Essay Abstract

In this essay I describe how we can use autonomous agents (AAs) from Embodied Cognitive Science (ECS) as models for real observers in order to understand how science may emerge for observers. I model science as the ability of observers to use symbolic systems to perform experiments. The methodology consists in designing specific experiments with AAs and application of these experiments to show how we can interpret such experiments as observers perform experiments using symbolic systems. According to an idea of Albert Einstein all human-observer notions (in science, daily life etc.) are arbitrarily creations of thinking and cannot be derived inductively from experience [4]. In other words, symbolic systems which are created by observers are only labels for stable sensor input patterns which may originate from environment objects as well as from patterns created by observers themselves. I will introduce a simple experiment with an AA which shows how we can formalize these ideas in an ECS-experiment. For this purpose I introduce various models elements like classifications processes, internal/external categories, correlation of categories and artificial/natural pattern source based categories. I speculate that if such experiments would be performed systematically in ECS with increasing complexity in the long run we will be able to obtain basic propositions for foundational sciences like physics or mathematics from such experiments. This would allow for an experimentally based understanding of how an observer creates a picture of reality.

Author Bio

The author has received his Ph.D. in theoretical astrophysics from Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. The author is working since several years in software industry.

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Dear Joe Fisher,

thank you for reading the essay and commenting it in detail. I know: to many unclear abstractions;-) Lets consider "Allegory of the Cave" (Plato): I want to understand the meaning of the shadows. In other words: how can we understand scientifically what we are doing in physics/mathematics (more generally in science). My essay is just a very simple try to make a model (which can be quantified) for how an observer can create something which can be identified with a model of science. This try is very concrete in contect of an ECS observer model. So I do not want to discuss what is observer-independent reality - which is something which produces Platos shadows - rather I want to understand the process how observers create a picture of reality. This clearly depends on the observer-model.

So lets start a discussion to understand the particular reflection of objective existing things by human observers. This is what I am really interested in - maybe you can explain further.

Thanks, Guido

Dear Guido,

I have a real skin surface. You have a real skin surface. All real things have a real surface. No matter in which direction you look, or at what particular time you choose to look, you will only ever see a plethora of surfaces. This is the only observable reality that could exist. It does not depend on an abstract observer model. What you see is what you get. I cannot simplify it further.

Warm regards,

Joe Fisher

8 days later

Dear Dr. Kruse,

what you explain is fascinating and as far as I know quite revolutionary.

Should it be possible that your speculation comes true: "Once we have understood this mechanism it should be possible to clarify the epistemological

foundations of science experimentally."

Wow, can we then really also test what is trick and what is truth?

Mit den besten Wuenschen fuer Erfolg

Lutz

2 months later

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  • Post #5

Dear Guido,

You proposal of addressing the question of the emergence of science is quite to the point for this contest. You are showing an important direction.

Your citation of Einstein is interesting, pertinent, and new to me.

Most of the ideas you state are sound, and you could have probably avoided a too detailed exposition of your elaborated and complex model of autonomous agents and embodied cognitive science, neural networks and the like, which eventually add little to the strength of your ideas. You would have saved more room to develop the consequences of your considerations, and I would have enjoyed reading more.

I completely agree with your early point: ``it is hard to find a reasonable degree of abstraction for starting a program like "deriving science from observer properties".''

When then you conclude that ``we should not model observers mathematically as part of theories of physics/science since we neglect in this way many relevant observer-model properties'', however, I entirely agree when I place myself in the frame of your essay, but neglecting aspects of what we perceive to extract patterns is the core of processes of perception, and as a consequence of science. Thus any possibility of a new and fruitful viewpoint on building science in the frame of observers will proceed in this way --but I completely agree that all the challenge is to retain relevant properties, and to find the right level of abstraction.

Incidentally, this is exactly my essay's attempt.

Regards,

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