Connectionists: how the brain works?

[Brian J Mingus]

Hi John,

Theories of the brain will come in at multiple levels of abstraction. A
reasonable first pass is to take object recognition as a given. It's clear
that language and general intelligence doesn't require it. Hellen Keller is
a great example - deaf and blind, and with patience, extremely intelligent.
Visual and auditory object recognition simply aren't required!

Brian




On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 6:38 PM, Juyang Weng <weng at cse.msu.edu> wrote:

> Danko,
>
> Good attempt.
>
> Any theory about brain/mind must address the First Principle:  How it
> learns visual invariance directly from natural cluttered environments.
> Your article does not seem to address the First Principle, does it?
>
> -John
>
>
> On 3/7/14 11:22 AM, Danko Nikolic wrote:
>
>> I believe that the readers of Connectionists list my be interested in the
>> manuscript available on arXiv (1402.5332) proposing the principles by which
>> adaptive systems create intelligent behavior. It is a theoretical paper
>> that has been recently submitted to a journal, and the editors agreed to
>> post it on arXiv.
>>
>> A nice context for this manuscript is, I think, the recent discussion on
>> Connectionists list on "how the brain works?", -- including the comparison
>> to how the radio works, arguments that neuroscience has not reached the
>> maturity of 19th century physics, that the development should be an
>> essential component, etc.
>>
>> I assess that anyone who enjoyed following that discussion, like I did,
>> would be interested also in what the proposed theory has to say.
>>
>> The theory addresses those problems by placing the question of brain
>> workings one level more abstract than it is usually discussed: It proposes
>> a general set of properties that adaptive systems need to have to exhibit
>> intelligent behavior (nevertheless, concrete examples are given from
>> biology and technology). Finally, the theory proposes what is, in
>> principle, missing in the current approaches in order to account for the
>> higher, biological-like levels of adaptive behavior.
>>
>> For those who are interested, I recommend using the link on my website:
>>
>> http://www.danko-nikolic.com/practopoiesis/
>>
>> because there I provided, in addition, a simplified introduction into
>> some of the main conclusions derived from the theory.
>>
>> I would very much like to know what people think. Comments will be
>> appreciated.
>>
>> With warm greetings from Germany,
>>
>> Danko Nikolic
>>
>>
> --
> --
> Juyang (John) Weng, Professor
> Department of Computer Science and Engineering
> MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program
> 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
> Tel: 517-353-4388
> Fax: 517-432-1061
> Email: weng at cse.msu.edu
> URL: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/
> ----------------------------------------------
>
>
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