Creative Thought as a Darwinian Process
(http://arxiv.org/html/nlin.AO/0411057)
This is the kind of nonsense that I (prejudicially) expect out of the humanities.
Admittedly, the authors are arguing against an even more extreme position.
On the other hand, I suspect that the extreme position they are arguing against (that ideas replicate and compete in a Darwinian way for brain space within a single brain) is a paper tiger - Nobody holds that position in an non-nuanced way.
Nitpicky details:
"It has been proven that the mathematical description of contextual change of state introduces a non-Kolmogorovian probability distribution, and a classical formalism such as selection theory cannot be used." That's a pretty exotic claim. Who proved it? I browsed through the references without finding something that is obviously "The proof of ... non-Kolmogorovian ...".
"Campbell would argue that we are unaware of generating and selecting amongst multiple possibilities because it happens subconsciously. [...] One argument against this is simply that there are times when one is aware of selecting amongst alternate possibilities, which suggests that if it happens, one is aware of it. But there are other times when it does not feel like one is selecting amongst alternate possibilities." Did you hear? The introspectionists (Wundt, Titchener) have been thoroughly discredited. Your counterargument has no force at all.
"Note that whereas Darwinian variation-selection is quite an elaborate affair, CAP [context-driven actualization of potential] is simply change of state in response to a context. CAP subsumes variation-selection, which is one process through change of state can occur." You may believe that there is a more careful description of what "context-driven actualization of potential" consists of elsewhere in the paper. This is as much of a definition as they give.
As far as I can tell, the theory is:
There is a state of mind.
It changes.
How it changes depends in some way on the previous state of mind.
And this "subsumes" selection theory in the sense that, in both theories, there is a state, and it changes.
Compare this paper to "Stability and Diversity in Collective Adaptation" (http://arxiv.org/abs/nlin.AO/0408039), which I wrote a little about recently. They both mention evolution (adaptation of populations) and events within one individual's lifetime.
The "Creative Thought" paper gives no mathematical model, neither for it's opposition (selection theory/replicator equations), nor for its own "CAP". The "Collective Adaptation" paper has lots of math.
The "Creative Thought" paper claims that if you have sequential states, you cannot have selection pressures between the states. The "Collective Adaptation" paper explains that you can move from a discrete time (with one action per time) to a continuous-time model if adaptation is slow compared to action selection. That is, the frequency of visiting a particular action/state can be analogous to the size of the population of a replicator.
Overall, I disrecommend this paper.
This is the kind of nonsense that I (prejudicially) expect out of the humanities.
Admittedly, the authors are arguing against an even more extreme position.
On the other hand, I suspect that the extreme position they are arguing against (that ideas replicate and compete in a Darwinian way for brain space within a single brain) is a paper tiger - Nobody holds that position in an non-nuanced way.
Nitpicky details:
"It has been proven that the mathematical description of contextual change of state introduces a non-Kolmogorovian probability distribution, and a classical formalism such as selection theory cannot be used." That's a pretty exotic claim. Who proved it? I browsed through the references without finding something that is obviously "The proof of ... non-Kolmogorovian ...".
"Campbell would argue that we are unaware of generating and selecting amongst multiple possibilities because it happens subconsciously. [...] One argument against this is simply that there are times when one is aware of selecting amongst alternate possibilities, which suggests that if it happens, one is aware of it. But there are other times when it does not feel like one is selecting amongst alternate possibilities." Did you hear? The introspectionists (Wundt, Titchener) have been thoroughly discredited. Your counterargument has no force at all.
"Note that whereas Darwinian variation-selection is quite an elaborate affair, CAP [context-driven actualization of potential] is simply change of state in response to a context. CAP subsumes variation-selection, which is one process through change of state can occur." You may believe that there is a more careful description of what "context-driven actualization of potential" consists of elsewhere in the paper. This is as much of a definition as they give.
As far as I can tell, the theory is:
There is a state of mind.
It changes.
How it changes depends in some way on the previous state of mind.
And this "subsumes" selection theory in the sense that, in both theories, there is a state, and it changes.
Compare this paper to "Stability and Diversity in Collective Adaptation" (http://arxiv.org/abs/nlin.AO/0408039), which I wrote a little about recently. They both mention evolution (adaptation of populations) and events within one individual's lifetime.
The "Creative Thought" paper gives no mathematical model, neither for it's opposition (selection theory/replicator equations), nor for its own "CAP". The "Collective Adaptation" paper has lots of math.
The "Creative Thought" paper claims that if you have sequential states, you cannot have selection pressures between the states. The "Collective Adaptation" paper explains that you can move from a discrete time (with one action per time) to a continuous-time model if adaptation is slow compared to action selection. That is, the frequency of visiting a particular action/state can be analogous to the size of the population of a replicator.
Overall, I disrecommend this paper.
posted by Johnicholas at 9:47 AM
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