Chuck

Thanks for this clarification. I'm still not sure what you're getting  
at, but I'll try a response.

You talk of expression and interpretation. I think what's going on  
here is that you're using a quite different framework than I am. The  
old discussions of intelligence were about intelligence observed  
(even as a measurable) from outside. My attempt concerns experience:  
where do we locate intelligence is a question about where we  
experience intelligence. It is thus an exploration from inside.  
Saying that intelligence occurs in interaction and belongs to neither  
participant in the interaction but to  both together means that  
intelligence is not expressed in the sense of being sent into the  
outside world by some source. Indeed, it's not to do with such  
sources at all.

I think that what you're doing is interpreting what I am trying to  
present in an objectivist framework, whereas my position is based is  
an understanding that what we live in is experience, and therefore  
that experience is what we need first of all to acknowledge and act  
with.

I don't think we can, any longer, hold this position as anything more  
than a shortcut and convenience. That doesn't mean it's not useful  
(which is one reason we retain it: another is that we have been  
brought up in this tradition and it's very hard to move outside  
this), but the question of whether we can make a machine that would  
be able to design in the full sense in which we recognise that term  
when applied to humans can't be argued through recourse to such  
shortcuts and conveniences because it's an argument in principle.

We have also to recognise that the objectivist position (which can  
give us all sorts of things) faces two unresolvable questions, one of  
which is what is the relationship between a description/explanation  
and the thing the description/explanation is supposed to be of: the  
assumption that the descriptions and explanations we make are of the  
thing: that the words equations etc that we use in describing and  
explaining are actually what is. They aren't.

As it happens, I think I do design with machines taking part in my  
designing because I treat my computer and software etc as a partner  
and new ideas etc arise through our working together. And that fits  
my analysis. Where the design (just as where the intelligence) comes  
from is not a legitimate question because it only occurs in the  
interaction. It's not, in this sense, expressed. And it's not  
interpreted. It arises (I won't use the word emerge because it's so  
tainted and, in its original use, so mechanistic. But this is not the  
approach to making the intelligent, design machine that we have for  
so long talked about. Look in the relationship, not in the box: and  
later, if you must, say the box is intelligent, can design or whatever!

I hope this helps,

Ranulph


On 16 Jan 2006, at 19:25, Charles Burnette wrote:

> On 1/16/06 11:45 AM, "Ranulph Glanville" <[log in to unmask]>  
> wrote:
>
>> What is strange about your response is that you are interested in my
>> PS, but don't answer my request for clarification so I still can't
>> respond to your questioning. I asked you to explain what you  
>> intend by
>>
>>>>> Where in your concept of intelligence as interactive sharing do  
>>>>> you
>>>>> locate
>>>>> interpretaion and the formulation of expression?
>>
>> because I don't understand it.
>>
>> Would you do that?
>
> I'll try but you could infer it from my last post in which I said.
>
> "locating evidence" (as you described your shared interactive  
> intelligence)
> is neither interpretation or expression applied to the located  
> evidence.
> That points to the problem I'm having with your statement
>
>  which, said otherwise, is that "intelligence" (or meaning for that  
> matter)
> can't be apprehended unless through the interpretation of a party  
> to the
> interaction and it can not be created (on your terms) without their
> expression. Does this clarify my question enough for you to answer it?
>
> Chuck