eventually someone who was willing to talk to me once in a while became a >> little exasperated with me for repeating this over and over, and he >> explained that two authors had written a textbook on Cognitive Science that >> he read had pointed out that Concepts were relativistic back in 1972. >> (Implying that my idea was not new or particularly interesting.) I wondered >> if that was possibly true so I wrote a reply and told him that I would make >> a point to read that book. I made a note to get a copy the next time I was >> in the state university library. A few months later I found a reference in >> Wikipedia to the authors he had mentioned and it was quite clear that they >> frequently emphasized the point that Concepts were related in their >> textbooks. >> >> Yes of course Concepts are related. But my choice of the term >> "relativistic" was not drawn from my cornucopia of grammatical errors or >> because I wanted to pretentiously use a term from physics but because I was >> trying to get the idea across that Concepts are not only related - they are >> relativistic. >> AGI | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
