Edward,
What you and everyone else is doing here - trying to analyse your conscious
thought processes directly to see grounding or not - is v. misleading.
One central point I have been making is that grounding - the brain making
sense of conscious symbols - is largely *unconscious.* Thinking consciously
in words is much more economic of effort than thinking consciously in
visuals. We will never stop thinking mainly in words - or, in maths, in
numbers.
If you really want to understand grounding - and, I suggest, seriously
improve your thinking - look at all the examples you can find of CONFUSION -
when you *don't* understand something.
That's a basic principle of something like neuropsychology of old - if you
want to understand how a thing works, look at when and why it *doesn't*
work.
What are the subjects or subject areas (in say science, philosophy,
psychology etc etc) that give you difficulty? Make a list.
And then try and see what it takes to overcome some of those difficulties -
what the brain needs to "see the light", for things finally to "click."
Then you'll start to see common patterns in how the brain does and doesn't
work/ understand.
If you and everyone else starts to do that, you'll also start to find this
whole business of grounding seriously interesting.
Edward:Different people's minds probably work differently. For me dredging
up of
memories, including verbal memories, is an important part of my mental
processes. Maybe that is because I have been trained as a lawyer.
I am not arguing against the fact that visual memories play an important
role in human thinking. They do. I often do a lot of my best thinking in
terms of images.
What I am arguing is that other types of grounding play an important part
as well. I am arguing that visual grounding is not necessarily the
largest force in each and every mathematical thought. Yes, the human
brain dedicates a lot of real estate to visual processing, but if you take
all of the language, behavioral, emotional and higher level association
areas, you have a lot of brain real estate dedicated to concepts that are
either non-visual or only partially visual. We should not assume that all
that brain real estate plays little or no role in most thinking.
Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if visual memories and patterns are
taking at least some part in the massively parallel spreading activation
and inferencing in the sub-conscious that helps pop most thoughts up to
consciousness -- without me even knowing it. But by similar reasoning I
would also assume a lot of non-visual memories and patterns would also be
taking part in such massive parallel inferencing.
In many types of thinking I am consciously aware of words in my head much
more than I am of images. Perhaps this is because I am a patent lawyer,
and I have spent thousands of hours reading text in which many of the
words have only loose association to concrete visual memories. And as a
lawyer when I read such abstract texts, to the extent that I can sense
what is in my consciousness and near consciousness, many of the words I
read seem to derive their meaning largely from other concepts and memories
that also seem to be largely defined in terms of words, although
occasionally visual memories pop out.
When I read "The plaintiff is an Illinois corporation selling services for
the maintenance of photocopiers" it is probably not until I get to
"photocopiers" than anything approaching a concrete image pops into my
mind.
Thus, at least from my personal experience, it seems that many concepts
learned largely through words can be grounded to a significant degree in
other concepts defined largely through words. Yes, at some level in the
gen/comp pattern hierarchy and in episodic memory all of these concepts
derive at least some of their meaning from visual memories. But for
seconds at a time that does not seem to be the level of representation my
consciousness is aware of.
Does any body else on this list have similar episodes of what appears to
be largely verbal conscious thought, or am I (a) out of touch with my own
conscious processes, and/or (b) weird?
Edward W. Porter
Porter & Associates
24 String Bridge S12
Exeter, NH 03833
(617) 494-1722
Fax (617) 494-1822
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: Charles D Hixson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 7:56 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [agi] The Grounding of Maths
But what you're reporting is the dredging up of a memory. What would be
the symbolism if in response to "4" came the question "How do you know
that?" For me it's visual (and leads directly into the definition of "+"
as an amalgamation of two disjunct groupings).
Edward W. Porter wrote:
(second sending--roughly 45 minutes after first sending with no
appearance on list)
Why can't grounding from language, syntax, musical patterns, and other
non-visual forms of grounding play a role in mathematical thinking?
Why can't grounding in the form of abstract concepts learned from
hours of thinking about math and its transformations play an important
role.
Because we humans are such multimedia machines, probably most of us
who are sighted have at least some visual associations tainting most
of our concepts -- including most of our mathematical concepts -- at
least somewhere in the gen/comp hierarchies representing them and the
memories and patterns that include them.
I have always considered myself a visual thinker, and much of my AGI
thinking is visual, but if you ask me what is "2 + 2", it is a voice I
hear in my head that says "4", not a picture. It is not necessary that
visual reasoning be the main driving force in reasoning involving a
particular mathematical thought. To a certain extent math is a
language, and it would be surprising if linguistic patterns and
behaviors -- or at least patterns and behaviors partially derived from
them -- didn't play a large role in mathematical thinking.
Edward W. Porter
Porter & Associates
24 String Bridge S12
Exeter, NH 03833
(617) 494-1722
Fax (617) 494-1822
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--
This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email
To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&;
<http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&;>
-----
This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email
To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&;
-----
This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email
To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&;
--
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.14.8/1064 - Release Date: 11/10/2007
15:09
-----
This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email
To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=53204612-1dfc0f
