flag waving

[Jim Bower]

I am extremely loath to continue to participate in this debate in that
it HAS become too redundant, may very well have been a waste of
time to begin with, and is fast becoming an exercise in patriotic
flag waving (Paul Munro's ridiculous equivalence for example).  If
anyone is still unclear about what I am, or am not trying to say, or
wants to take personal exception to some comment I have made,
please communicate with me directly.  But I would like to make two
brief comments with respect to Lev Goldfarb's posting.
 
First, it is not clear to me that an "analytical model of an intelligent 
system" is the common goal of the people on this mailing list.  
 
Second, the assumption that a "direct approach" to modeling the
brain is limited to old tools is simply not correct.  Both Terry
Sejnowski's example from history, or the current work of Nancy
Kopel (BU) and Bard Ermentrout (UPitt) are examples to the contrary.
It may even be that taking a direct approach applies more pressure
to come up with new mathematical tools, especially if one has
learned enough about the biology to know that the old models are off
the mark.  
 
 Jim Bower