From: mitsu@nic.cerf.net (Mitsuharu Hadeishi)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Report on Philosophies of Physicists
Date: 10 Sep 92 22:28:22 GMT
Organization: CERFnet

In article <9209101315.AA16725@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> nicho@vnet.ibm.com writes:
>In <2760@news.cerf.net> Mitsuharu Hadeishi writes:
>> --- previous matter deleted for brevity -----
> This is all very well Mitsu, but the assertion that 'Eastern' modes
>of thought are better suited to describing 'neuroscience' 'cognitive
>psycology' and 'social science' than 'Western' modes is not one you
>have backed up with any facts. I'd be interested in any references
>you can provide demonstrating that a scientist using an 'Eastern'
>mindset had obtained superior results in the fields you have chosen.

	It is becoming increasingly evident in the field of artificial
intelligence that the kinds of analogical and metaphorical reasoning
used in everyday thought process are not very well describable by
Boolean logic.  Rule-based systems, though powerful, have extremely
limited fields of application, and are only capable of working well
when the problem domain is extremely restricted in scope.  They are
also not very good at generalization or pattern recognition.  Neural-
network models appear to be much better at these kinds of tasks;
often manual construction of rule-based systems that take months to
achieve a certain level of accuracy can have their performance matched
by a neural-network model which is trained over a data set in a period
of just a few days.  Cognitive science is a very hot and very new
field, and I will predict that these kinds of results will continue,
and you will find that major advances in these areas will result from
exploration of these directions (i.e., moving away from rule-based
systems, except for special-case domains, and toward "fuzzy"
pattern recognition and automatic generalization systems).

> <cheap shot on> 'Western' philosophy, for all it's faults, doesn't
>approve of rolling tanks over students.

	The development of democracy, which is an objective structure
for social organization, is indeed another great triumph of Western
civilization which is also in some part due to the philosophical
bias of the West.  That is, I believe Western philosophy is not all
that effective is dealing with small-scale personal and interpersonal
issues (i.e., what someone has called "divergent" problems, i.e., those
problems that do not admit to a closed-form solution), however,
the closed-form structure of democracy does indeed greatly influence
overall societal stability.  The East, on the other hand, ignored
these kinds of advances for a long time, because it relied on the
power of interpersonal or personal interactions to maintain social
order and justice.  Structural solutions were seen to be inferior
to personal and informal solutions.  Unfortunately this means the
rule of law is less strong in Eastern societies, enabling dictatorships
to arise.  However, abusive dictatorships are no more "approved"
of by Eastern philosophy than Nazism is "approved" of by the West
(does 'Western' philosophy condone the systematic genocide of
Native Americans, or the massacre of millions of Jews in Nazi
death camps, or the Stalinist starvation and purges which also claimed
millions?  One can argue that these atrocities, though not condoned
by Western philosophy, arose from a fallacy inherent in Western
epistemology, which has to do with the importance of closed-form
solutions to problems, i.e., overly simplistic solutions.  The
democratic solution happens to be one with a very flexible structure,
and therefore incredibly successful; however, other "Western"
solutions to the social problem have been quite horrific in nature
as well.  I might point out that the Chinese dictators in control
subscribe to a Western social philosophy, Communism, which has
been already discredited in the West, but nevertheless arose from
Western culture.)

	I might also mention that the "Eastern" philosophy that I speak
of has not always been central to the social systems of Asian
countries.  There are competing philosophical systems, such as
Confucianism, which are not much less well-developed than the systems
I am talking about (primarily Zen and other forms of Buddhism,
Taoism, and other schools which focus on flexible epistemology.)
Confucianism is a much more rigid system of thought, and I believe
makes a very poor model for societal organization.  Unfortunately for
China, the Taoists were "kicked out" of power sometime in the
eleventh to twelvth centuries, and the Zen Buddhists were massacred
and destroyed (in China) in the thirteenth century.  Thus China
lost some of its strongest philosophical basis.  Japan, on the other
hand, maintained a strong Zen influence up until the early twentieth
century, when right-wing forces subverted the constitutional
monarchy (modelled after Western democracies, particularly Britain's)
set up in the late nineteenth century.  However, after Japan's
defeat, Zen influence again spread, and can be seen in many aspects
of Japanese economic and other policy.

	This is, however, getting a bit off-topic.

Mitsu
Newsgroups: sci.physics