In order to have perceptual/conceptual similarity, it might make sense that there is distance metric over conceptual spaces mapping (ala Gardenfors or something like this theory) underlying how the experience of reasoning through is carried out. This has the advantage of being motivated by neuroscience findings (which are seldom convincing, but in this case it is basic solid neuroscience research) that there are topographic maps in the brain. Since these conceptual spaces that structure sensorimotor expectation/prediction (including in higher order embodied exploration of concepts I think) are multidimensional spaces, it seems likely that some kind of neural computation over these spaces must occur, though I wonder what it actually would be in terms of neurons, (and if that matters).
But that is different from what would be considered quantitative reasoning, because from the phenomenological perspective the person is training sensorimotor expectations by perceiving and doing. And creative conceptual shifts (or recognition of novel perceptual categories) can also be explained by this feedback between trained topographic maps and embodied interaction with environment (experienced at the ecological level as sensorimotor expectations (driven by neural maps). Sensorimotor expectation is the basis of dynamics of perception and coceptualization). On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 7:24 PM, Ben Goertzel <b...@goertzel.org> wrote: > > > On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Steve Richfield < > steve.richfi...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Ben, >> >> On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Ben Goertzel <b...@goertzel.org> wrote: >> >>> know what dimensional analysis is, but it would be great if you could >>> give an example of how it's useful for everyday commonsense reasoning such >>> as, say, a service robot might need to do to figure out how to clean a >>> house... >>> >> >> How much detergent will it need to clean the floors? Hmmm, we need to know >> ounces. We have the length and width of the floor, and the bottle says to >> use 1 oz/M^2. How could we manipulate two M-dimensioned quantities and 1 >> oz/M^2 dimensioned quantity to get oz? The only way would seem to be to >> multiply all three numbers together to get ounces. This WITHOUT >> "understanding" things like surface area, utilization, etc. >> > > > I think that the El Salvadorean maids who come to clean my house > occasionally, solve this problem without any dimensional analysis or any > quantitative reasoning at all... > > Probably they solve it based on nearest-neighbor matching against past > experiences cleaning other dirty floors with water in similarly sized and > shaped buckets... > > -- ben g > > > *agi* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/> | > Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;>Your Subscription > <http://www.listbox.com> > ------------------------------------------- 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=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
