On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 1:53 AM, Ed Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Of course the selection of what to attend to and what action to take is > often a function of what is being perceived and/or imagined, or what goals > and drives one is currently laboring under. Selection of a behavior often > involves a comparison of its perceived cost/benefit compared to that of > other options. And as I stated in my response to Josh, instantiation of a > behavior usually requires feedback with perceived reality so as to make that > behavior appropriate in that reality, often repeated cycles of such > feedback. >
I think this is not a good way of seeing what's going on. Selection of behavior based on comparison of options is a deliberative process, a learned tabulator-like behavior which is not very interesting for the fundamentals. Normal action (including decisions to invoke specific kinds of deliberative reasoning) is more fluid that this, and in this regard it looks very much like perception. But "things" that it perceives are not about the scene that is being observed - it is about the actions that are to be done on this specific scene. When I'm hungry, and I see an apple, I recognize that there is an apple, so this is "here's an apple" kind of scene. But it's also "I grab the apple" kind of scene, and so action occurs. Independently, the size of the grip that my hand forms is being primed by the size of the apple. It could also be a "I need to deliberatively consider whether to grab the apple" kind of scene. Such categories are employed in action and deliberative reasoning, and as intermediate nodes in complex inference schemes. They don't just describe sensory input in terms of "what is", but more generally as "signals to be processed further". How to make sense of it in bringing about reasonable behavior is another matter, where high-level concepts come into play. -- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
