March 15, 2013 at 12:14 P.M. Yesterday, I was subjected to hacks into my blogs. The spacing between words and sentences in my third paragraph in this essay was altered so that it could not be corrected. After so many years of censorship, cyberstalking, cybercrime, and so much worse in my life, I am not surprised by this continuing psychological torture effort that is about covering-up was has been done. Equally unsurprising is a new inquiry in the Washington Post concerning another contributor to Mr. Menendez.
I am saddened and frightened for America's future. The celebration of ignorance and stupidity, violence and suppressions of speech -- as a response to dissent and also out of hatred for intelligence -- is a repulsive example of a new fascism. If these crimes displayed to the world are what we mean by freedom of speech on-line and respect for human rights, we will be regarded, rightly, as hypocritical and dishonest when we ask others to abide by these same rights. As a result, dissidents in many places will be less safe.
I will try to repair the harm done by hackers to my text. There is always a risk that what I do will only make things worse. The defacements of this essay should serve as a symbol of what many thinkers in the world struggle against. I am unable to send or receive email, no images can be used at these blogs, only 45 minutes per day are available to me for on-line writings after the destruction of my home computer.
March 14, 2013 at 2:25 P.M. Alterations in spacing of paragraphs in this essay cannot be corrected and may be one indication that I am right in my criticisms of Mr. Lohr's essay. Censorship, plagiarism, attempts to destroy intellectual work have usually been the weapons of the enemies of science and learning. ("How censorship works in America" and "What is it like to be plagiarized?")
Steve Lohr, "Algorithms Get a Human Hand In Steering the Web," in The New York Times, March 11, 2013, at p. A1. (Is Mr. Lohr also "Abigail Tucker"? "'Nice Babies' and Bad Psychologists.")
Simon Blackburn, Philosophy (New York: METRO, 2009).
Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1994).
David Deutsch, "Quantum Theory of Probability and Decisions," in Proceedings of the Royal Society, A, 455 (1999).
David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World (New York: Viking, 2011). (Quantum computing is discussed by its first great theorist, Professor Deutsch.)
James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Viking, 1987).
Rebecca Goldstein, Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel (New York & London: W.W. Norton, 2005).
Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1989).
Bertrand Russell, "On Denoting," in Mind (1903).
Nathan Salmon, Philosophical Papers, I: Metaphysics, Mathematics, and Meaning (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2005). (Can there be non-recursive forms of proof?)
Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture (Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 2001).
M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992). ("Classifiers and Instantiation.")
Quentin Hardy, "Testing a New Class of Speedy Computer: For Lockheed Martin, A Machine to Harness Quantum Technology," in The New York Times, March 22, 2013, at p. B1. (This article appeared after posting this essay. I will write about this fascinating development soon.)
I.
As computer searches become more ubiquitous and urgent, efforts are underway to sharpen as well as enhance the capacity of search engines to answer questions or provide information to Internet users.
Human assistance is required to improve computer capacities to provide more precise or focused searches, also to scrutinize a larger quantum of data -- a capacity which is, often, simply about computational power which is growing at a geometric rate. ("Stephen Hawking's Free Will is Determined" and "Stephen Hawking is Right On Time" then "Mind and Machine" and "John Searle and David Chalmers On Consciousness.")
I notice that the word "algorithm" is used in this article extensively without being defined. I believe that, unconsciously, the term substitutes in Mr. Lohr's analysis and discussion for "denotation" and also for "representation," "connotation" and "association."
When persons ask a search engine questions about, say, "Big Bird," what do they really want to know? Are these inquiries about the scope of an utterance hermeneutic-interpretive issues? (Lohr, p. B6.)
Luckily, we are told, that a college student and Google employee "assists" the company's search engines to overcome ambiguities and "literal-mindedness" in the application of such mathematical-philosophical concepts. ("Whatever!" and "Nihilists in Disneyworld.")
The goal is to "tweak," as it were, inquiries and responses from members of the public in order to yield the best possible responses to such inquiries.
To meet this goal (best response) a human/machine "dialectic" has been created. I believe that this is a promising approach for reasons that are somewhat different from Mr. Lohr's conclusions to the extent that I can discover conclusions in this article.
I must say that Google seems like a great company for geeks, including philosophy geeks. Mr. Lohr states the issue for Google's great minds in ambiguous terms:
"Although algorithms are growing ever more powerful, [sic.] fast and precise, the computers themselves are literal-minded, and context and nuance elude them." ("The Galatea Scenario and the Mind/Body Problem" then "The Entanglements Are Primary.")
How are computers "themselves" different from the algorithms that determine their operations? How can a computer not be literal-minded while remaining precise as an instrument of calculation? What exactly is a computer? Hard drive? Software? A set of mathematical equations? How is chaos thinking or complexity theory relevant to this discussion? Why not allude to Godel's "Incompleteness Theorem" or Russell's comments on "denotation/connotation" which are, necessarily, at the heart of this discussion? ("Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.")
II.
Each of these concepts transgressing disciplinary boundaries merits a separate essay. I will confine my brief efforts (again, I only have 45 minutes per day) to their application in reasoning about the scope and limits of algorithms in dealing with open-ended as opposed to (potentially) "closed" or purely factual inquiries.
I also will be concerned with problems that contain both open and closed features, that is, requests for answers to factual questions as well as judgments of meaning, usually in combination, that will certainly feature in future computing challenges:
"The word algorithm comes from the name of ninth century Persian [Iran] mathematician Abu Ja 'Far Mohammed ibn Musa al Khowarzim who wrote an influential mathematical textbook about 825 A.D. entitled 'Kitab al-jabr wa'l-mugabe.' [Euclid's "algorithm" dates from 300 B.C. but is pre-algebraic and pre-calculus.] ..." (Penrose, pp. 40-41.)
Algorithms are "systematic procedures for finding factors" or a "set" of "rules or instructions for the solution of a problem." (Penrose, pp. 40-47 and Blackburn, ed., Dictionary of Philosophy, p. 11.)
Recently developed evolutionary algorithms, that are not mentioned by "Mr. Lohr," are crucial to the growth of search capacity or "responsiveness" for search engines. This is because such protean algorithms make use of "simulations that are variable and multiple trials," each variation leading to new options. (Deutsch, p. 160.)
The complexities and ambiguities of questions dependent on uncertain information lead to difficulties in the construction of algorithms that seek to accomodate and respond to various levels of complexity in any solution.
Multidimensional problems or questions require "decision procedures" (algorithms) and answers that are also multidimensional. The challenge of developing such algorithms has allowed computer science to meet chaos theory in physics and mathematics as well as hermeneutics in philosophy and analytical "fuzzy logics." Much of this work can be seen in efforts to create new theories of infinity or "eternal loops." ("Projects.")
"Complexity theory is concerned not so much with the difficulty of solving single problems algorithmically, but with infinite families of problems where there would be a general algorithm for finding answers to all problems of one single family." (Penrose, p. 182.)
A Google search that gives you only one site is less successful than one that provides you with multiple options.
Given Godel's "Incompleteness Theorem" and Russell's concerns about human failures to "denote," or to provide meaningful utterance when articulating questions for computers or persons to ponder or seek to answer, an area for solutions to multilayered, complex and open-ended inquiries is dialectical or hermeneutical processes.
The conversation between human and machine, for example, or between questioner and answer-provider is "representable," mathematically, in algorithmic terms that yield "options" rather than definite or closed responses. Accordingly, evolutionary algorithms may be designed to yield open dialectics. ("What is memory?")
The ability to create algorithms that fragment results into levels of discussion, leading to further fragmentations producing more patterns of meaningful information, brings us to chaos thinking. Fractals and other branches of mathematics attempt to address these new realities.
If consciousness is essentially self-consciousness or awareness of thought, subjectivity, qualia, then developments in computer thinking -- especially quantum computing for multiple levels of inquiry and response -- may finally bring us within reach of consciousness for artificial intelligence systems as well as networks. ("Mind and Machine" then "John Searle and David Chalmers On Consciousness.")
You may recall Mr. Gleick's discussion of snow flakes and crystals as instantiating reproducible and predictable patterns that are knowable a priori and, potentially, infinitely reproducible and that are strikingly beautiful. The more beautiful the pattern, the more useful and manageable will be even the most massive amounts of information.
"Elegance" then becomes an organizing principle for algorithmic responses, and also to "understand" as well as "know" the universe. The result is what I call the "Rosebud" phenomenon. In Citizen Kane a single word to denote a boy's sleigh comes to define the hopes and dreams along with the meaning/identity of a man's entire life. All memory is contained in a single image and name: "Rosebud." (''Inception': A Movie Review" and "'In Time': A Movie Review.")
Similarly, massive amounts of information can be organized by a single metaphor/image ("butterfly effects") that captures or "represents" the complexity in order to "open the door" to the various levels of difficulty and nuance responding to an original inquiry. ("Arthur Schopenhauer's Metaphysics of Art.")
These matters reveal the persistence of a paradoxical human ambition that may be called "Promethean." We yearn for a single unified field theory (UFT) or a formula for the universe; we hope for an entirely absolutely knowable and certain rational order revealed, perhaps, by an all-encompassing "algorithm." We also yearn for freedom and ambiguity that allows for the inscrutability of our inner lives. ("'Prometheus': A Movie Review.")
Chaos theory and the emerging language of manifolds in mathematics suggests that we may be able to satisfy both of these desires: Einstein represents one side of this equation (the search for certainty); Godel/Heisenberg represent the other side of this same equation (acceptance of uncertainty).
Resolution of this tension between certainty or knowledge (science) and the freedom of mystery (religion) simply is human nature, the eternal inner dialogue that becomes external between self and/as other, human and machine, appearance and reality, knowledge and truth that can only be dialectical. ("Has Science Made Religion Obsolete?" and "Consciousness and Computers.")
The future of computing -- as Google demonstrates -- is not to contain this dialectic, but to make it available to the world by liberating inquiries that are always "unfinished." David Deutsch's discussion of "quantum computing" only makes these issues more important and fascinating. Perpetual dialogue or inquiry may be the only true "formula for the universe" and the best definition of what we are. Dissatisfaction with all of our answers reveals us to be eternal questioners:
"Our empirical science, our discoveries about the way the world works, give us more than mere hypotheses or conjectures. They give us our certainties and beliefs which our whole lives presuppose. In fact, the philosophical skeptic arguing that we should not have any confidence in these certainties is wasting his breath. Nature forces us to expect things as we do, I cannot jump off a cliff without expecting to fall, or deliberately walk into a wall without expecting to be stopped, any more than a dog or cat can. Our animal natures tell us how to navigate our world. They make us confident, and no reasoning could ever undermine that confidence."
Please compare "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism" with, again, "Stephen Hawking is Right On Time":
" ... Just as the law that between every pair of even numbers there lies an odd number is immutable, immune to time, necessarily true not just in the world as it happens to be, but in any other possible world we can imagine, so we would like to find a constraining fact, a physical or metaphysical directive, ensuring the continuing good behavior (from our point of view) of the natural order." (Blackburn, Philosophy, pp. 126-127.)
