Alex, The answer to your question below is related to your previous note: "Just a question: do flies or bees have mental models?"
Short answer: They behave as if they do, Bees definitely develop a model of the environment, and they go back to their nest and communicate it to their colleagues by means of a dance that indicates (a) direction to the source of food; (b) the distance; and (c) the amount available at that source. That is very close to my definition of consciousness: "The ability to generate, modify, and use mental models as the basis for perception, thought, action, and communication." The bees demonstrate generating and using something that could be called a mental model for perception, action, and communication. The only question is about the amount and kind of thinking. In the quotation by Damasio, he wrote "Ultimately consciousness allows us to experience maps as images, to manipulate those images, and to apply reasoning to them." It's not clear how and whether the bees can "manipulate those images and apply reasoning to them." Flies aren't as smart as bees. They may have simple images that may be generated automatically by perception and used for action. But flies don't use them for communication. I admit that my definition is based on philosophical issues, but so is any mathematical version. And the issue of vagueness is related to generality. An image that can only be applied to a single pattern is not very useful. Alex> The main question is: can we create a device (now these are autonomous robots) capable of studying the outside world and then itself? The application to bees and flies can be adapted to designing devices "capable of studying the outside world and then itself". Every aspect of perception, thinking, action, and communication is certainly relevant, and those four words are easier to explain and to test than the complex books that Anatoly cited. The most complex issues involve the definition of mental models and methods of thinking about them and their relationship to the world, to oneself, and to the future of oneself in the world. And the issues about vagueness are extremely important to issues about similarity, generality, and changes in the world and oneself in the future. Those are fundamental issues of ontology, and every one of them involves vagueness or incompleteness in perception, thinking, action, and communication. As for mathematical precision, please note that Peirce, Whitehead, and Wittgenstein all had a very strong background in logic, mathematics, and science. That may be why they were also very sensitive to issues about vagueness. I'll also quote Lord Kelvin: "Better an approximate answer to the right question than an exact answer to the wrong question." John ---------------------------------------- From: "Alex Shkotin" <[email protected]> Excerpt is very interesting and mostly philosophical. The main question is: can we create a device (now these are autonomous robots) capable of studying the outside world and then itself? The progress in this direction is one of the main topics in robotic news. And this progress is significant. Alex
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