AI and cognitive psychology rant (getting more and more OT - tell me if I should shut up)

[Stephen Horne]

On Fri, 24 Oct 2003 20:58:13 +0100, Robin Becker
<robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

>In article <rdeipvk8ac9in4csnlbcmts9v9snr8trob at 4ax.com>, Stephen Horne
><steve at ninereeds.fsnet.co.uk> writes
>>On Fri, 24 Oct 2003 16:00:12 +0200, anton at vredegoor.doge.nl (Anton
>>Vredegoor) wrote:
>>
>......
>>Perception is not reality. It is only a (potentially flawed)
>>representation of reality. But reality is still real. And perception
>>*is* tied to reality as well as it can be by the simple pragmatic
>>principle of evolution - if our ancestors had arbitrary perceptions
>>which were detached from reality, they could not have survived and had
>>children.
>>
>.....
>It is a commonplace of developmental psychology that the persistence of
>objects is learned by children at some relatively young age (normally 3
>months as I recall). I assume that children learn the persistence of
>hidden objects by some statistical mechanism ie if it happens often
>enough it must be true (setting up enough neural connections etc).
>
>Would the reality of children subjected to a world where hidden objects
>were somehow randomly 'disappeared' be more or less objective then that
>of normal children.
>
>Unlucky experimental cats brought up in vertical stripe worlds were
>completely unable to perceive horizontals so their later reality was
>apparently filled with invisible and mysterious objects. I can't
>remember if they could do better by rotating their heads, but even that
>would be quite weird.
>
>I think it unwise to make strong statements about reality when we know
>so little about it. Apparently now the universe is 90-95% stuff we don't
>know anything about and we only found that out in the last 10 years. 

Actually, a great deal is understood about precisely that mechanism
you describe. There is nothing mysterious about it. Even innate
processes depend of certain features of the environment which
evolution has effectively assumed constant, such as - for the cats
example above - the presence of various angles of rough lines in the
environment. If these features do not occur at the correct
developmental stage, the processes that wire the appropriate neurons
together simply don't occur. Evolution is nothing if not pragmatic.

As for children subjected to a world where hidden objects suddenly
disappeared, you may be surprised. I am not aware of anyone doing that
precise experiment for obvious moral reasons, but if you know where to
look you can find evidence...

The human brain continues developing after birth. It cannot be fully
developed at birth, as with most animals, because of the limits of the
human female hip bone. Continued brain developement after birth does
NOT automatically mean learning, therefore.

Take for instance social development. Human cruelty knowing no bounds,
there have been children who were shut away from all human interaction
by their parents. These children do *not* become autistic - even when
found well into their teenage years, and despite the symptoms of
traumatic stress, such children socialise remarkably well and
extremely quickly - far faster than they learn language, for instance
- whereas an autistic may never learn good socialisation despite a
lifetime of intense effort (I speak from experience).

Reason - a substantial part of socialisation is innate (and thus
accessible without learning), but neurological damage prevents that
innate socialisation ability from developing.

Even if this was not the case, you have not proved that reality is not
real. Of course perception still varies slightly from person to
person, and more extensively from species to species, but it is not
independent of reality - it still has to be tied to reality as closely
as possible or else it is useless.


-- 
Steve Horne

steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk