C-262.1. What’s in the “Black Box”?

Not enough. Not if this is what is talked about as what lies between “stimulus” and “response.” Not enough if this is what physicists, chemists and biologists are looking for in the brain. Characteristically, each of these disciplines has a limited field interest: not in behavior per se but in the behaviors of this or that entity, whether of one-step or multi-step entities. Sometimes just to establish entity identity.

Far from the pure behavior of immediate post-Big Bang before there were any entities as we know them.  Far from the needed functionality posed by the R-zone. Dealing in B-speak with behaviors and behavior as if they were entities (“things”). Dealing with this or that particular functionality, before and/or after the fact, instead of providing for all the missing needed functionality.

The R-zone’s theoretical perspective, given The Expansion-Nature of things Conjecture, offers some Forward leverage … as, for example, dealing with the concept and technologies of “artificial intelligence” (AI) as practiced and envisioned.

Viewing AI conceptually, we encounter a B-speak thoughtknot: we see that discussions of its applications and promises, of what it is and what it might and ought to be, flow back and forth between how they see “intelligence.” Some needed capability – i.e., materiality – to be sure. But as behavioral product that we can replicate artificially on the basis of aggregated and digested behaviors (e.g., “Big data” algorithms)? Or as behavioral process to guide our steps necessitated by the R-zone and yet to be formally developed as theory FOR?

Something more than the conceptual “information processing”* – given the Nature of Thing’s’ general persisting condition of partial order (even with the orderings we have introduced into The Expansion). Can AI do all that humans can or might and ought to do re intelligence? Albeit we do it not so well – i.e., conceptually, in B-speak re “think” -- and not as much as we might and ought to. Theoretically, “Think” should be replaced by Reason (as an R-word: to provide implication). It belongs in the S-universe. And in deference to “Why?” – i.e., WICF -- we might (and ought to?) prefer Reason to think.**

Consider, for example, these cognitive fragments: “DIF … SIM => DIF” and “SIM … DIF => DIF.” Where “…” and “=>” introduce two before-after relations along with the DIF and SIM relations. Such that if the first term is criterial -- what we need or want -- and the following term is what we find, then the final term gives us a different DIF. These are more or less familiar conceptually as the distinction between “conflict” and “dissonance.”

Reason affords procedural tech assistance to intelligence, and to imagination, to what might be. Not just the “might be” of that conceptual “imagination” which guesses about the identity and/or “reality” of something there, which only provides information about that which is informed. This is informing when information is needed but not yet there to be found. The information we make.

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Or perhaps too much in the Black Box? Too many thoughtknots, especially B-speak concepts? The body’s brain has it’s distinctive Alzheimer’s problem with accumulating Amyloid plaques. The step’s Mind has an analogous problem with B-speak concepts … most particularly behavioral concepts.

These concepts, based on instances, are poured into the child by local cultures. The child is expected – even forced – to learn by imitation. The child learns to behave -- accordingly. But come to know about behavior? There’s no course in it. Only a range of courses about different kinds of entities and/or their behaviors.

What about the full story of needed functionality? What about the principles involved? What about the behavioral foundations of effective problem solving?

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* The concept of “information” is a thoughtknot, confounding process with product. Thus “information processing,” although it typically points to information as a product, it also occludes needed forward process (i.e., intelligence) that is perhaps more needed than the product.

** If we were not addicted to “reason” as a product rather than as a process. Or familiar with it as process via “logic,” a procedural technology, rather than having developed and used capabilities to imply and infer (the esteemed but not tutored conceptual “critical analysis”). To cultivate differences that make a difference in the dual Read CEM Tell dynamic of WICF. (The principle of communicability: [3] Read CEM Tells, between actors plus those between actors and the observed.)***

*** In this respect, for what is called for (WICF), Newcomb’s “A-B: X” balance model for two actors and an object serves our needed functionality agenda better than Heider’s “P: X-X” balance model. It points us forward from balance toward CEM. And whereas the psychological model looks to populations, the sociological model looks to communities

(c) 2023 R. F. Carter
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