> Lakoff and Nunez > (http://perso.unifr.ch/rafael.nunez/reviews.html) have a theory > that we compare lengths in our head to do arithmetic, when we're > not using school-learned rules. Our innate mathematical ability > is based on visuo-spatial comparisons in their view. > > This would basically be #2, and to use this capability we need to > get familiar enough with the problem that our mind translates the > numbers involved into length. > > > > -Brad
yes! This is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of.... We have pretty good "inference" capability in the perceptual and motor domains, and it may be that one of our main (unconscious) strategies for cognitive processing is to map cognitive problems into the intuitive form of perceptual/motor problems. And, as you say, doing this mapping is much easier when the domain in question is familiar. Translation of extents into lengths so they can be reasoned on using length-handling circuitry is an excellent example... This is also an example of how weird the brain can be from an algorithmic perspective. In designing an AI system, one tends to abstract cognitive processes and create specific processes based on these abstractions. (And this is true in NN type AI architectures, not just logicist ones.) But evolution is a hacker sometimes: often, rather than abstracting, it reuses stuff that was created for another purpose, providing hacky mappings to enable the reuse. This is terrible software engineering practice, but evolution has a lot of computational resources to work with, and it does create a lot of buggy things ;) ben ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
