20 research outputs found
Conceptual dependency as the language of thought
Roger Schank's research in AI takes seriously the ideas that understanding natural language involves mapping its expressions into an internal representation scheme and that these internal representations have a syntax appropriate for computational operations. It therefore falls within the computational approach to the study of mind. This paper discusses certain aspects of Schank's approach in order to assess its potential adequacy as a (partial) model of cognition. This version of the Language of Thought hypothesis encounters some of the same difficulties that arise for Fodor's account.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43836/1/11229_2004_Article_BF00413665.pd
Revisiting the Gaia Hypothesis: Maximum Entropy, Kauffman’s ‘Fourth Law’ and Physiosemeiosis
Recently, Kleidon suggested to analyze Gaia as a non-equilibrium
thermodynamic system that continuously moves away from equilibrium, driven by
maximum entropy production which materializes in hierarchically coupled
mechanisms of energetic flows via dissipation and physical work. I relate this
view with Kauffman's 'Fourth Law of Thermodynamics', which I interprete as a
proposition about the accumulation of information in evolutionary processes.
The concept of physical work is expanded to including work directed at the
capacity to work: I offer a twofold specification of Kauffman's concept of an
'autonomous agent', one as a 'self-referential heat engine', and the other in
terms of physiosemeiosis, which is a naturalized application of Peirce's theory
of signs. The conjunction of these three theoretical sources, Maximum Entropy,
Kauffman's Fourth Law, and physiosemeiosis, shows that the Kleidon restatement
of the Gaia hypothesis is equivalent to the proposition that the biosphere is
generating, processing and storing information, thus directly treating
information as a physical phenomenon. There is a fundamental ontological
continuity between the biological processes and the human economy, as both are
seen as information processing and entropy producing systems. Knowledge and
energy are not substitutes, with energy and information being two aspects of
the same underlying physical process