On Jan 8, 2008, at 10:34 PM, Glen E. P. Ropella wrote:
>
>> In what way does Genetic Programming not provide an efficient cause?
>> Having a stochastic aspect, and the possibility to define new
>> instructions, it seems to me to provide an escape from anything a
>> human
>> might have intended. This learning algorithm could escape the
>> constraints of being a `tool' by being used in a robot with similar
>> senses as ours and interacting with the conditions of the `real'
>> world.
>
> Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but GP currently requires a human to
> set
> up the objective function. And even in the cases where a system is
> created so that the objective function is dynamically (and/or
> implicitly) evolved, my suspicion is that the GP would soon find a
> computational exploit that would result in either an infinite loop
> (and/or deadlock), crash, or some sort of "exception".
This is certainly a good point, but from what I understand of Rosen's
theories another limitation of GP has to do with the fact that the
language in which the programming is done can not evolve. The syntax
will always be circumscribed by a subset of the programming language
that is used to set up the GP, and the semantics of what the symbols
represent in terms of real-world measurements or actions will be
fixed by the robot's senses and actuators.
The only novelty possible in such a system are new arrangements of
already existing primitives (which in a computationalist view could
be enough, actually, if you think like Zuse/Toffoli etc. that the
universe really is a big computer anyway, which means that an
isomorphism could be possible), but from what I understand from
Rosen, Pattee, Pask and Cariani is that novelty in a real, non-
platonic (let's say Aristotelic ?) world has to do with the
appearance of new primitives: new symbols with new meanings in a new
syntax. The construction of symbols in the real world is an open-
ended process, which is why no isomorphism with a closed, formal
system is possible.
right, my two cents worth and no doubt garbled version of what I've
been reading lately. (I'm reading the thesis by Peter Cariani right
now, who was a student of Pattee and sort of a follower of Rosen).
I'm not schooled in these matters in any way, so criticism, yes
please, and I will probably have no other reply than pointing to the
writings of Cariani and Rosen.
ciao,
Joost.
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Joost Rekveld
----------- http://www.lumen.nu/rekveld
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“This alone I ask you, O reader, that when you peruse the
account of these marvels that you do not set up for yourself
as a standard human intellectual pride, but rather the great
size and vastness of earth and sky; and, comparing with
that Infinity these slender shadows in which miserably and
anxiously we are enveloped, you will easily know that I have
related nothing which is beyond belief.”
(Girolamo Cardano)
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