On the shape of things to come

[Lev Goldfarb]

In view of the multidisciplinary background of members of this mailing
list and, more particularly, in view of some resent remarks (which I
don't want to quote since they may appear to have been taken out of the
context) about the specific ways of proceeding to our common goal -- an
analytical model of an "intelligent" system -- I feel compelled to draw
your attention to the following apparent paradox, if we are to accept
a more "direct" or "hands on" approach to the modeling of the brain.

Most of us would probably agree that to model "intelligent" (biological,
irreversible) processes a fundamentally new mathematical models are
necessary. Is it possible then to proceed to construct these models in a
piecemeal fashion using "pieces" of the old mathematical models (that
were constructed for entirely different purposes) as one is compelled to
do under the "direct approach" philosophy? If it has been impossible
to do this within the confines of the same science, physics, it will
prove to be even less possible to do so for the biological processes.

I for one would be much less sure of the feasibility of the new model
proposed by me if one could show that it is reducible to one of the
existing mathematical models. Incidentally, the NN models are not new
mathematical models.

--Lev Goldfarb