-- Guide to Ridge Route

DEVICE_3

Experimental Variations

The device_2 system has many shortcomings:

Exclusion relations

A traffic light may signal either red, yellow or green, but never more than one color. Truth and falsity are supposed to behave in a similar fashion. Likewise a switch is either on or off, but never both. It is said that even electrons share this trait (Pauli spin exclusion).

If you know the traffic light is red, you also know it is not green or yellow.

In the system of device_2, exclusion relations are treated like any other relation. They notate a structural condition rather than activating a process of reason. Development requires that such processes be activated automatically, e.g. for the purpose of pruning excess from a structure of possibilities.

Emphasis

In the system of device_2, each location has an equal weight. Such is not the case with experience. For example, in the structural system of this work, explication exaggerates differences in emphasis.

Space and time

The present system cannot interpret measures. (Measures are a refinement of exclusion relations, above, e.g., inches, seconds, ounces, bytes.) Consequently, it has only a clumsy approach to variable quantities such as space and time. Under the notation of device_2, a new structure (with new values for the variables) must be defined for each instant or each point of view

Action

In stage_3, an action is a relation constructed out of a series of states, strung together by identifications marking enduring objects. This is the Mickey Mouse model, named in honor of the animated character and his cinematic success. As with the case of the original Mickey, development in technique may refine an initial clumsiness and may enrich a relative poverty of expression.

In the author's opinion, the Mickey Mouse model is unsatisfactory in the long run.

Piaget teaches that sensori-motor schemata are the primitive and rudimentary patterns of intelligence out of which all else develops through continuous processes of adaptation (assimilation, accomodation, re-organization). An infant's schemata include sucking, crying and co-ordination of hand/eye and eye/ear. Later schemata include crawling and the manipulation of objects, during which the child constructs reality, including space and time.

Co-ordination of different structural forms is a primary goal in these pages. Acitivity is an obvious focus of attention. Activities make up structures, such as steps in a recipe, "the way to get to Jeff's house," or the succession of equations used to solve a physics problem (paradigm). Some human activities worth considering allow for wide smooth ranges of variation and free inventiveness, e.g. rockclimbing.

The shortcomings stand in the way of development

• Ambiguities often involve interlocking patterns generated by several choices, requiring something more than exclusion relations that simply represent the condition in a passive fashion. E.g., after noticing a new structural event, a structure of possibilities may need to be pruned to notate the consequences.
• Difference in emphasis are useful, perhaps even necessary, in organizing ambiguities for evaluation.
• Action patterns (called ways) are critical structures in dealing with ambiguities. E.g., court procedures.
• Space and time (and other measures) must be incorporated into the structures.

Variations in device_3 are preparation for device_4

The variations for device_3 are intended to enlarge the repertoire that device_4 may reduce to or emulate.

Hardware and Commands

• constant on_locations that generate input at every opportunity
• negative input voltages and/or a separate but interactive network providing negative inputs
• variable input voltages
• variable connection (resistance) strengths

All materials copyright by Robert Kovsky, 1997.