… Read the rest

The New York Times: One Giant Step for a Chess-Playing Machine, by Steven Strogatz, December 26th 2018

Thought as word dynamics. II. Architecture (5)

Mathematically speaking, a graph is a set of ordered pairs. It can be decomposed in elementary units of individual pairs. Each of the two elements in an ordered pair represents a node in the graph and every pair represents an edge. Say, there are four nodes, A, B, C and D and the graph is defined as (a, b), (b, c), (c, d) and (a, c), the corresponding graph is as represented in the figure below.

An example of a word-pair is “cat-feline” and each of the two words “cat” and “feline,” … Read the rest

Thought as word dynamics. II. Architecture (4)

In Indo-European languages there are two types of words. Every speaker has a very strong intuitive feeling of this. We have no difficulty when defining the meaning – or offering a definition – of words of the first type: “a rose is a flower that has many petals, often pink, a strong and very pleasant fragrance, a thorny stem,” etc.; “a tire is a rubber envelope to a wheel, inflated with air,” etc. With the second type, we’re in real trouble: for instance with the word ‘nonetheless,’ “it is used when one wishes … Read the rest

Thought as word dynamics. I. General principles. (3)

A thoroughly “physical” account of the objective dynamics of speech performance will be provided later. In the meantime I’m indicating here that as far as talking subjects are concerned, their subjective experience of the dynamics of speech performance is – from the initiation of a speech act to its conclusion – one of an emotional or “affective” nature. A view commonly held is that emotions hinder the expression of rational thinking. Beyond a certain threshold, emotions may indeed lead to disarray and impair speech performance. In normal circumstances however, the “expression of … Read the rest

Thought as word dynamics. I. General principles. (2)

It is undeniable that speech acts are produced from within a talking subject, as they are uttered through the mouth. This however does not necessarily imply that the network mentioned in Speech acts are generated as the outcome of a dynamics operating on a network, along with its data, is stored within the talking subject. It can however be reasonably inferred that such is indeed the case, essentially for lack of a viable alternative hypothesis.

Suppose for a moment that the network were located elsewhere than within talking subjects, meaning … Read the rest

Thought as word dynamics. I. General principles (1)

The general hypothesis is that “speech acts are generated as the outcome of a dynamics operating on a network”; it is specific as far as it states that the data, the “words,” summoned in the generation of speech acts are structured as a network. It is also informative when it distinguishes to the mechanism, two parts: an architecture, being the network itself and a “dynamics” – so far unqualified – operating on it. To a large extent the hypothesis states the obvious as speech performance unfolds in time and is therefore … Read the rest

On two occasions already on my French blog, I’ve written an article in a serialized format, posting each part whenever it was ready then creating a link to a copy of the whole text when it had reached a final form. In both instances has the process taken about two months (Les tâches et les responsabilités qui sont aujourd’hui les nôtres ; Ce qu’il est raisonnable de comprendre et partant d’expliquer).
I will proceed in the same way with Thought as Word Dynamics. I envision that the process will take longer as the text is structured … Read the rest