Re: Next stage, and Q1

Jerry and everyone else.

At 10:06 PM 24/06/02, you wrote:

>Dear Pedro and John:
>
>Other obligations prevent me from participating in the current discussion
>period. I will return to Washington on June 30, 2002.
>
>Could we postpone the discussion of my extended abstract in order to begin
>on July 1, 2002? I have a number of systematic biological examples
>which will bring some clarity (I hope) to the basic definitions and the
>relations to Shannon (engineering) mathematics.

This is no problem, Jerry. I am going to Ghent on Wednesday, so I would
prefer to wait to put up another set of issues (Q4 to Q6, I suppose,
following Peter's lead) until I return in any case. I will be going to
Yalta for a few days in early July, so I will make a post for the new stage
(but the same old actors, perhaps in new roles) just before I leave on the
30th.

Incidentally, I basically agree with your comments on Pedro's post, Jerry,
but I have a question that is perhaps prompted by having just refereed a
number of A-life papers. You suggest that the roles should be defined
mathematically. I am inclined to agree, but I have also seen the damage
that too hasty formalization has caused in analytic philosophy, so
personally I prefer to come into formalization very slowly, working in a
stepwise manner. Perhaps we don't differ on this. I was struck, though, by
the attempts in A-life to define such heady concepts as emergence, novelty
and the like formally in terms of computational models based on precise
mathematical formulations of agents (which are more or less like actors in
roles, method actors, if you will pardon the terrible pun). My question is
this: do you think that computer models of agents (or roles) would satisfy
your requirement for mathematical formulation, or do you think there are
problems with this approach that a more general mathematical approach (not
based in state machines) would avoid?

If you like, defer this until later, and I will make it one of the Qs.

John

----------
Dr John Collier john.collier@kla.univie.ac.at
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research
Adolf Lorenz Gasse 2 +432-242-32390-19
A-3422 Altenberg Austria Fax: 242-32390-4
http://www.kli.ac.at/research.html?personal/collier
Received on Mon Jun 24 22:28:47 2002