james.mccabe (james@oranda.com)
Thu, 16 Oct 1997 05:52:36 +0100
Gene Kofman wrote:
> Bodvar wrote:
> > A Magnus Berg aware of his loneliness would soon loose his
> > mind (literally), or he would join an animal society. Remember the
> > wolf-boy incident?
> Not necessarily. Magnus could still retain social patterns and
> intellectual
> on top of them. I think, we all chatter inside our heads, constantly
> explaining what we already know. That would be the only case when such
>
> chatter served some more or less clear purpose. But, that's another
> thread
> too. In addition, that lone survivor's mind will protect itself by
> relentlessly believing in existence of other survivors and, by doing
> that,
> it'll keep the Society from extinction.
That's interesting. It seems to me that the task of intellect has a lot
to do with representation, especially of the physical world and the
social world. The conscious mind always has a model of the physical
universe in front of it, but perhaps the social world is represented not
just in the form of a intellectual model, but in the form of
motivations. In his Society of Mind, Marvin Minsky argued that the mind
can be thought of as a collection of independent forces which can form
coalitions and overcome one another.
The mind internalizes all levels and this makes it self-sufficient, at
least for a while. I think you are right, Gene, about the inner chatter;
the mind continually maintains itself by reinforcing old patterns, and
preserves gains by reinforcing new patterns..
--James McCabe http://www.oranda.com/personal
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