Re: Some closing comments.

From: roberto kampfner <[email protected]>
Date: Mon 06 Jul 1998 - 06:33:36 CEST

Dear Allan and all FIS colleagues:

Thanks Allan for your information about the trend toward an increased use
of models of an energy-driven form to explain computational processes. The
success of neural networks approaches that you mention seems to indicate
that there is a niche for non-algorithmic, evolutionary computing of the
kind that works naturally in biological systems.

 Best regards,

 Roberto
 

On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, Allan L Combs wrote:

> Dear FIS colleagues:
>
> Thanks Roberto for the excellent summary that puts things in a nicely
> ordered perspective. I whish I could have had more time to participate
> personally.
>
> > The issue of consciousness could be studied not only from the standpoint
> > of humans, but that of animal behavior as well, as Morris proposes. Allan
> > Combs idea of the brain as a system at the boundary between
> > information-driven dynamics and energetically-driven dynamics is
> > intriguing. A broad notion of computation that includes as such the action
> > of physical processes, would consider both one and the same, although
> > would allow for both to coexist, for example, in artificial "brains".
> > Would they coexist also in the human brain, or a biological brain? I
> > really do not know.
>
> For interest's sake let me note that there is a small but growing movement
> in the US to replace computational theories of the mind ("cognitive"
> theories and approaches) with dynamical ones. Work by people like Walter
> Freeman represents the same shift in terms of the brain. If this trend
> continues and in the next generation of scientists actually overtakes the
> traditional cognitive approaches to the brain and the mind, then the way
> will be open to also replace informational dynamics of the old
> computational variety with models of an energy-driven form. The current
> success of neural networks approaches seems to lie somewhere in between.
>
> Allan Combs
>
>
Received on Mon Jul 6 06:34:35 1998

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