2008/7/14 Terren Suydam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Will, > > --- On Fri, 7/11/08, William Pearson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Purpose and goal are not intrinsic to systems. > > I agree this is true with designed systems.
And I would also say of evolved systems. My fingers purpose could equally well be said to be for picking ticks out of the hair of my kin or for touch typing. E.g. why do I keep my fingernails short, so that they do not impede my typing. The purpose of gut bacteria is to help me digest my food. The purpose of part of my brain is to do differentiation of functions, because I have . > The designed system is ultimately an extension of the designer's mind, > wherein lies the purpose. Oddly enough that is what I want the system to be. Rather an extension of my brain. >Of course, as you note, the system in question can serve multiple purposes, >each of which lies in the mind of some other observer. The same is true of >your system, even though its behavior may evolve. Your button is what tethers >its purpose to your mind. > On the other hand, we can create simulations in which purpose is truly > emergent. To support emergence our design must support large-scale, (global) > interactions of locally specified entities. Conway's Game of Life is an > example of such a system - what is its purpose? To provide an interesting system for researchers to research cellular automata? ;) I think I can see your point, It has no practical purpose as such. Just a research purpose. >It certainly wasn't specified. And neither am I specifying the purpose of mine! I'm quite happy to hook up the button to something I press when I feel like it. I could decide the purpose of the system was to learn and be good at backgammon one day, in which case my presses would reflect that, or I could decide the purpose of the system was to search the web. If you want to think of a good analogy for how emergent I want the system to be. Imagine someone came along to one of your life simulations and interfered with the simulation to give some more food to some of the entities that he liked the look of. This wouldn't be anything so crude as to specify the fitness or artificial breeding, but it would tilt the scales in the favour of entities that he liked all else being equal. Would this invalidate the whole simulation because he interfered and bought some of his purpose into it? If so, I don't see why. > The simplest answer is probably that it has none. But what if our design of > the local level was a little more interesting, such that at the global level, > we would eventually see self-sustaining entities that reproduced, competed > for resources, evolved, etc, and became more complex over a large number of > iterations? Then the system itself still wouldn't have a practical purpose. For a system Y to have a purpose, you have to have be able to say part X is like it is for Y to perform its function. Internal state corresponding to the entities might be said to have purpose, but not the system as a whole. > Whether that's possible is another matter, but assuming for the moment it > was, the purpose of that system could be defined in roughly the same way as > trying to define the purpose of life itself. We have to be careful here. What meaning of the word life are you using? 1) The biosphere + evolution 2) And individuals exsistance. The first has no purpose. You can never look at the biosphere and figure out what bits are for what in the grander scheme of things, or ask yourself what mutations are likely to be thrown up to better achieve its goal. That we have some self-regulation on the Gaian scale is purely anthropic, biospheres without it would likely have driven themselves to a state not able to support lives. An individual entity has a purpose, though. So to that extent the purposeless can create the purposeful. > So unless you believe that life was designed by God (in which case the > purpose of life would lie in the mind of God), the purpose of the system is > indeed intrinsic to the system itself. > I think I would still say it didn't have a purpose. If I get your meaning right. Will ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
