Re: Paper by ~MM on distributed self-awareness


"feedbackdroids" <feedbackdroids@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Stephen Harris wrote:
"feedbackdroids" <feedbackdroids@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Stephen Harris wrote:

I think the use of the terms self-adaptive, self-managing,
self-healing,
self-organizing and self-configuring in relation to describing
computer
behavior in network software is widespread.

I keep trying to tell you ... the usage you give here is no problem.
From Webster, "self-" simply means of oneself or itself, the object or
subject of the action.


Well the definition of aware is "having knowledge of". In this discussion
information is passed on by ants or immune system cells of the body.

The problem is specifically in use of the term "self-aware", as this is
most commonly used in regards consciousness and other psychological
concepts.


Not any more. There used to be big philosophical fights about whether
the running the right program would "instantiate" a mind. Most people
consider the computationalist movement to have already failed. Even
then self-aware was not equivalent to 'conscious of ones own existence'
to the majority of philosophers. Lay people might not know or think
about how the terms were different. But academics don't write to please
lay people; they use terms in the accepted manner of their particular
field
or discipline which often have specialized meanings rather than common.



What we really need are even more academics muddying the already muddy
waters. Conflating classical psychological terms with physical
mechanistic terms.

Pretty soon, they'll all start sounding like new-age twinkies.

A job advert as below is hardly a refereed publication now, is it. I'm
sure you can find 10,000 more bad examples.


The job advert was contained inside a paper. The people who wrote
the paper were not using the job advert as a theoretic academic source.
They were showing that the terms had already filtered down from
theory to the point where the PR people who write the job ads
were using them as industry buzzwords in 2002.

I can see the cause of your muddlement regarding Melanie's paper.
You don't sound like a twinkie to me, more like Lester Zick.


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