Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
> jamikes.domain.name.hidden said:
>
>>George and List:
>>a very naive question (even more than my other posts) since I miss lots
>
> of
>
>>posts that have been exuded on this list (since a decade or so of my
>
> incompletely reading it):
>
>>Has it been ever formulated (and accepted on this list!) what we mean by
>
> the verb "to observe"? What does an 'observer' do in its (not his!!!)
> 'observer minute'? WHAT (and not 'who') is an observer?
>
>
> Many hours spent on this one.
>
> My definition sounds odd but only because I have to literally 'build'
> observation that I have had to sort it out. As an engineer I know that
> building an X is a sure route to an intimate understanding of X....so...My
> design goal: construction of an artificial scientist (artificial general
> intelligence - AGI). Thus logically I must build an observer. So.. the
> design aim of the project has observation as follows...(off the top of my
> head!):
>
> Observation involves (necessitates) the AGI having experiences, some of
> which are an experiential representation of the external world. The
> process of generation of the experiential field(s) involves the insertion
> of the AGI in the chain of causality from that which is observed 'out
> there' through the external world to the sensing surface, impact (causal
> interaction) measured by sensing, transport (causality again) of the
> measurement through the AGI to the brain where the measurement
> participates in the causality that is the creation of the experiential
> field.
So that is what is *involved* in creating the experiential field. But what is the
field? I understand it is a representation of the external world, but what about it
makes it a representation? I hope you're not going to say because "the observer"
recognizes or uses it as such.
>It is by virtue of the existence/reality of the _entire_ causal
> chain that the experiential field can be created and be called observation
> of the external world. (Clearly experiential fields can also be created as
> hallucinations/dreams, without the full causality chain - but that is not
> the 'observation' we are talking about). In making use of the complete
> causal chain the oberver has access (inherits some of the properties of)
> to that which is observed.
This sound like your experiential field is a play performed in the Cartesian theater
fof the edification of the observer.
>This is not 'creating reality' in the
> Berkeleyian sense. This is participation in it. This is construction of a
> representation of it from within the reality.
>
> This process I have described is observation and all of observation -
> nothin else counts as observation.
So anything happening in my brain that has a causal connection to the world is an
observation. I can buy that, but it seems so broad as to include things, like
recalling memories, not usually called "observation".
Brent Meeker
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Received on Wed Oct 11 2006 - 01:00:41 PDT