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ThinkArt Lab Animation: A.T. Kelemen© November 12, 1998 Dr. Rudolf Kaehr
1 Proemiality and Panalogy
1.1 Cognitive Systems and Panalogy Architectures
The DARPA label Cognitive Systems maybe interpreted as a interplay of cognitive and volitive aspects of a living system. Such an interplay was described by Gunther in his Cybernetic Theory of Subjectivity as the mechanism of a proemial relation.
This idea of a proemiality between structurally different systems can be brought to a more concrete level as an interplay of the four aspects of a living system architectonics", reflectionality", interactivity" and positionality". I choose these terms because they show a possible connection to existing work in the fields of AI, robotics, living systems, etc.
None of these aspects is prior to the other. They are simultaneously founding and generating each other. There is now need for a complex architectonic if there is no need for complex reflection, and so on.
The polycontextural approach to cognitive systems postulates that cognitive systems are from the very beginning involved in the interplay of (at least) these aspects of specifications. Cognitive systems don´t exist in the world isolated for themselves, and are starting from time to time to interact and to reflect, etc. In contrary, they simply don´t exist if they are not principally involved from the very beginning simultaneously in all these actions.
At the time there are some very interesting developments in AI, robotics and other branches, collected by terms like "Cognitive Systems" (DARPA), "Architectures" (Sloman, Minsky) and "Emotion Machine" (Minsky), "Common Sense Interfaces", etc.
The main background idea and strategy seems to be to introduce multitudes against single monolitical concepts and methods. Slogans like "Multiple ways of thinking", "Diversity of ways of thinking", "Parallel ways of thinking", etc. The introduction of different agents like critics are part of the dissolution of monoliticity of classical modeling in AI.
Minsky calls one important case of multitudes "parallel analogy" or short panalogy.
Push Singh is on the way to write and implement in his Ph.D. dissertation The Panalogy Architecture for Commonsense Computing.
The Panalogy Principle: If you 'understand' something in only one way then you scarcely understand it at all-because when something goes wrong, you'll have no place to go. But if you represent something in several ways, then when one of them fails you can switch to another. That way, you can turn things around in your mind to see them from different points of view -until you find one that works well for you now. And that's one of the things that `thinking" means!
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We cannot expect much resourcefulness from a program that uses one single technique-because if that program works in only one way, then it will get stuck when that method fails. However, a program with multiple `ways to think'-the way we'll describe in Chapter §7-could behave more like a person does: whenever you get frustrated enough, then you can switch to a different approach-perhaps through a change in emotional state.
Minsky
One aspect of the broader view is the way in which a growing interest in
architectures and varieties of forms of representation replaces, or
rather subsumes, the older emphasis on algorithms and data-structures.
By 'architecture' I don't mean what computer engineers used to mean: the
low level organisation of a kind of hardware device, e.g. a Turing
Machine architecture, or a VonNeumann architecture, or a Vax
architecture. Rather the study of architecture includes the study of all
sorts of ways of constructing complex functioning systems from many,
possibly diverse, components. This includes software architectures,
virtual machine architectures, hybrid architectures, etc.
I expect the study of architectures, especially layered virtual-machine architectures will
continue to grow in importance. We may need entirely new kinds of mathematics for this.
From: Aaron Sloman (A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk)
Date: May 26, 2003 23:22
In order to explore how to build an architecture of diversity for commonsense computing, my thesis will explore these questions:
How can we represent a "way of thinking"?
How can we map types of problems to types of ways of thinking?
How can we detect problems with the current way of thinking?
How can we switch efficiently between ways of thinking?
1.2 Ways of thematicizing
In earlier papers I introduced some distictions to characterize how we are thematicizing our subject.
Explanation (Narration, Metaphors, Notions)
Formalization (Mathematics, Logics)
Implementation (Modeling, Computerimplementation)
Realization (Construction, real-world performance)
Diagramm 3
Leitlinien der Erfragung
These categories of thematicizing are understood as purely functional and structural and not fixed in any sense. Therefore we can study the implementation of the explanation or the realization of the formalization, etc. In this sense even a poem can be thematicized by its power of formalization, its level of realization, etc.
From this point of view the project "Cognitive Systems" with its architectures are situated in the field of Explanation, see Minskys book "Emotion Machines", Implementation, Modeling, see SADE, CoGaff, SOAR and Realization in the domain of Modeling. This implies Formalization too. But here we observe a very classical situation without any attempts in the direction of the slogan "Multiple ways of thinking". The whole monolitical concept and apparatus of mathematical and logical thinking and reasoning is accepted, at least it is not a topic of the new panalogy program. The same happens to the realization of the model, it has to run on a classical computer, accepting the paradigm of algorithms as formalized e.g. in the Turing machine and the concept of information as formalized by Shannon.
This situation is surely not surprising, because it mirrors the current situation of technology and mathematics. Any denial of these presuppositions would sabotage the whole project of developing today on a reasonable base more complex systems.
Nevertheless, to discuss and surpass the limits of the formalization power of mathematics for the realization of artificial living systems was one of the aims at the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) in the early days of AI researches.
The only voice concerning mathematics in connection with the Grand Challenge Project I found in Sloman´s email. "We may need entirely new kinds of mathematics for this." But this statement can have itself a multitude of interpretations.
The open question remains, is the study of cognitive systems, more explicit, is informatics part of mathematics? Or is it the grand challenge of informatics to deliberate itself from the paradigm of mathematics? It seems that Margret Boden is thinking in this direction too.
1.3 Complementary Work?
From the point of view of strict foundational studies in this field, I try to realize some complementary aspects of the contemporary situation.
Therefore I have to focus mainly on the aspects of formalization. What are "Multiple ways of thinking" in logic and arithmetics? One actual answer to this question we can find in the growing approach of Combining Logics (fibring, labelling, weaving formal systems, Pfalzgraf, Gabbay). This trend is not yet recognized by the vision of panalogy. Mainly probably, because this work is not only very recent but also extremely technical and even mathematicians will have some problems to understand and to use it. Also, at least from my standpoint, this work is not radical enough at all. Because it is based on a monolitical kernel of classical logic. The diversity comes here to a stop at the bottom and ends in monolicity. On the other hand, it is based in its meta-language, category theory and multi-sorted logics, on a monolitic monster at the top.
That classical logics in all its forms are not enough for the study of cognitive systems maybe well known. Not only Kant and Hegel discovered it, but also Peter Wegner was criticizing the Japan Project from this point of view. Prolog, based on first order logic, is to weak to cope with interaction. But the common strategy of Hegel and Wegner is to avoid logic and to switch to a more speculative or empirical level of modeling, instead of transforming the paradigm of logic itself. There is no reason to believe that logic is something natural like the natural numbers of arithmetics and that it could not be changed as the naturality of the natural numbers can be de-mystified. This challenge is not accepted at all, the result is, again, some regression into non-formal thinking.
Because of my focus on foundational studies my realization of the category of explanation is worked out in a more philosophical sense, and the category of implementation too, is more foundational than empirical, that is, it is implementing new formalisms and programming languages with the help of today´s monolitical methods (existing programming languages) on monolitical machines.
"I first presented the idea that Turing machines cannot model interaction at the 1992 closing conference of the Japanese 5th generation computing project, showing that the project´s failure to reduce computation to logic was due not to lack of cleverness on the part of logic programming researchers, but to theoretical impossibility of such a reduction. The key argument is the inherent trade-off between logical completeness and commitment. Commitment choice to a course of action is inherently incomplete because commitment cuts off branches of the proof tree that might contain the solution, and commitment is therefore incompatible with complete exploration."
Wegner, ECOOP ´99, p.1/2
As mentioned above, Wegners strategy to surpass this limiting situation is not to deliberate the paradigm of formality which is defining the very concept of logic and all the concrete logical systems, but some form of regression to empiricism.
"Logic can in principle be extended to interaction by allowing nonlogical symbols to be interactively modified (reinterpreted) during the process of inference, for example by updating a database of facts during the execution of logic programs. However, interactive discovery of facts negates the monotonic property that true facts always remains true."
Wegner, p. 25
This strategy of extending logical systems by non-logical symbols for modeling interaction introduces into logic some non-logical elements of empiricism. For practical reasons this approach has its merits. Nevertheless, from a structural point of view of operativity and formality nothing has changed. Still the old logic is ruling the situation.
This strategy of extending the concept of pure classical logic is well know, at least by the work of mathematical linguists. I named this tendency of concretizing pure logic to more mundane tasks the "parametrization of logical constants". Every element in a logical system which has some constant definition can by parametrized to a more dynamic notion. In a strict sense, all these extensions are conservative extensions of classical logic. At least, they are all based on a kernel of classical logic. But this kernel is taboo.
To empathize on this should make clear that this situation offers at least two options, one to accept classical logic and to parametrize it as far as possible and one who opts for a radical change of the kernel itself. This latter option doesn't deny the reasonability of the first strategy. The difference should be recognized and also that there is no possibility to deny the reasonability of the second way of thinking. I have not to mention, that the first decision is the established way of thinking. The second way of thinking is closely connected with idea of polycontexturality and proemiality.
The complementary aspect of Minsky´s approach to the polycontextural approach is expressed by the statement
"We'll try to design (as opposed to define) machines that can do all those 'different things'." Minsky
The question of definition is a logical one, the process of design belongs to the domains of modeling, simulation, implementation and not to formalization.
It seems not to be easy to escape the challenge of logics. All the tools and methods of design, programming languages, LISP obviously too, are based on logic. The same is the case for the machines.
Why should the process of design be restricted by the structure of its classical tools?
Some complementary aspects of MIT related and PCL related work.
1.4 Minsky´s Architecture: The Six Level Model
Marvin Minsky offered the Six Level Model from his forthcoming book The Emotion Machine as an initial proposal for such an architecture. This architecture is being developed jointly by himself and Aaron Sloman, and is based on several key ideas:
1. Use several approaches, at once, to each problem. When one method begins to fail the system can quickly switch to another. We represent each fragment of knowledge with several different representations. By always maintaining several viewpoints (in contrast to all traditional systems), our processes will rarely get stuck.
2. Have many ways to recognize and respond to internal and external problems.
The architecture consists of layers of agents, where each layer is concerned with coordinating, managing, and responding to problems in the layers beneath it. Within each layer, there are `critics' that detect types of problems in the layers beneath or in the outside world. These then turn on `selectors' that invoke methods for resolving these problems.
3. Support many different "ways of thinking". The most important high-level operation is mapping types of problems to large-scale "ways of thinking". Each way of thinking disposes the system to use certain types of knowledge, methods of reasoning, types of critics, and other kinds of resources to solve the problem at hand. This architecture is really a kind of meta-architecture, one that invokes more specific architectures in response to the kinds of problems the system encounters.
THE ST. THOMAS COMMONSENSE SYMPOSIUM
Marvin Minsky, MIT
Push Singh, MIT
May 13, 2002
1.5 The Polycontecturality Approach
As the name suggests, polycontectural logic, polycontecturality in general, is interwoven with multiplicity from the very beginning.
Because of the complementary thematization of cognitive systems I am working on, it is easy to confuse common terms, like architecture, reflection, interaction, etc.
As a trial I define a cognitive system as a chiastic entity with the following structural aspects.
More details can be found in the following chapter Proemiality and reflectional architectures.
1.5.1 Architectonics
The operator of architectonics is the cut.
Classical science and computing is based on a single cut, the Cartesian cut. This cut is producing the difference of internal and external domaines, states, events. And most other dichotomies are based on this Cartesian decision.
Architectonics is defined by structural, that is, epistemic cuts. The cut between internal and external domains, the cut of the internal as a self and a model of another self.
Classical computing is still imprisoned by the simple Cartesian cut: inside/outside. Computational reflection in the sense of Smith tries to escape this frame in introducing differences in the inside of the system.
A short philosophical remark. Mostly, we are occupied by temporal studies, studies of the temporal behavior of systems, short with time. Even the circus of self-referentiality was a drama of time. Our concept of space is not welcomed because of the fear of objectification of subjective events. Only in recent time, a new emphasis for architectures in the theory of living systems emerges. Architectures are not tectonics.
Interestingly, the Hegel-Marx based Soviet concepts had been more architectonically oriented than the more temporal notions of self-referentiality of Second-order Cybernetics by the Western research (Levebvre)
Towards some cuts inside the cartesian cut
Because there is no theory about the process of cutting, reflectional programming is forced to introduce meta-circular interpreters.
Sign systems, as the scriptural medium of computation, are structured by their tectonics. This type of hierarchical tectonics is based on a single cut architectonics. But this cut is not part of the sign system, it is much more its blind spot.
From the point of view of polycontecturality, sign systems, semiotics, are not structured by architectonics.
Architectonics are understood as a form of mediation of structural and prozessual, algebraic and coalgebraic, principles.
Architectonics is not a Ur-ground, a static and eternal fundament, origin of everything. Architectonics is complex and dynamic, giving space for a multitude of beginnings of interacting tectonic systems.
Starting a list of questions and possible answers about reflectional blindness.
What is the blind spot of a program? Answer: Its operating system.
What is the blind spot of an OS? Answer: Its hardware system.
What is the blind spot of a computer system? Answer: Its users. Or: Its environment.
1.5.2 Reflectionality
In the history of cybernetics and computer science reflectionality was reduced mainly to recursive and self-reflectional concepts. The most famous approache is surely the Y-operator of combinatorial logic for the whole of AI esp. LISP and also well known, but more in the circles of second-order cybernetics the re-entry concept of Spencer-Browns Calculus of Indication. This re-entry concept has destroyed by its simplizity and mysticism all germs of complex architectonics of the early second-order cybernetics as they had been introduced by the research of Gunther and Pask.
1.5.3 Interactivity
1.5.4 Positionality
Today´s approaches to Cognitive Systems are therefore classified as
Architecture: one cut, internal/external
Reflectionality: Intentionality, representation of the external world
Interactivity: communication by means of information
Positionality: unizity as blind spot
Classical computing systems are well described as systems with a single cut, where reflectionality is reduced to representation of the world producing information, interactivity occurs as communication, communicating information and the blind spot of classical computing is its positionality.
This characterization shows clearly the conflict of introducing panalogy architectures in a mono-contextural paradigm.
What´s about some traditional specifications of our understanding of ourselves and the world?
The term cognitive, in cognitive systems, seems not to be very clear. The aspects of affect, emotion, decisions are not necessarily components of cognition. It would be more adequate to name such systems subjective systems as composed by cognitive and volitive functions (Gunther, Cybernetic Theory of Subjectivity).
Is the very concept of Cognitive Systems or Emotion Machine in itself panalogic? In other words, is the pananalogy of the new approaches, Cognitive Systems and Emotion Machine, mono- or polycontextural?
1.6 Togetherness of living systems
Some philosophical remarks about the concept of togetherness as it is used in this text. If we ask the internet about "togethernes", we are quickly involved in all sorts of spiritual groups and mental health projects. Next we find us together with philosophers of togetherness like Martin Buber, Rosenstock-Hüssey and others. A step further we join the work of Martin Heidegger about Mitsein, then Ludwig Binswanger´s Miteinander-sein. And so on. Also this connections are of importance, this text tries to go radically beyond anthropomorphic implications. A more genuine reading of Heidegger gives us some hints to not to confuse anthropology with his strict structural deconstruction of ontology.
The desire to build a machine with cognitive, emotive and volitive behaviors shouldn't try to implement some sort of classical anthropology and its (child)psychology, but should be guided by the structural analysis of the conditions of being in the world of living systems. This excludes not only (phenomenological) psychology but also biological approaches.
Architectonics maybe a hard but strict interpretation of "Mit-Sein".
The so called "Blind Spot" exists only for an analysis of living systems as cognitive systems that is, on the base of representations (Vorstellungen) and information. It doesn't change much if the framework of cognition is set in a more constructivist manner. The same problems of "reflective blindness" emerge. Simply because the restriction of living systems to cognition and all the optical metaphors of mirroring, reflection, and view points arise. The blind spot is mainly a result of cognitive solipsism. The Blind Spot problem is not solved by duplicating it by two cognitive systems instead of only one, as proposed by Kennedy (2003). The reason is obvious, there is no structural difference between the two cognitve systems as cognitive systems they are the same, and have in common the general idea of being a cognitive system. In other terms, its performance is an Ego-Ego-relation and not an Ego-Thou-relation.
It was exactly this Cartesian burden which Heidegger was deconstructing. His Daseinsanalyse is much more volitive, pragmatic than cognitive.
Cognitive Science as a base of cognitive AI is still dreaming in the cartesian cage.
Embodiment, embeddedness, situatedness, etc. are terms in the direction of an abandonment of the dominance of cognitivism.
Togetherness as structural interactivity. Maturanas structuaral couplings.
Mismatches of architectures in interaction
1.6.1 Conceptual graph of togetherness
Togetherness can be thematicized first as an interplay of different cognitive systems as Ego- and Thou-systems. Second togetherness can be understood as the mechanism of over-determination as simultaneous realizations of different events at the same "ontological" locus which has its inscribtional realization in morphogrammatics.
"Since the classic approach to identify cognition and volition separately in a closed unit of individual subjectivity has failed we shall approach the problem from a different side. We shall assume that the phenomenon of subjectivity, as manifested by thought processes and decision making, cannot be looked for inside the skin of an individual living body - be that animal or man. We propose instead the following theorem:
Subjectivity is a phenomenon distributed over the dialectic antithesis of the Ego as the subjective subject and the Thou as the objective subject, both of them having a common mediating environment." Gunther, Cognition and Volition
Diagramm 4
Single cognitive system
The minimal structure of togetherness is the proemiality of the quadrupel (volition, cognition, subjetive subject, objective subject) in a co-created common world.
Diagramm 5
togetherness of two cognitve systems
The full graph of the chiastic interplay between two cognitive systems would have to consider all possibilities of combinations of order and exchange relations between the components of the two systems. Therefore we would have to study 5 coincidence relations and 25 exchange relations on the base of 10 basic order relations.
Cognitive System1 Cognitive System2
Reflectionality Reflectionality
The unizity 1 of the positionality of system1 is mirrored as a position, that is as one of several positions, in the positionality of system2.
The unizity 1 of the positionality of system2 is mirrored as a position, that is as one of several positions, in the positionality of system1.
Despite the fact, that the unizity of both systems for themselves is absolute, the change of functionality, ruled by the exchange relation, produces some kind of context dependent relativity between these absolute unizities.
A system therefore can accept the uniqueness of another system without getting into the problem of denying its position and to have to be identified with the other system. It can offer in its own positionality space for the positionality of the other system.
positionality vs. reflectionality
reflectionality vs. architectonics
interactivity vs. architectonics
1.7 Intra- and trans-contextural proemiality of and between cognitive systems
Intra-contextural proemiality occurs in the process of introspection of a system.
Interaction in the so called paradigm shift of computing and computation (Goldin, Stein, Wegner) is mainly understood as informational interaction.
The flow of information in the new paradigm is not restricted to the internal flow of information in computers and computer systems but also allows informational communication with a non-computational environment. In this sense computer science finds home to cybernetic approaches, mainly to concepts of old first-order cybernetics.
Despite of the strong differences between interactive and non-interactive computation as open and closed systems, the informational approach to interactivity is not aware that with the use of the general concept of information the difference between the inside and outside of interacting systems is niviledged to a homogen system of information flow. This information flow of algorithmic and non-algorithmic processes which is basic for the model of interactive computation is the common and homogenizing mechanism of internal algorithmic and external input-output streams.
If the difference of inside and outside should have any meaning it should be clear that the difference as such doesn't belong to the concept of information. There may be an informational process inside a system and there may be informational processes too in the environment of that system but the change as such from inside to outside or simultaneously from the outside to inside is itself not well understood as an informational process.
It has taken cybernetics a longtime of research to understand the problematics of this constellation. And only in a few approaches of second-order cybernetics some advance could be achieved (von Foerster, Gunther, Varela).
If interaction is understood as perturbation of structurally coupled systems the very concept of information with its information unit, channel, transmitter, receiver, etc. gets obsolete.
"The ability to transform its own representation because of a non-adequation between representation and reality is a typical reflective mechanism which regulate its activity by comparing results to the simulated world. But reflection is present only if this comparison and the way to reduce the difference is explicit and not defined in an ad hoc way. For instance, a simple feedback loop is not aware of its behavior, and does not define a reflective system (even if reflective systems often do use some sort of feedback)." J. Feber, in: Meta-Level Architectures and Reflection, p.192
1.8 An example: Switches between arithmetics
Why not simply ask the experts from the MIT?
Implementing Panalogy
I will use the term Panalogy to refer to a family of techniques for synchronizing and sharing information between different ways of thinking concerned with the same or similar problems. The term derives from `parallel analogy'. By maintaining panalogies between ways of thinking, we can rapidly switch from one way of thinking to another.
We can also make more partial changes like the representation language they are using, the types of assumptions they are making, the methods that are available to them for solution, and so forth. The key idea is to support representing multiple problem solving contexts simultaneously and the links between them. A graphical depiction of panalogy at work is shown below in Figure 6.
But is this exactly what I am looking for? Obviously not. To have the same wording and to have the same diagram doesn't yet mean that we are thematicizing the same situation in the same way of thinking and implementation.
Here, my distinction of different modi of thematicizing comes into play: narrative explanations, formalizations, implementations and realizations. I am introducing such patterns of multiple thinking directly into the very concepts and methods of semiotics, logics and arithmetics. And this happens step-wise on all 4 modi of thematization.
The Minsky approach is still mostly in the mode of modeling of some psychological and linguistic concepts from metaphorics into implementations.
Modeling means, that there is some knowledge about the subject, e.g. the way of thinking of a child, maybe with the help of Piaget, and then this knowledge has to be transformed into computer simulations.
The opposite or complementary approach of polycontextural logic is more concerned in constructing new ways of formal thinking and producing new formalisms, formal methods and apparatus, to help to understand the structural problems of natural science, e.g. child psychology and the unsolved paradoxes of the Piagetian approach.
The wording "Switching between parallel methods of thinking" sounds quite promising, but it doesn't gives us a hint how the switch is working, what is the mechanism of the switch, and, how do we know that we are dealing with the same problem after the switch to another domain. How much is the problem itself transformed by the switch of context? And what is the notion of sameness involved in this switch? What do we mean by "parallel" in this context?
I will use the term Panalogy to refer to a family of techniques for synchronizing and sharing information between different ways of thinking concerned with the same or similar problems.
The common term between the different domains of panalogy is obviously information. But how can we know that all the domains are ruled by the very same concept of infromation? Why is the term information not in itself panalogical?
By maintaining panalogies between ways of thinking, we can rapidly switch from one way of thinking to another.
This sounds really good! But, again, how does it work and who is operating these deliberating switches?
Still, one thing seems common to every such change: In each of our different emotional states, we find ourselves thinking in different ways-in which our minds get directed toward different concerns, with modified goals and priorities-and with different descriptions of what we perceive. Thus, although we use `love' for so many things, there's one feature that most of those meanings share:
When a person you know has fallen in love, it's almost as though someone new has emerged-a person who thinks in other ways, with altered goals and purposes. It's almost as though a switch had been thrown, and a different program has started to run.
What could cause so dramatic a change? What makes our minds keep switching around? What happens inside a person's brain, to cause such a transformation? This book will argue that when we change what we call our `emotional states,' we're switching between different "Ways to Think." For some of these, we have distinctive names-such as `suffering, 'anger', 'fear' or 'pain'-but others are harder to classify.
Why don't we stick with one way to think? What are the functions of all those emotions? Our answer is that no one, single technique will help us face every predicament.
We'll try to design (as opposed to define) machines that can do all those 'different things'.
Marvin Minsky, Emotion Machine
Minsky´s question is "What could cause the change?" and not "How does it happen?" or "What is the mechanism of change?"
1.9 Brainstorming vs. Diamond Strategies
Critics
I will propose that there exist two important classes of agents that I will call critics and advocates.
Critics are the agents responsible for producing such a negative way of thinking, one that prevents actions from being considered or complains about actions under consideration, as opposed to retrieving or promoting the taking of those actions.
Advocates
A commonsense system is unlikely to be effective if it only sees flaws and never opportunities. On the positive side we need ways of thinking that are more optimistic and suggest courses of action. As I mentioned before, positive knowledge includes the space of ordinary effective procedures, ones that suggest things to do, as well as all sorts of positive knowledge about how to propose things to try.
Let us consider planning, as one example of a cognitive task a commonsense system should be able to perform. Positive agents produce ideas, analogies, inferences, plan and anything else that may suggests a path-both of mental inferences and of worldly actions and events-towards a goal.
Push Singh
The pananalogy architecture consits of the following components and agents.
Ways of thinking
Reflective
Deliberative
Reactive
Brainstorming
critics
advocates.
facilators
Panalogy
This architecture depends on the ability to rapidly switch between different ways of thinking, as depicted below in Figure 5. While the central operation in brainstorming is to select advocate and critic agent in ways that move us towards our goals, these agents may use many different ways of representing knowledge. If transitioning from one way of thinking to another requires a large-scale reconfiguration of the currently active society of agents, then this may involve a great many reformulations from the current way of representing things into suitable new representations.
Sing is introducing an interesting list of panalogy operators.
Environment panalogy.
Procedural panalogy.
Sensory panalogy.
Operator panalogy.
Category panalogy.
Ontology panalogy.
Composition panalogy.
Realm panalogy.
Sense panalogy.
To each key idea I have tried to associate new words: ways of
thinking, brainstorming, critics and advocates, reflective critics, and panalogy.
It is interesting to compare these concepts of "Ways of thinking", "Brainstorming", and "Panalogy" with similar concepts known from the theory of polycontexturality. A possible first correspondence maybe:
Ways of thinking vs. Polycontecturality
Panalogy transitions, switches vs. Proemiality
Brainstorming vs. DiamondStrategies
The complexity of a situation, e.g. a problem to be solved, can be elicited by the method of diamond strategies. Diamond strategies are not restricted to positive and negative agents, and possible mediators, but are evolving the whole range of possible meanings of a situations under consideration. A situation is not restricted to linguistic entities, each accessible event can be questioned by the diamond strategies.
Diamond Strategies are distinguishing two main types of questions. One is asking the enabling (Ermöglichung) question: "What enables X?" and "What disables X?". The other type of questions is asking "What is the opposite to X?". Additionally to the question of the opposite, there are two strong further questions "What is neither the position nor the opposition?", this question is asking for something beyond the duality of position and opposition and is producing some reflectional distance to the problematic situation. The fourth question is asking for the common, the at once of position and opposition producing a higher form of unity of both beyond identification with a single one.
In a situation of problem solving, the opposite of the problem statement can be the context in which the problem is posed.Because a problem statement is a sentence which always can have several meanings, even if the statement is strictly well-formed, we have to analyze the context of the statement to get more information about further possible meanings which may be helpful to find a solution of the intended problem.
For a well-defined problem its solution lies in the domain of the problem statement. Most problems are not so strictly well-defined to be solved without some creativity. Diamond Strategies are helpful to support creativity.
The brainstorming approach, advocats and critics are mainly concerned about the truth or falshood of statements, or of the usefullnes or uselesness of some strategies and not the opening up of new spaces of choices.
Brainstorming is involved with the goal-oriented approach of problem solving.
1.10 Panalogy transitions and proemilaity
But Singh is keeping his mechanism of switching between different modes as a well regarded secret. It seems that the very idea of multiplicity, of a multitude of ways of thinking, etc. is in itself interesting enough.
Singh refers to Minsky´s Emotion Machine, there we can find a lot of examples which shows the phenomenon of changing positions. But there is no explanation how these transitions are working. What is missing it seems is an operator which is not only introducing these multitudes but also operates the switches between different levels, standpoints, ontologies, ways of thinking and so on.
My impression is that all these multitudes have to be pre-given by the designer of the system. It is not clear how the system itself can evolve and change its framework of complexity.
In Singh´s model a critics agent suppose to change the way of thinking for the purpose of problem solving. Mainly there are only two attidudes involved, the negative and the positive way of thinking, critics and advocates. A new domain is chosen, where is it from?, and some adaption of the notions has to be realized to fulfill the transition. After the change, what happens structurally to the old system?
1.11 Cognition and Volition
What could cause so dramatic a change? What makes our minds keep switching around? What happens inside a person's brain, to cause such a transformation? This book will argue that when we change what we call our `emotional states,' we're switching between different "Ways to Think." Marvin Minsky
Gunther seems to be more concerned with the question "How is it possible" and not so much with Minsky´s question "What could cause so dramatic change?". Obviously, both, the how- and what-questions are working together.
To explain this in detail, I make use of extensive citations.
In the proemiality chapter I have given a semi-formal explanation of the concept of proemiality. Now, cognition and volition, will give an interpretation of this formal concept and will put it into the more familiar context of the cognition/emotion interplay as we know it especially from Damasio and Minsky.
Since the classic approach to identify cognition and volition separately in a closed unit of individual subjectivity has failed we shall approach the problem from a different side. We shall assume that the phenomenon of subjectivity, as manifested by thought processes and decision making, cannot be looked for inside the skin of an individual living body - be that animal or man. We propose instead the following theorem:
Subjectivity is a phenomenon distributed over the dialectic antithesis of the Ego as the subjective subject and the Thou as the objective subject, both of them having a common mediating environment.
Since the present author is vigorously opposed to the prevailing methodological aim of total re-objectivation of life processes the following analysis of the fundamental relation between subjectivity as cognition and subjectivity as active volition is intended to be a contribution to a cybernetic theory of Life.
Our two figures show that the mutual relations of a cognition and a volition with regard to their environment are exactly inverse. It goes without saying that figure_1 and figure_2 represent an abstract separation of the interlocking mechanisms of cognition and volition. In reality there is, of course, a constant interplay between the two and it goes without saying that one of them cannot operate without being continuously supported by the other. There is no thought without an essential admixture of volition and vice versa volition without an intrinsic component of theoretical awareness would be totally blind.
We may now say that a system of subjectivity is a mechanism - albeit not a classic one - in which two interacting programs of cognition and volition regulate its relation to the environment concurrently. In one program the living system has to behave under the supposition that the environment represents the superior force of the factum brutum to which reason has to submit; now subjectivity finds itself placed at the bottom rung of a hierarchical ladder as long as the connection between subject and object is cognitive. In the other, the volitive program, the environmental objectivity is merely a nebulous field of potentialities which only the Will can transform to solid objective realities.
Since this paper is devoted to the problem of the mutual relation between cognition and volition some remarks should be added as to how the proemial relationship unites these two faculties and melts them together in a system of self-referential subjectivity. We stated that the proemial relationship presents itself as an interlocking mechanism of exchange and order. This gave us the opportunity to look at it in a double way. We can either say that proemiality is an exchange founded on order; but since the order is only constituted by the fact that the exchange either transports a relator (as relatum) to a context of higher logical complexities or demotes a relatum to a lower level, we can also define proemiality as an ordered relation on the base of an exchange. If we apply that to the relation which a system of subjectivity has with its environment we may say that cognition and volition are for a subject exchangeable attitudes to establish contact but also keep distance from the world into which it is born. But the exchange is not a direct one. If we switch in the summer from our snow skis to water skis and in the next winter back to snow skis, this is a direct exchange. But the switch in the proemial relationship always involves not two relata but four!
Not only two subjective faculties, called cognition and volition, are exchanged, but the order of subject and object also suffers a reversal. What had to be interpreted as subjectivity in the cognitive attitude of the subject, namely the symmetry of position and negation, becomes, in the volitive faculty, a property of the objective world which offers a physical alternative for the will. And where, for the cognitive attitude, the whole Universe is content of the consciousness the volitional act is a content of this very same Universe. In other words: the symmetrical exchange relation between cognition and volition implies a reversal of the non-symmetrical order of subject and object.
Gotthard Gunther, Cognition and Volition, A Contribution to a Cybernetic Theory of Subjectivity, in: Cybernetics Technique in Brain Research and the Educational Process, 1971 Fal l Conference of American Society for Cybernetics, Washington D.C., 119-135
The interplay of cognition and volition doesn't restrict the reasons of switching from one "way of thinking" to another to only emotional events like falling in love, etc. Also cognition as thinking can produce exiting emotions which are motivating or even forcing volition and cognition to a switch. The mechanism of proemiality also guaranties that both modi of existence, cognition and volition, are always simultaneously active, only changing their role of dominance from background to foreground functionality.
On the other hand, the concept of proemiality is open for the interplay with other behaviors additional to cognition and volition.
1.12 Gunther's Conceptual Graphs in Proto-Structures
An interesting analogy between Minsky´s panalogy and Gunthers mappings of conceptual trees onto his architecture of proto-structure can be seen in the following diagram.Transitions between different ways of thinking can be realized in the framework of polycontexturality as mappings of different conceptual trees or semantic nets onto the kenogrammatic architecture of proto-structure.
From the point of view of polycontexturality, transitions between different ways of thinking can be seen as a switch between conceptual systems in a polylogical complexity. The actual system is the system under attention, the new system as a possibility is in the background. The transition is in this sense also a change of focus between fore- and back-ground of simultaneously existing parallel systems. Each point of transition belongs simultaneously to different logical systems. Therefore, a transition is not simply an exchange of information but a structural change of logical systems ruled by the operator of proemiality. Such proemial switches are not restricted to single systems or single ways of thinking. A switch can in itself be of complex structure entailing a multitude of ways of thinking and their changes.
Proemiality in a multitude of ways of thinking opens up the possibility of non-hierarchic, that is, heterarchic thinking and decision making. In a hierarchical system, the way down and the way up coincide, they have to be the same. And at the end, all path have a common origin as its start or as its end.
1.13 Common Sense Agents and Ambiguity
"Understanding natural language also requires inferring hidden state, namely, the intention of the speaker. When we hear, "John saw the diamond through the window and coveted it," we know "it" refers to the diamond and not the window-we reason, perhaps unconsciously, with our knowledge of relative value. Similarly, when we hear, "John threw the brick through the window and broke it," we know "it" refers to the window.
Reasoning allows us to cope with the virtually infinite variety of utterances using a finite store of common sense knowledge. Problem-solving agents have difficulty with this kind of ambiguity because their representation of contingency problems is inherently exponential." Stuart Russell
A mechanical system doesn't know the intention of the speaker. Therefore it has to analyze the sentence and to chose in parallel all grammatically possible interpretations, also it has to go on in parallel with the two interpretations until there is new knowledge, from the past or from the new experiences, which enables a decision, which interpretation of the sentences should be preferred in the actual context, or situation. But the old interpretation will still be a possible choice for the case that the narratives turns back to a new context in which this interpretation will have its own significance and will prevail.
It is also possible, especially in esthetic texts, that both interpretations are of equal importance, and that there is an ambivalence played by the game of interchange between background and foreground positions of the interpretations. Maybe there is at this point a connection to Selmer Bringsjords project of artificial joke making programs.
All these maneuvers are possible only in a real parallel and grammatically or semantically multi-layered system. Probably the best candidate for this job, again is poly-contextural logic.
From a technical point of view of poly-contextural systems there is no reason to think that the complexity of dealing with ambiguity has to grow exponentialy.
Is there a method in the poly-contextural approach to reduce complexity from the exponential to the linear type?
2 Are Minsky Machines Derrida Machines?
2.1 The root problem
Many ways of thinking, Panalogy, does they have a common root, or even a ultimate origin?
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