[comp.ai.philosophy] meta

kpc00@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (kpc) (10/27/90)

I am very interested in the reasoning here.  Any comments?  Followups
are redirected to c.a.p.

In article <1990Oct25.100748.2501@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
mccool@dgp.toronto.edu (Michael McCool) writes:

   >>It is really an interesting question of whether birds (in flight)
   >>show intelligent behaviour or are just purely constrained by the
   >>physical laws of flight (wind streams etc).

   >>Any comments ?

   You might want to check out the work done in graphics on the
   animation of flocks, herd, schools (of fish), and other collective
   motion.  I don't have any references handy, but you can ask a
   friendly neighbourhood graphics type or look through the last few
   years of Computer Graphics (the proceedings of the SIGGRAPH
   conference published in journal form).  There is also an nice
   animation, whose name escapes me (BOY, I'm a LOT of help, aren't
   I?) which animated fish & birds.

   I seem to recall windstream has nothing to do with it; the
             ======

From the simulations?  (Underscoring is mine.)

   collective behaviour is a result of the birds desire to "remain
                                                 =================
   together" balanced against a desire to avoid collision with each
   ========                     =========================
   other and objects.  And of course, at least in the case of birds, a
   minimum speed may be necessary to remain airborne (ignoring
   hovering and soaring).  Collective "goal-directed" behaviour, i.e.
   following a general path or going towards a point (tropism) is also
   a factor.

I don't mean this as a rhetorical device; just as a question: what
kinds of reasoning did you use here, and what are the names for the
elements of reasoning involved?  (For example, had you made an
inference something like the following?

  1  A is the reason for B
     B is like C (it was made for the sake of being like C)
     There is probably a reason, of the same sort as A, for C

implies

  2  A is, or is probably, the reason for C

?)

This doesn't necessarily map onto the above example, but did

 1  seeing that an algorithm based on simulation of what, if it were
    human agents instead of graphical objects, would be desires and
    goals, simulates a flock of birds's salient group behavior fairly
    well

lead you to believe that

 2  birds have these desires or analogues or homologues of these
    desires

or perhaps instead that

 2  avoidance and cohesion strategies is the best, or a very good, way
    to describe the flock's behavior as an entity

?

I really don't mean this as criticism at all; I am just wondering how
the inference went.

   Anyhow, good luck.
   Michael McCool@dgp.toronto.edu

Yes, good luck.

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