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public:t_720_atai:atai-20:constructivistai [2022/09/20 19:47] – [Thinking About Thinking: Constructivist Origins] thorissonpublic:t_720_atai:atai-20:constructivistai [2024/04/29 13:33] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1
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 ====Lecture Notes, W6: Constructivist AI==== ====Lecture Notes, W6: Constructivist AI====
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 Common sense tells us that if we were born with no sensory organs -- //at all// -- then we would be unlikely to develop a normal, healthy, fully-capable mind. The idea that perception is a necessary prerequisite for thought and intelligence has been at the center of epistemology for centuries. In the 1600s René Descartes, thinking about thinking, and about what reality really is, as well as his own place and existence in it, came up with the phrase **Cogito ergo sum** -- //I think, therefore I am//. This was not just a phrase, it was a philosophical stance and conclusion that still permeates all deep thinking about thinking. A unique idea was that knowledge was constructed by the mind: If the wax that a candle is made from can so radically change shape and appearance, yet still be understood as "the same stuff", then that had to be a process of //thinking// -- since the perceptions were not enough to inform of this. And so thinking moved to the center stage, in the form of //reasoning//.  Common sense tells us that if we were born with no sensory organs -- //at all// -- then we would be unlikely to develop a normal, healthy, fully-capable mind. The idea that perception is a necessary prerequisite for thought and intelligence has been at the center of epistemology for centuries. In the 1600s René Descartes, thinking about thinking, and about what reality really is, as well as his own place and existence in it, came up with the phrase **Cogito ergo sum** -- //I think, therefore I am//. This was not just a phrase, it was a philosophical stance and conclusion that still permeates all deep thinking about thinking. A unique idea was that knowledge was constructed by the mind: If the wax that a candle is made from can so radically change shape and appearance, yet still be understood as "the same stuff", then that had to be a process of //thinking// -- since the perceptions were not enough to inform of this. And so thinking moved to the center stage, in the form of //reasoning//. 
  
-Descartes proposed a dualist theory, of mind and physical reality, where the mind is "immaterial" and interacts with the physical world through a particular part of the brain. One problem with this theory is that if the mind is immaterial, then how does it interact with the material body that it obviously controls? Descartes proposed that the mind interacts with the body through the pineal gland in the brain. He was right about the brain being important for thought. George "Bishop" Berkeley took this one step further and said that we are nothing more than sensations, since sensations are the only information we have about this thing we call "reality". One problem with this view, pointed out by his critics, is that if something is not being observed it essentially does not exist, since all reality is created by the minds that perceive them. Berkeley did not despair but came up with an ingenious answer (but which most would now call silly), and this became the heart of his proof for the existence of God. The concept is nicely captured in this funny limerick: +Descartes proposed a dualist theory, of mind and physical reality, where the mind is "immaterial" and interacts with the physical world through a particular part of the brain. One problem with this theory is that if the mind is immaterial, then how does it interact with the material body that it obviously controls? Descartes proposed that the mind interacts with the body through the pineal gland in the brain. He was right about the brain being important for thought. George "Bishop" Berkeley took this one step further and said that we -- and in fact, all of existence -- is nothing more than our sensations, since sensations are the only information we have about this thing we call "reality". One problem with this view, pointed out by his critics, is that if something is not being observed it essentially does not exist, since all reality would then be created by the minds that perceive it. Berkeley did not despair but came up with an ingenious answer (but which most folks would now call silly), and this became the heart of his proof for the existence of God. The concept is nicely captured in this funny limerick: 
  
   God in the Quad   God in the Quad
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-2020(c)K. R. Thórisson  +2022(c)K. R. Thórisson  
  
 //EOF// //EOF//
/var/www/cadia.ru.is/wiki/data/attic/public/t_720_atai/atai-20/constructivistai.1663703240.txt.gz · Last modified: 2024/04/29 13:33 (external edit)
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