On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 5:43 PM, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [..] > And these different instantiations *have* to be fairly precise, if we are > to understand a text, or effect an instruction, successfully. The next > sentence in the text may demand that we know the rough angle of reaching - > and that, say, it was impossible because there was a particular kind of > object in the way.
The above paragraph is, as I see it, the crux of your argument. If you can't prove that one point, the argument doesn't hold water. But it seems to me that needing to know that "there was a particular kind of object in the way" is not entirely common. I'd think the exact physical circumstances are typically less important to understand than the intentions of people involved, the purposes of nearby objects, etc. If so, the arguments you make earlier about how many possible combinations of angles there are (and hand positions etc) are irrelevant. Those details can be abstracted away. > It would be absurd and almost certainly impossible to try working out > movements by symbolic means - by, say, listing every possible angle at which > an arm can reach out, and listing the normal heights of different objects > that can be reached for - or trying to apply some set of mathematical, > formulaic approach to the problem. It is not clear what you mean by "symbolic" here. Surely any simulation, including those you suggest, will be symbolic-- all we've got to work with are 1s and 0s. But that's not what you mean. It seems as if you mean something any representations that are abstract (as opposed to concrete image-manipulation). But it seems odd to eliminate abstract representations altogether... so perhaps you are suggesting that abstract must always be accompanied by concrete? ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
