Re: "Inductive intelligence" or a "generalist" cognitive bias in

cognomad@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

I googled "inductive intelligence" & hit on John W Edser' post of the
last year. I share his frustration with IQ measures & came up with an
explanation of why real-time tests can't capture a high-level
generalization ability, caused by a longer-range induction. Basically,
induction is a search for matches/patterns, & deduction is an
interactive projection of these patterns.

Most work in AI is based on a HUGE assumption, i.e., the
assumption that rationality can be reduced to logic. This runs counter
to Godel's logical discovery that mathematical rationality can never
be found in its entirety with a formal (e.g., logical) system.

Here's a line of argument that suggests that "reasoning" is a bit of a
different animal from the one characterized by the Kahneman, Tversky
etc. crowd who are still operating on the logic = rationality
assumption (IMHO). Its from one of my papers presented at
a number of conferences over that past few years in which I draw
a distinction between higher cognition and lower cogntion as follows:

[begin quote]

Higher Cognition (class)
(analogical ?reasoning?)

Associations arising from
'the cognition of abstruse
similarity and difference',
e.g., electricity is like
water flowing in a pipe.
Highly individualized.


Lower Cognition (class)
(conditioning)

Associations arising from
'the cognition of obvious
similarity and difference',
e.g., this A + B sequence
is like one's previously
observed. Inter-environ-
mental individualization,
intra-environmental iso-
morphism. Likely progen-
itor of higher cognition.



Higher Cognition:

Not uncommonly, deductive syllogisms such as
?Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, therefore Socrates is
mortal?, are offered as examples of reasoning. This is not how
I am employing the term in the phylogeny, which is why it appears
in quotation marks. I mean for it to refer to whatever thought
process lies at the heart of ampliative inference, a process
often associated with ?Aha!? or ?Eureka!? experiences, but
commonly falling below the threshold of an identifiable event
in which much, if not most, of the processing is not
introspectively available. Even so, by applying a bit of the
abstraction and generalization sanctioned by our methodology
and in contrast to the Nisbett and Wilson approach to the
study of ?higher order, inference based responses?), I believe
enough is available for us to make a reasonable guess that the
cognition of similarity and difference (analogical/metaphorical
?reasoning?) does most of the heavy lifting. But then I am
hardly the first introspectionist to arrive at that
conclusion:

?All kinds of reasoning consist in nothing but a comparison
and a discovery of those relations either constant or inconstant,
which two or more objects bear to each other? (Hume, 1739).

Lower Cognition:

My unorthodox definition of conditioning as ?the cognition of
obvious similarity and difference? stems from my unorthodox
definition of reasoning as ?the cognition of abstruse similarity
and difference? which, when combined with the former, offers a
number of explanatory advantages:

1. It allows for continuity between the two concepts and, as
such, allows for an appreciation of how ?reasoning? might have
evolved from conditioning. In this view, the ability to
understand electricity by comparing it to how water flows in
a pipe is just an extension of the process that underlies an
organism?s ability to understand a currently observed A + B
sequence (e.g., Pavlov?s dogs) by comparing it to ones previously
observed.

2. It allows one to forego syllogistic deduction (?Socrates is
a man??, etc.) as a paradigm for reasoning in that, based on the
analogy with conditioning, concluding that Socrates is mortal
can be viewed as analogous to a conditioned mouse remembering it
must go left at the fourth fork in a maze. In much the manner
the mouse?s recollection would be construed as more a manifestation
of conditioning that has already occurred, we might also conclude
that deducing Socrates is mortal is more a manifestation of
reasoning which has already occurred, and perhaps closer to
remembering than reasoning, at least in an ampliative sense of
coming to a deeper understanding of the nature of reality, and
thereby serving to produce a net increase in one?s rationality.

?If analogy were merely a special variety of something that
in itself lies way out on the peripheries, then it would be
but an itty bitty blip in the broad blue sky of cognition.
To me, however, analogy is anything but a bitty blip -- rather,
it?s the very blue that fills the whole sky of cognition ?
analogy is everything?? (Hofstadter, 2001).

3. It allows for a naturalistic indeterminism in that one can
surmise that once an event sequence or feature has become cognized
it is easy to appreciate how one might then have the option of
following the sequence or conforming to the feature or not, and
thereby becoming less determined by it, i.e., aware of more options
than prior to the cognition. Another way of saying this is that
it lends itself to the suspicion that there might well be an
inverse correlation between ?being cognizant? or ?being rational?
and ?being determined?.

[end qutoe]


'Rehabilitating Introspection:
A Procedure for a First Person Psychical Science'

Phil Roberts, Jr.
www.rationology.net






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