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Date:         Thu, 3 Sep 1992 21:39:30 PDT
From:         Penni Sibun <sibun@PARC.XEROX.COM>
Subject:      Re: Skinner & Control; More cooking; variaboili
              3 Sep 1992 08:33:41 -0700
              <92Sep3.085756pdt.11627@alpha.xerox.com>

(ps 920903.2200)

   [From Bill Powers (920903.0800)]
   --
   Penni Sibun (920902.1400) --

   >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.

   My problem with institutions is that they're nouns, whereas what goes
   on between organisms are processes and interactions -- verbs.

yes, i agree.  that's suggested by ``participation.''

 What
   something like CSG-L "is" depends on who's looking at it. For me, it's
   an ongoing conversation with a person to claims to be Penni Sibun,
   someone who uses the name Rick Marken, a writer who expresses himself
   very much like Chuck Tucker, and so forth. The only real person on
   this net is me. From someone else's viewpoint, I'm imaginary. What the
   net "is" depends on each user's conception of it, and that conception
   isn't out there in the world. It's in a head.

well, i don't suppose solipsism is very useful.  unless you want to
assume that everything is imaginary, then this list is something real.
its existence depends on our actively maintaining it.

   >``...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_.''

   Doesn't your quote say explicitly that it _is_ the machine's problem?
   "The automaton [machine] may choose at each step to go into any one of
   these legal next states..."

   I think that what the quote means is that it isn't the _programmer_'s
   problem -- that is, the simulation or model or whatever is making its
   own choices based on current experience, rather than having those
   choices programmed in from the start. But if you include the state of
   the environment and the criteria for choosing, then the automaton is
   deterministic, even if the programmer didn't determine its choices.
   The only way I can see to produce a nondeterministic outcome is to
   make the choice using random numbers or the output of a Geiger
   counter.

well, i probably confused you by saying ``machine''--let's stick to
``automaton.''  at any rate, neither is a program:  an automaton is a
description, a theoretical abstraction.  one can perfectly rigorously
say whether an automaton is deterministic or not; i gave the def.
above.  determinism does not describe what the automaton does, it
describes how it is built.

i recommend the book i cited for learning about computational theory.
interestingly, chomsky can be blamed for a lot of it.

   >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.

   This still doesn't answer my question. If an operation like "put pan
   on burner" is carried out, I assume that the history would record the
   pan first in some other place, then after the operation, the pan on
   the burner. What I was asking was whether the position of the pan was
   recorded in this history over the whole trajectory between "on the
   counter" and "on the burner," or whether just the end positions were

the natural numbers are the positive integers starting from 1, so a
function from natural numbers to world states implies discreet rather
than continuous time.
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