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<Glyn.Goodall at bordeaux.inserm.fr>

After getting your text from cogsci, I forwarded it to a collegue
who works in the theatre world. I'm forwarding you his "gut"
reactions. I am working on a neuro-vision of Cognitive Sci,
and he is in contemporary theatre. For some time we've been
working together on topics of motor planning, etc. If you
want to know more of what we do, have a look at our web 
page : http://user.orbit.net.mt/josch/...

       I've added (enclosed in [**....**]) some comments as
reading notes!

        Keep in touch...your ideas are exciting to us!


From: "Dr John Schranz" <josch at orbit.net.mt>
To: "Glyn Goodall" <Glyn.Goodall at bordeaux.inserm.fr>

2.  Real time learning - WOW!  That is right home!  And we
have much much to say there.  For one thing, but I have to
think deeply on this, "imitation" in its common
understanding is shaken.  I can only DO something as *I* 
see that it "is".  Which means that at any one moment of
real time I am seeing that thing differently to what it 
"is" .. and I am more truly engaged in:
>
>(1) collection and storage of information about a problem,
>(2) examination of the information at hand to determine the
>complexity of the problem,
>(3) development of trial solutions (nets) for the problem,
>(4) testing of trial solutions (nets),
>(5) discarding such trial solutions (nets) if they are not 
>good enough, and (6) repetition of these processes until 
>an acceptable solution is found."

Those are much more in the street of the way I understand
learning to be, which is PRIMARILY the identification of 
the problems which are envisaged whenever one sees onself
entering into ANY SORT OF RELATIONSHIP - whether it be with
an object (animate or not, it's the same thing) or with a
subject (human or not, it's the same thing) ... IN EACH 
CASE THAT ENVISAGED *RELATIONSHIP* IS SEEN TO BE FRAUGHT
WITH POTENTIAL SLIPS (imaginary or not, it's the same 
thing;  minor or not, it's the same thing)... AND WHAT
WE CALL *TASKS* ARE, PRECISELY, THE NAVIGATION OF THOSE
POTENTIAL SLIPS.

This is what Frank [**Cammileri **]- and I mean when we
address what we refer to as "Alterity"... "Otherness"...
"Difference".... in a course of lectures we have given here
[** University of Malta **] and at other universities
abroad.

>Real-time learning is not compatible with these learning
>processes. One has to remember that the essence of
>learning is generalization.In order to generalize well, 
>one has to look at the
>whole body of information relevant to a problem, not just 
>bits and pieces of the information at a time as in
>real-time learning.

Precisely.  That is nearly verbatim (in my reading at 
least) what I have just expounded on above.

>So the argument against real-time learning is simple: one cannot 
>learn (generalize) unless one knows what is there to learn 
>(generalize).

And by "knows" as used above I understand "one only knows by
relating that which IS IN one's own experience ALREADY to
that which as yet is not ...and we use 'knows' in
specifically THIS sense"....  And that is "to generalise"
.. or in other words to "analogise", "AS IF *this* thing
(which I do not 'know') were *that* thing which is in my
experience"...

 
>One finds out what is there to learn  (generalize) by 
>collecting and storing information about the problem. In
>other words, no system, biological or otherwise, can
>prepare itself to learn (generalize) without having any
>information about what is to be learnt (generalized).

Precisely what I have just said ... or, anyway, that's how
*I* see it!!!!! Then, of course, come the big discourse on
partituras, or scores, as fragments [** sequences of 
actions that make up a theatrical presentation - which are
regularly reworked, and improvised upon, during the entire
training and rehersal period, and even during the
performance **] which one learns as such ... in
order to then play about with them.  The entire discourse of
variations and "improvisations" is opened out.

The paper I've just written for wales [** for a conferance
about the Mime, Ducroux **] taps this quite well ... and the
cross topics between the two are VERY interesting...

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