AI, NN, CNS (central nervous system)

[GOLDFARB%unb.ca@UNBMVS1.csd.unb.ca]

Terry :

>                                           It should also be
> noted that Hartline and Ratliff would not have been able to
> develop their model if the mathematics of linear networks had
> not already been established by mathematicians, physicists, and
> engineers, most of whom were not interested in biological problems.
> Without the development of a mathematics of nonlinear dynamical
> systems there will be no future models for future Hartlines
> and Ratliffs to apply to future biological problems.  I find
> it encouraging that so many good scientists who are confronting
> so many difficult problems in psychology, biology and computation
> are begining to at least speak the same mathematics.
>
>    I do not think that anything is going to be settled by
> debating ideologies, except who is the better debater.  Precious
> bandwidth is better spent discussing specific problems.

I believe that on closer examination the above remarks disclose an
important contradiction, which, in the first place, was an the impetus
to the "ideological debate".

First, by no means should the AI/NN "debate"  be viewed as
"ideological", but rather as one about the need for a new mathematical
model the importance of which was stressed in the first paragraph.

Second, why is it that "without the development of a mathematics of
nonlinear dynamical systems there will be no future models for Hartlines
and Ratliffs to apply to future biological problems"?

Third, I can't see where "many good scientists who . . . are
beginning to at least speak the same mathematics" are, and what
this mathematics is.

Finally, since some of us (perhaps including even yourself) believe
that in the absence of "the same mathematics" the "precious bandwidth
is better spent" discussing the possible "shape" of the new model, may
be you (against yourself) can explain how one can "discuss specific
problems" independent of mathematical models, and what these specific
problems are.

--Lev