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Date:         Wed, 2 Sep 1992 14:39:01 PDT
From:         Penni Sibun <sibun@PARC.XEROX.COM>
Subject:      Re: Cooking; chapman; visual perception
X-To:         CSG-L%UIUCVMD.BITNET@pucc.princeton.edu
              1 Sep 1992 20:27:59 -0700
              <92Sep1.203225pdt.11779@alpha.xerox.com>

(ps 920902.1400)

   [From Bill Powers (920901.1900)]

   >a primary interactionist field, ethnomethodology, came
   >about explicitly in reaction to sociology.  rather than asking ``how
   >can we describe the[s]e here institutions,'' it asks, ``are there
   >institutions, and if so what, and if so how constituted.''

   Sounds pretty much the same to me. In either case, the institutions
   are reified. Not that I don't believe in them. I just think they exist
   in people's heads, not in the environment.

well, of course, to interactionists, institutions are neither in the
head nor in the evironment, but....  this list, csgl, is an
institution cause we are all participating in it.  it's not my head,
it's not in your head, and it's not out there in the environment
somewhere just sitting around.

   Well-used, I'd say. Understanding how an object can play a role is
   something else. I think it makes a difference who is perceiving the
   object.

yes, of course it does.

   If you objectify objects, you can't explain how the same
   object can have different roles depending on who's using it for what
   purpose.

i don't see how this follows (unless ``objectify'' has a lot of
connotations here).

   >a machine is deterministic if there is only one way
   >to get from one state to the next; it's nondeterministic otherwise.

   That's what I was asking about. If it's nondeterministic in that
   sense, then what selects which of the possible paths will be taken?

that's not the machine's problem:

``...we shall...permit several possible `next states' for a given
combination of current state and input symbol.  the automaton
[machine]...may choose at each step to go into any one of these legal
next states; the choice is not determined by anything in our model,
and is therefore said to be _nondeterministic_.''

--lewis, h. and c. papadimitriou, _elements of the theory of
computation_, prentice-hall, 1981.

 If
   there's some systematic selection method, then it's deterministic
   again.

sure.

   So the question is, when there are alternate paths, what
   determines the path actually taken?

as far as toast is concerned, i don't know if they actually say (i
didn't see it).  they may well have flipped a coin.

   >no, a history is what happens between one point in time and another
   >point in time.

   Do you mean that there are continuous processes taking place BETWEEN
   nodes? I had thought that an operation simply jumped you from one node
   to another.

in section ``ontology of cooking tasks,'' a&h say:  ``a _history_ is a
function from natural numbers (representing `time') to world states.''
roughly, a history is a record of what happens during a run of toast.

   Because the way the proposition is stated, it doesn't matter whether
   the agent breaks the egg into the pan or whether someone else blunders
   through the room and breaks it on the floor, or if the agent finds it
   already broken in the carton. If it's broken the goal is satisfied,
   the way I read it.

you're probably right on that, and it's a good point.

   Now we simply have goal-setting, perception of the current state,
   comparison with the goal, and action that reduces the error. That I
   understand. What I don't get are all these nodes and arcs and that
   stuff, which sounds like the innards of a computer program, not
   something happening with someone doing it. chacun a son gout.

oh, absolutely.  can you see that that's exactly my reaction when
y'all get into the details of reference signals etc. and all that
math?  in both cases, the theories and their models are disjoint, and
it's an enormous act of faith (or science?!) to maintain the belief
that they have anything to do w/ each other.


cheers.

				--penni
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