Re: Finding useful functions- part 1

From: David Longley (David_at_longley.demon.co.uk)
Date: 10/28/04 

Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 00:16:19 +0100

In article <tKdgd.17800$Qs6.1523401@news20.bellglobal.com>, Wolf
Kirchmeir <wwolfkir@sympatico.ca> writes
>Stargazer wrote:
>> Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
>>
>>>Stargazer wrote:
>[snip a number oif clear answers to my questions - thanks. I think. :-)]
>> *SG*
>
>Your answers clear up some misconceptions on my part, but they also
>show terminological obfuscation on the part of artificial neural
>network researchers.
>
>Throughout your explanation, the term "signal" is used ambiguously. It
>sometimes seems to apply to an input to a single neuron, and sometimes
>to a collection of inputs to a network of neurons. IMO this is
>confusing. Very. It's a hierarchy error, which always cause trouble.
>
>Also, calling the calculated output of a NN a "training signal" because
>it's compared to the desired outcome is confusing, at least to me, for
>whom a "training signal" is a "signal that trains", ie, an input to the
>NN. And the use of "signal" for both inputs and outputs is confusing,
>since IMO an output is a signal to the experimenter, not the NN.
>
>All in all, my immediate impression is that workers in artificial NNs
>don't have a clear conception of what they are trying to do. Not that
>that is a bad thing - after all, it's early days yet, and one of the
>functions of research is to clarify the questions one is trying to
>answer. My comments as a pure outsider may or may not help clarify
>vagueness. Either way, thinking about your explanations has been
>interesting.
>
>
Another way of putting it is that the early ANN folk didn't know what
was being done in the EAB back in the 30s, 40s and 50s (note that all of
the former folks' work came out of those decades but they seem to have
an uncanny knack of misrepresenting of just not understanding their
sources). Nor did they understand the way that philosophy was going in
the same period (most "AI" and "Cognitive Scientists" *still* appear to
be pre 1929 Carnap or early Wittgensteinian). It appears to me that they
took some basic "programming" algorithms which *simulated* (or at best
controlled) some of the experimental schedules/equipment (in those early
days it was largely switchboard and other telephonic paraphernalia) and
just renamed their statistical models or descriptions of this "rule
governed behaviour" something more catchy ie "Artificial Neural
Networks" or "cell assemblies" (Hebb was always talking about a
Conceptual Nervous System and he did it rather poorly relative to the
efforts of Hull, Guthrie or Estes - he just said it all in more popular,
familiar intensional language ensuring that more science-shy people
lapped it up!). This propensity to generate misnomers and repackage,
plagiarise or re-badge others' *empirical* work as something new and
"algorithmic" or "analytic" simply through name changes allows them to
sell a load of nonsense to the unwary who don't see this sleight of hand
for what it is. When they make out that what they have to say somehow
captures what's essential about "cognitive" or "mental" life I just see
fraud, something which I think is endemic within psychology and has been
for decades. It makes "Cognitive Science" a Ptolemeic monster which in
my view is far worse than the original, as this monster has no practical
utility over the behavioural work itself, and actually gets in the way
of advancing that science by soaking up funding on grounds that's it's
closer to common sense folk psychology! These people make quite
ludicrous grant proposals, with fantastic promises which make the
realistic aims of real science look trivial in comparison. This just
shapes up lying and turns science into marketing. These people actually
take students and other naive folk back to ways of thinking which were
abandoned well over a century ago. 

-- 
David Longley

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