Eshu figure evocative of the possibility of mediation between forms of being and modes of knowledge
Ground of being
Spiral evocative of ontological and hermeneutic interrelationships
Procession of human, animal and liminal figures suggestive of the various forms of being integrated in the Odu of Ifa and through which the divinatory process mediates
Eshu figure evocative of the possibility of mediation between forms of being and modes of knowledge
Half-humanoid half spiral figure evocative of the grasp of hermeneutic interrelations
through human consciousness-
for sources on this
see witte on eshu figures in Yoruba artist and his eshu book and lawal on spirals in edan ogboni essay
Analogical
Correlation
HERMES-A Heterogeneous Reasoning and Mediator System
An overview of the HERMES Project
HERMES is a system for semantically integrating different and possibly heterogeneous information sources and reasoning systems. This is accomplished by executing programs, called mediators, written in the HERMES system. Mediators, first proposed by Wiederhold, are guidelines of how information from different sources will be combined and integrated. HERMES system is based on the theory of Hybrid Knowledge Bases, due to Lu, Nerode and Subrahmanian. In this framework, external information sources are abstracted as domains which execute certain functions with pre-specified input and output type. These domains are accessed in mediators using a logic-based declarative language. This language is based on Annotated Logics, due to Kifer and Subrahmanian, and it provides a powerfull and extensible programming environment. The system also provides a uniform environment for the easy addition of new external sources to existing mediators. The system currently runs on Sun Sparc stations (under Unix), as well as on the IBM-PC platform under DOS/Windows 3.1. A graphical user interface has been built on both platforms.
http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/hermes/overview/overview.html
To make Eshu-Hermes connections-see Signifying Monkey-Gates and Faivre on Hermes- Greek God to Alchemical Magus
The Odu are understood, not simply, at one level, as geomantic patterns, or, at another level, as organising categories of the textual corpus of the system, but as a means of developing and organising a systemic construction of the scope of existence, in terms of its extant forms and its possibilities of realisation, from the most abstract to the most concrete. As Joseph Ohomina describes them:
The Odu are the names of spirits whose origin we do not know…. They are the spiritual names of all phenomena, whether abstract or concrete: plants, animals, human beings, the elements, and all kinds of situations. Abstractions such as love, hate, truth and falsehood; concrete forms such as rain, water, land, air and the stars; and situations such as celebrations, conflict and ceremonies, are represented in spiritual terms by the various Odu
The divinatory process, therefore, could be understood as a process through which this data base of ontological values is galvanised in relation to particular situations represented by the queries presented to the oracle. These situations would be interpreted in relation to their ontological identification in the various Odu. The correlation between this understanding of the Odu and ideas about female biology emerges in the feminine characterisation of the Odu and the resonance of this characterisation in the sculptural realisation of the space on which the Odu are configured in divination. The Odu are collectively understood as female and, in this collective identity, as being the wife of Ifa. The divinatory process, therefore, could be understood as being characterized in terms of relationships between a female and a male personality. This implies a generative process that emerges on the space where the Odu patterns are formed, graphically represented by the empty centre of the divination tray. Within this empty space, therefore, the macrocosmic values represented by the Odu in their fundamental characterisation as cosmic forms converge with the microcosmic patterns represented by the client’s query. The empty space, therefore, becomes a generative space, a womb of transformation, akin to the vaginal space where new life emerges after its transformation within uterine space. The correlation of macrocosmic and microcosmic frameworks in the divinatory process could be understood to be expressive of a convergence of forces similar to the integration of the power of life which is universal but manifests anew in each life form and the distinctive genetic encoding that emerges from the gene banks of both parents in the conception and growth of new human life.
Analogical
Correlation
caOBNET
OBJECTIVE BAYESIAN NETS FOR INTEGRATING CANCER KNOWLEDGE: A SYSTEMS BIOLOGY APPROACH
INTRODUCTION
Cancer treatment decisions should be based on all available knowledge. But this knowledge is complex and varied: it includes not only the patient's symptoms and expert knowledge of the relevant causal processes, but also clinical databases relating to past patients, databases of observations made at the molecular level, domain knowledge embodied in medical ontologies, and knowledge encapsulated in medical informatics systems such as argumentation systems. What is needed is a principled way of integrating these knowledge sources.
Objective Bayesian nets offer a principled path to knowledge integration. Objective Bayesianism is a theory that represents background knowledge using probabilities. These probabilities - e.g. the probability of recurrence of a patient's cancer; the probability that the patient will respond to treatment - are invaluable for making treatment decisions. An objective Bayesian net is a practical device for representing and calculating these probabilities. By building an objective Bayesian net one can practically integrate disparate knowledge sources.
The goal of this project is to implement this approach and to analyse its performance. We are particularly keen to investigate the way in which objective Bayesian nets can be used to combine
- qualitative and quantitative knowledge: the integration of quantiative statistical databases with qualitative ontological, argumentative and common sense knowledge is an important goal from the point of view of the knowledge engineer;
- molecular and clinical knowledge: the integration of different levels of analysis is an important goal from the systems biology perspective.
http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/philosophy/jw/2006/caOBNET.htm
Analogical Correlation
Bayesian Rationality: The Probabilistic Approach to Human Reasoning (Oxford Cognitive Science) (Paperback) by Mike Oaksford (Author), Nick Chater (Author)
Are people rational? This question was central to Greek thought; and has been at the heart of psychology and philosophy for millennia. This book provides a radical and controversial reappraisal of conventional wisdom in the psychology of reasoning, proposing that the Western conception of the mind as a logical system is flawed at the very outset. It argues that cognition should be understood in terms of probability theory, the calculus of uncertain reasoning, rather than in termsof logic, the calculus of certain reasoning.
Table of Contents
Logic and the Western conception of mind; Rationality and rational analysis; Reasoning in the the real world: how much deduction is there?; The probabilistic turn; Does the exception prove the rule? How people reason with conditionals; Being economical with the evidence: collecting data and testing hypotheses; An uncertain quantity: how people reason with syllogisms; The rational analysis of mind: a dialogue
About the AuthorMike Oaksford is Professor of Psychology and Head of School at Birkbeck College London. He was a research fellow at the Centre for Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh, he was then lecturer at the University of Wales, Bangor, and senior lecturer at the University of Warwick, before moving to Cardiff University in 1996 as Professor of Experimental Psychology, a post he held until 2005. His research interests are in the area of human reasoning and decision making. In particular,with his colleague Nick Chater, he has been developing a Bayesian probabilistic approach to deductive reasoning tasks. According to this approach reasoning " are the result of applying the wrong normative model and failing to take account of people's normal environment. He also studies the way the emotions affect and interact with reasoning and decision making processes.
Description
Are people rational? This question was central to Greek thought; and has been at the heart of psychology, philosophy, rational choice in social sciences, and probabilistic approaches to artificial intelligence. This book provides a radical re-appraisal of conventional wisdom in the psychology of reasoning.For almost two and a half thousand years, the Western conception of what it is to be a human being has been dominated by the idea that the mind is the seat of reason - humans are, almost by definition, the rational animal. From Aristotle to the present day, rationality has been explained by comparison to systems of logic, which distinguish valid (i.e., rationally justified) from invalid arguments. Within psychology and cognitive science, such a logicist conception of the mind was adopted wholeheartedly from Piaget onwards. Simultaneous with the construction of the logicist program in cognition, other researchers found that people appeared surprisingly and systematically illogical in some experiments. Proposals within the logicist paradigm suggested that these were mere performance errors, although in some reasoning tasks only as few as 5% of people's reasoning was logically correct. In this book a more radical suggestion for explaining these puzzling aspects of human reasoning is put forward: the Western conception of the mind as a logical system is flawed at the very outset. The human mind is primarily concerned with practical action in the face of a profoundly complex and uncertain world. Oaksford and Chater argue that cognition should be understood in terms of probability theory, the calculus of uncertain reasoning, rather than in terms of logic, the calculus of certain reasoning. Thus, the logical mind should be replaced by the probabilistic mind - people may possess not logical rationality, but Bayesian rationality.
About the Author(s)
Mike Oaksford is Professor of Psychology and Head of School at Birkbeck College London. He was a research fellow at the Centre for Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh, he was then lecturer at the University of Wales, Bangor, and senior lecturer at the University of Warwick, before moving to Cardiff University in 1996 as Professor of Experimental Psychology, a post he held until 2005. His research interests are in the area of human reasoning and decision making. In particular, with his colleague Nick Chater, he has been developing a Bayesian probabilistic approach to deductive reasoning tasks. According to this approach reasoning nullbiasesnull are the result of applying the wrong normative model and failing to take account of people's normal environment. He also studies the way the emotions affect and interact with reasoning and decision making processes.Nick Chater is Professor of Cognitive and Decision Sciences at University College London. He has an M.A. in Psychology from Cambridge University, and a PhD in Cognitive Science from Edinburgh. He has held academic appointments at Edinburgh, Oxford, and Warwick Universities. His research focussed on attempting to find general principles that may be applicable across many cognitive domains, ranging from reasoning and decision making, to language acquisition and processing, to perception and categorization. Since the late 1980s, in collaboration with Mike Oaksford, he has been interested in the application of probabilistic and information-theoretic methods for understanding human reasoning.
Rationality in an Uncertain World: Essays in the Cognitive Science of Human Understanding (Paperback) by Mike Oaksford (Editor), Nick Chater (Editor)
Book DescriptionThis book brings together an influential sequence of papers that argue for a radical re-conceptualisation of the psychology of inference, and of cognitive science more generally. The papers demonstrate that the thesis that logic provides the basis of human inference is central to much cognitive science, although the commitment to this view is often implicit. They then note that almost all human inference is uncertain, whereas logic is the calculus of certain inference. This mismatch means that logic is not the appropriate model for human thought. Oaksford and Chater's argument draws on research in computer science, artificial intelligence and philosophy of science, in addition to experimental psychology. The authors propose that probability theory, the calculus of uncertain inference, provides a more appropriate model for human thought. They show how a probabilistic account can provide detailed explanations of experimental data on Wason's selection task, which many have viewed as providing a paradigmatic demonstration of human irrationality. Oaksford and Chater show that people's behaviour appears irrational only from a logical point of view, whereas it is entirely rational from a probabilistic perspective. The shift to a probabilistic framework for human inference has significant implications for the psychology of reasoning, cognitive science more generally, and forour picture of ourselves as rational agents. SynopsisThe essays in this work focus on problems with logic-based approaches to human reasoning and show how a probablistic approach can provide a more psychologically plausible, computationally viable and philosophically respectable account of human inference. The author's probablistic approach shows that although people's behaviour appears irrational from a logical point of view, it is entirely rational from a probablistic perspective. There are new chapters on the emerging empirical support for probablistic models and on the cognitive mechanisms, such as neural networks, that may implement them in the mind. Moreover, the presentation of optimal data selection is simplified reflecting the author's experiences with teaching this material at the advanced undergraduate level.
Professor Mike Oaksford
My research concerns how people reason and construct arguments in discourse. From a logical point of view, people seem to make many errors and biases in their deductive reasoning. However, from a probabilistic point of view, these “errors” are the rational result of people being more sensitive to the strength of an argument defined using Bayesian probability theory rather than to deductive validity. This approach can also be generalised to account for the differential strength of the informal argument fallacies that have accrued in logic text books since Aristotle. This research involves experimental work and modelling the resulting inferential behaviour. I am also interested in how the emotions, both experienced and anticipated, affect people’s reasoning and decision making.
Students
Mal Christie: Minimal risk models of route finding and the representation of risk
Adam Corner: A Bayesian approach to circular reasoning (Cardiff, Joint with Ulrike Hahn (Psychology))
Rhys ap Gwilym: Bootstrapping informed economic behaviour in the lab to real markets (Cardiff, Joint with Patrick Minford (Economics))
School of Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psyc/staff/academic/moaksford
Nick Chater
My research focuses on looking for fundamental principles of cognition, which might apply across several cognitive domains. I am particularly interested in problems of uncertain inference, that arise in learning, reasoning, and perception; and in models of judgement and decision making, based with on cognitive principles. I also work on real-world applications of the cognitive and decision sciences.
Courses taught MSc Cognitive & Decision Sciences
http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/people/profiles/chater_nick.htm
MSc Cognitive and Decision Sciences (CoDeS)
This program studies the cognitive processes and representations underlying human thought, knowledge and decision-making. It integrates a wide range of disciplines and methodologies, with the core assumption that human cognition and choice are computational processes, implemented in neural hardware. Key topics include: the nature of computational explanation; the general principles of cognition; the scope of rational choice explanation; probabilistic models of the mind; learning and memory; applications to economics and business. The program involves intensive training in experimental design and methodology, building computational models, and carrying out a substantial piece of original research.
Why CoDeS?The program draws on an outstanding faculty, ranging across many disciplines, including internationally renowned researchers in psychology, computational modelling, neuroscience and economics. London is one of the global “hot-spots” for research in cognition, decision-making, and neuroscience; and it is an intellectual “hub”, with a high density of research seminars and scientific meetings that attract leading international researchers. London is also one of the world’s foremost commercial and political centres, with consequent opportunities for high-level applied research; and it is a vibrant, culturally diverse and international city, with world-class music, theatre and galleries.
Who should apply?This program will appeal to outstanding students interested in pursuing a research career in the cognitive and decision sciences, as well as to students wishing to develop an understanding of core theoretical principles of human thought to tackle applied problems, e.g., in business or public policy. The program will involve challenging formal, conceptual, and empirical work, and hence outstanding talent and motivation, including the ability to think clearly and creativity, and rapidly acquire and integrate new knowledge, is more important than specific disciplinary background. Relevant undergraduate backgrounds include psychology, economics, neuroscience, philosophy, computer science, mathematics, statistics, physics and engineering.
Course outline
The course is made up of eight taught modules and a research project. There are six core modules, which will provide students with a firm basis in both the theory and practice of cognition science and decision-making, and two specialist modules, selected by students from a wide list of options. The options and research project will allow students to pursue their own specific interests, and complete a significant piece of research work.
Core modules:
INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE SCIENCE (convenors David Lagnado and Marius Usher)
This module introduces the foundations of cognitive science, highlighting its interdisciplinary nature. A historical review will include seminal work in computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology and philosophy. The central metaphor of the mind as an information processor will be introduced, and various computational models of cognition discussed, raising questions of cognitive architecture, modularity, symbolic vs. connectionist representation, algorithms for learning and reasoning etc. Philosophical issues will also be explored, including classical theories and current debates in the philosophy of mind.
PRINCIPLES OF COGNITION(convenor Nick Chater)
This module outlines general theoretical principles that underlie cognitive processes across many domains, ranging from perception and memory, to reasoning and decision making. The focus will be on general, quantitative regularities, and the degree to which theories focusing on specific cognitive scientific topics can be constrained by such principles. There will be particular emphasis on understanding cognitive principles that are relevant to theories of decision making. The course will also deal with the issue of which mental processes are subject to general theoretical principles, and which must be understood one-by-one.
JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING(convenor David Lagnado) This module will introduce normative and descriptive models of judgments and choice. Formal models will include the axioms of probability, Bayesian networks, decision theory and game theory. The classic violations of these normative models will be critically discussed, in particular probability biases and choice anomalies. Current psychological models of judgment and choice will be presented, including heuristics and biases; prospect theory; decision field theory; sampling approaches and rational analysis models. These will be evaluated and linked with more general principles of cognition. The implications of this research for practical decision-making, and the use of decision aids, will also be discussed.
KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING & INFERENCE(convenors Nick Chater and Mike Oaksford)
This module introduces the range of computational formalism and methods that are currently used in the cognitive sciences. These will include Bayesian methods, symbolic approaches from artificial intelligence, machine learning techniques, and neural networks. The course will also show how these techniques can be applied to explain specific cognitive phenomena, by describing a range of current computational models. Students will also have the opportunity to develop their own simple computational models of cognitive processes.
PROGRAMMING FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE (convenor Marius Usher) This module introduces students to the basics of programming for cognitive and decision science. It will be made up of two main components: (1) Designing and programming simple laboratory experiments; (2) Computational modelling and simulation. The course will involve both theoretical and practical work. Students will program their own cognitive science experiments, and learn how to build simple computational models and run simulations. These practical projects will be tied in with the empirical and theoretical work covered in other modules (e.g., judgment and decision-making; knowledge, learning and inference).
RESEARCH STATISTICS (convenor Paul Cairns)
This module is intended to give students the more advanced statistical tools that they will need to analyze data in a range of psychological experiments. The course will therefore cover (1) a range of nonparametric tests such as Friedman and Jonckheere; (2) Advanced topics on ANOVA such as post hoc tests, ANCOVA and contrasts; (3) Introduction to multivariate methods such as MANOVA, Factor Analysis, Multiple Regression and the basics of the linear model.
Optional modules will include:
Neural computation: Models of brain function (Anatomy)Topics in Economics and Psychology (Economics)Supervised Learning (Computer Science) Unsupervised Learning (Computer Science) Applied Decision-making (Psychology)Learning and Memory (Psychology)Cognitive Neuroscience (Psychology)Neuropsychology of memory (Cognitive Neuropsychology)Applied cognitive science (Human-computer interaction centre)
Disorders of executive functions (Psychology) Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (Psychology) Brain and Cognitive Development (Psychology) Cognitive Neuropsychiatry (Psychology)
I am thereby developing a conception of Ifa hermeneutics which integrates the conception of an ontology, as understood both in terms of philosophy and in terms of computer science.
My interpretation of Ifa is related to the philosophical conception of ontology because I understand the Ifa system structured in relation to an ontology which ,from one perspective, could be understood to be centred on the relationship between the Ori and the universe. This universe itself is onsts in terms of interactive relationships between various forms of being, both human and nonhuman. In the characterisation of these beings, the conception of consciousness and agency as demonstrated by both biological forms as weell as non- biological forms/entities is central.
The interaction between these ontological forms is developed in Ifa in terms of a hermeneutic form, the Odu, which is understood as a correlation of human cultural forms, verbal language and numerate organisation-the odu patterns-and the agents who are understood as manifest through these cultural forms but as not being exhausted by a description of them purely in terms of human cultural construction but as demonstrating a sense of direction distinctive to them and not derived from human agency-abimbola on the odxu as spirits having their own ori.
To what degree are the cultural forms through which they are realised understood to be implicated in their nature?
See the possible contrast between notions of understanding Yoruba as central to understanding ifa,as in the UNESCO ifa presentation and ohominas contrary position. see also conceptions in the orisha tradition on the reciprocal relationship? Or even dependence on by deity on the human being-karen barber-how man makes God,in achebe-use carefully-how olu came to be made-on the creation and abandonment of gods-soyinka on similar ideas at the end of credo and paradoxical relationship of that to his earlier thrust in the poem-to the development of a metaphysics that develops similar ideas in terms of a particular conception of the relationship between from and essence where the form is a material form, whether ideational, textual or figural,or even simply an object, in the work of modern western occultism,[particularly the work of dion fortune, regardie, Crowley and whitcomb.see the essay on the aim of religion, the method of science.
See also hostage to the devil for a related discussion of spirit.
See also oyubukeres perspective as a scholar of African classical thought and an enthusiast of western esotericism.
On ontology in philosophy see as a beginning-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
In terms of the relationship of my understanding of Ifa to ontology in terms of computer science and information science, the Ifa system could be understood to constitute “a data model that represents a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts” and “is used to reason about the objects within that domain” as wkipedia describes ontology in computer since and information science, where the data model consists of the various modes of being through which the ifa system mediates and the information structures- a metaphysical form codified in terms of both literary and numerical forms in relation to the social knowledge of the diviner-through which this mediation is actualized/ effected. The data model is focused in the Odu and the conceptions they embody. The odu are used to reason about the objects within that domain, using forms of inference distinctive to ifa hermeneutics.
On ontology in computer science and information science-see as a beginning-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_%28computer_science%29
How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical Universe? (Hardcover) by John R. Anderson (Author)
.
"The question for me is how can the human mind occur in the physical universe. We now know that the world is governed by physics. We now understand the way biology nestles comfortably within that. The issue is how will the mind do that as well."--Alan Newell, December 4, 1991, Carnegie Mellon University The argument John Anderson gives in this book was inspired by the passage above, from the last lecture by one of the pioneers of cognitive science. Newell describes what, for him, is the pivotal question of scientific inquiry, and Anderson gives an answer that is emerging from the study of brain and behavior. Humans share the same basic cognitive architecture with all primates, but they have evolved abilities to exercise abstract control over cognition and process more complex relational patterns. The human cognitive architecture consists of a set of largely independent modules associated with different brain regions. In this book, Anderson discusses in detail how these various modules can combine to produce behaviors as varied as driving a car and solving an algebraic equation, but focuses principally on two of the modules: the declarative and procedural. The declarative module involves a memory system that, moment by moment, attempts to give each person the most appropriate possible window into his or her past. The procedural module involves a central system that strives to develop a set of productions that will enable the most adaptive response from any state of the modules. Newell argued that the answer to his question must take the form of a cognitive architecture, and Anderson organizes his answer around the ACT-R architecture, but broadens it by bringing in research from all areas of cognitive science, including how recent work in brain imaging maps onto the cognitive architecture.
Amazon.com book description. Accessed 29/05/07
Compare weitjh your similar claims about ifa hermeneutics in relation to relating thepresent with the past and the future in your ifa/van gogh essay and with onwuejeogwu in his afa book and his conception of time in his inaugural plus your conception of wenger and matwoods work as creative sytntesais of diverse facrors under the inspiratipon oif the phenomena they studied
Ground of being
Spiral evocative of ontological and hermeneutic interrelationships
Procession of human, animal and liminal figures suggestive of the various forms of being integrated in the Odu of Ifa and through which the divinatory process mediates
Eshu figure evocative of the possibility of mediation between forms of being and modes of knowledge
Half-humanoid half spiral figure evocative of the grasp of hermeneutic interrelations
through human consciousness-
for sources on this
see witte on eshu figures in Yoruba artist and his eshu book and lawal on spirals in edan ogboni essay
Analogical
Correlation
HERMES-A Heterogeneous Reasoning and Mediator System
An overview of the HERMES Project
HERMES is a system for semantically integrating different and possibly heterogeneous information sources and reasoning systems. This is accomplished by executing programs, called mediators, written in the HERMES system. Mediators, first proposed by Wiederhold, are guidelines of how information from different sources will be combined and integrated. HERMES system is based on the theory of Hybrid Knowledge Bases, due to Lu, Nerode and Subrahmanian. In this framework, external information sources are abstracted as domains which execute certain functions with pre-specified input and output type. These domains are accessed in mediators using a logic-based declarative language. This language is based on Annotated Logics, due to Kifer and Subrahmanian, and it provides a powerfull and extensible programming environment. The system also provides a uniform environment for the easy addition of new external sources to existing mediators. The system currently runs on Sun Sparc stations (under Unix), as well as on the IBM-PC platform under DOS/Windows 3.1. A graphical user interface has been built on both platforms.
http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/hermes/overview/overview.html
To make Eshu-Hermes connections-see Signifying Monkey-Gates and Faivre on Hermes- Greek God to Alchemical Magus
The Odu are understood, not simply, at one level, as geomantic patterns, or, at another level, as organising categories of the textual corpus of the system, but as a means of developing and organising a systemic construction of the scope of existence, in terms of its extant forms and its possibilities of realisation, from the most abstract to the most concrete. As Joseph Ohomina describes them:
The Odu are the names of spirits whose origin we do not know…. They are the spiritual names of all phenomena, whether abstract or concrete: plants, animals, human beings, the elements, and all kinds of situations. Abstractions such as love, hate, truth and falsehood; concrete forms such as rain, water, land, air and the stars; and situations such as celebrations, conflict and ceremonies, are represented in spiritual terms by the various Odu
The divinatory process, therefore, could be understood as a process through which this data base of ontological values is galvanised in relation to particular situations represented by the queries presented to the oracle. These situations would be interpreted in relation to their ontological identification in the various Odu. The correlation between this understanding of the Odu and ideas about female biology emerges in the feminine characterisation of the Odu and the resonance of this characterisation in the sculptural realisation of the space on which the Odu are configured in divination. The Odu are collectively understood as female and, in this collective identity, as being the wife of Ifa. The divinatory process, therefore, could be understood as being characterized in terms of relationships between a female and a male personality. This implies a generative process that emerges on the space where the Odu patterns are formed, graphically represented by the empty centre of the divination tray. Within this empty space, therefore, the macrocosmic values represented by the Odu in their fundamental characterisation as cosmic forms converge with the microcosmic patterns represented by the client’s query. The empty space, therefore, becomes a generative space, a womb of transformation, akin to the vaginal space where new life emerges after its transformation within uterine space. The correlation of macrocosmic and microcosmic frameworks in the divinatory process could be understood to be expressive of a convergence of forces similar to the integration of the power of life which is universal but manifests anew in each life form and the distinctive genetic encoding that emerges from the gene banks of both parents in the conception and growth of new human life.
Analogical
Correlation
caOBNET
OBJECTIVE BAYESIAN NETS FOR INTEGRATING CANCER KNOWLEDGE: A SYSTEMS BIOLOGY APPROACH
INTRODUCTION
Cancer treatment decisions should be based on all available knowledge. But this knowledge is complex and varied: it includes not only the patient's symptoms and expert knowledge of the relevant causal processes, but also clinical databases relating to past patients, databases of observations made at the molecular level, domain knowledge embodied in medical ontologies, and knowledge encapsulated in medical informatics systems such as argumentation systems. What is needed is a principled way of integrating these knowledge sources.
Objective Bayesian nets offer a principled path to knowledge integration. Objective Bayesianism is a theory that represents background knowledge using probabilities. These probabilities - e.g. the probability of recurrence of a patient's cancer; the probability that the patient will respond to treatment - are invaluable for making treatment decisions. An objective Bayesian net is a practical device for representing and calculating these probabilities. By building an objective Bayesian net one can practically integrate disparate knowledge sources.
The goal of this project is to implement this approach and to analyse its performance. We are particularly keen to investigate the way in which objective Bayesian nets can be used to combine
- qualitative and quantitative knowledge: the integration of quantiative statistical databases with qualitative ontological, argumentative and common sense knowledge is an important goal from the point of view of the knowledge engineer;
- molecular and clinical knowledge: the integration of different levels of analysis is an important goal from the systems biology perspective.
http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/philosophy/jw/2006/caOBNET.htm
Analogical Correlation
Bayesian Rationality: The Probabilistic Approach to Human Reasoning (Oxford Cognitive Science) (Paperback) by Mike Oaksford (Author), Nick Chater (Author)
Are people rational? This question was central to Greek thought; and has been at the heart of psychology and philosophy for millennia. This book provides a radical and controversial reappraisal of conventional wisdom in the psychology of reasoning, proposing that the Western conception of the mind as a logical system is flawed at the very outset. It argues that cognition should be understood in terms of probability theory, the calculus of uncertain reasoning, rather than in termsof logic, the calculus of certain reasoning.
Table of Contents
Logic and the Western conception of mind; Rationality and rational analysis; Reasoning in the the real world: how much deduction is there?; The probabilistic turn; Does the exception prove the rule? How people reason with conditionals; Being economical with the evidence: collecting data and testing hypotheses; An uncertain quantity: how people reason with syllogisms; The rational analysis of mind: a dialogue
About the AuthorMike Oaksford is Professor of Psychology and Head of School at Birkbeck College London. He was a research fellow at the Centre for Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh, he was then lecturer at the University of Wales, Bangor, and senior lecturer at the University of Warwick, before moving to Cardiff University in 1996 as Professor of Experimental Psychology, a post he held until 2005. His research interests are in the area of human reasoning and decision making. In particular,with his colleague Nick Chater, he has been developing a Bayesian probabilistic approach to deductive reasoning tasks. According to this approach reasoning " are the result of applying the wrong normative model and failing to take account of people's normal environment. He also studies the way the emotions affect and interact with reasoning and decision making processes.
Description
Are people rational? This question was central to Greek thought; and has been at the heart of psychology, philosophy, rational choice in social sciences, and probabilistic approaches to artificial intelligence. This book provides a radical re-appraisal of conventional wisdom in the psychology of reasoning.For almost two and a half thousand years, the Western conception of what it is to be a human being has been dominated by the idea that the mind is the seat of reason - humans are, almost by definition, the rational animal. From Aristotle to the present day, rationality has been explained by comparison to systems of logic, which distinguish valid (i.e., rationally justified) from invalid arguments. Within psychology and cognitive science, such a logicist conception of the mind was adopted wholeheartedly from Piaget onwards. Simultaneous with the construction of the logicist program in cognition, other researchers found that people appeared surprisingly and systematically illogical in some experiments. Proposals within the logicist paradigm suggested that these were mere performance errors, although in some reasoning tasks only as few as 5% of people's reasoning was logically correct. In this book a more radical suggestion for explaining these puzzling aspects of human reasoning is put forward: the Western conception of the mind as a logical system is flawed at the very outset. The human mind is primarily concerned with practical action in the face of a profoundly complex and uncertain world. Oaksford and Chater argue that cognition should be understood in terms of probability theory, the calculus of uncertain reasoning, rather than in terms of logic, the calculus of certain reasoning. Thus, the logical mind should be replaced by the probabilistic mind - people may possess not logical rationality, but Bayesian rationality.
About the Author(s)
Mike Oaksford is Professor of Psychology and Head of School at Birkbeck College London. He was a research fellow at the Centre for Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh, he was then lecturer at the University of Wales, Bangor, and senior lecturer at the University of Warwick, before moving to Cardiff University in 1996 as Professor of Experimental Psychology, a post he held until 2005. His research interests are in the area of human reasoning and decision making. In particular, with his colleague Nick Chater, he has been developing a Bayesian probabilistic approach to deductive reasoning tasks. According to this approach reasoning nullbiasesnull are the result of applying the wrong normative model and failing to take account of people's normal environment. He also studies the way the emotions affect and interact with reasoning and decision making processes.Nick Chater is Professor of Cognitive and Decision Sciences at University College London. He has an M.A. in Psychology from Cambridge University, and a PhD in Cognitive Science from Edinburgh. He has held academic appointments at Edinburgh, Oxford, and Warwick Universities. His research focussed on attempting to find general principles that may be applicable across many cognitive domains, ranging from reasoning and decision making, to language acquisition and processing, to perception and categorization. Since the late 1980s, in collaboration with Mike Oaksford, he has been interested in the application of probabilistic and information-theoretic methods for understanding human reasoning.
Rationality in an Uncertain World: Essays in the Cognitive Science of Human Understanding (Paperback) by Mike Oaksford (Editor), Nick Chater (Editor)
Book DescriptionThis book brings together an influential sequence of papers that argue for a radical re-conceptualisation of the psychology of inference, and of cognitive science more generally. The papers demonstrate that the thesis that logic provides the basis of human inference is central to much cognitive science, although the commitment to this view is often implicit. They then note that almost all human inference is uncertain, whereas logic is the calculus of certain inference. This mismatch means that logic is not the appropriate model for human thought. Oaksford and Chater's argument draws on research in computer science, artificial intelligence and philosophy of science, in addition to experimental psychology. The authors propose that probability theory, the calculus of uncertain inference, provides a more appropriate model for human thought. They show how a probabilistic account can provide detailed explanations of experimental data on Wason's selection task, which many have viewed as providing a paradigmatic demonstration of human irrationality. Oaksford and Chater show that people's behaviour appears irrational only from a logical point of view, whereas it is entirely rational from a probabilistic perspective. The shift to a probabilistic framework for human inference has significant implications for the psychology of reasoning, cognitive science more generally, and forour picture of ourselves as rational agents. SynopsisThe essays in this work focus on problems with logic-based approaches to human reasoning and show how a probablistic approach can provide a more psychologically plausible, computationally viable and philosophically respectable account of human inference. The author's probablistic approach shows that although people's behaviour appears irrational from a logical point of view, it is entirely rational from a probablistic perspective. There are new chapters on the emerging empirical support for probablistic models and on the cognitive mechanisms, such as neural networks, that may implement them in the mind. Moreover, the presentation of optimal data selection is simplified reflecting the author's experiences with teaching this material at the advanced undergraduate level.
Professor Mike Oaksford
My research concerns how people reason and construct arguments in discourse. From a logical point of view, people seem to make many errors and biases in their deductive reasoning. However, from a probabilistic point of view, these “errors” are the rational result of people being more sensitive to the strength of an argument defined using Bayesian probability theory rather than to deductive validity. This approach can also be generalised to account for the differential strength of the informal argument fallacies that have accrued in logic text books since Aristotle. This research involves experimental work and modelling the resulting inferential behaviour. I am also interested in how the emotions, both experienced and anticipated, affect people’s reasoning and decision making.
Students
Mal Christie: Minimal risk models of route finding and the representation of risk
Adam Corner: A Bayesian approach to circular reasoning (Cardiff, Joint with Ulrike Hahn (Psychology))
Rhys ap Gwilym: Bootstrapping informed economic behaviour in the lab to real markets (Cardiff, Joint with Patrick Minford (Economics))
School of Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psyc/staff/academic/moaksford
Nick Chater
My research focuses on looking for fundamental principles of cognition, which might apply across several cognitive domains. I am particularly interested in problems of uncertain inference, that arise in learning, reasoning, and perception; and in models of judgement and decision making, based with on cognitive principles. I also work on real-world applications of the cognitive and decision sciences.
Courses taught MSc Cognitive & Decision Sciences
http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/people/profiles/chater_nick.htm
MSc Cognitive and Decision Sciences (CoDeS)
This program studies the cognitive processes and representations underlying human thought, knowledge and decision-making. It integrates a wide range of disciplines and methodologies, with the core assumption that human cognition and choice are computational processes, implemented in neural hardware. Key topics include: the nature of computational explanation; the general principles of cognition; the scope of rational choice explanation; probabilistic models of the mind; learning and memory; applications to economics and business. The program involves intensive training in experimental design and methodology, building computational models, and carrying out a substantial piece of original research.
Why CoDeS?The program draws on an outstanding faculty, ranging across many disciplines, including internationally renowned researchers in psychology, computational modelling, neuroscience and economics. London is one of the global “hot-spots” for research in cognition, decision-making, and neuroscience; and it is an intellectual “hub”, with a high density of research seminars and scientific meetings that attract leading international researchers. London is also one of the world’s foremost commercial and political centres, with consequent opportunities for high-level applied research; and it is a vibrant, culturally diverse and international city, with world-class music, theatre and galleries.
Who should apply?This program will appeal to outstanding students interested in pursuing a research career in the cognitive and decision sciences, as well as to students wishing to develop an understanding of core theoretical principles of human thought to tackle applied problems, e.g., in business or public policy. The program will involve challenging formal, conceptual, and empirical work, and hence outstanding talent and motivation, including the ability to think clearly and creativity, and rapidly acquire and integrate new knowledge, is more important than specific disciplinary background. Relevant undergraduate backgrounds include psychology, economics, neuroscience, philosophy, computer science, mathematics, statistics, physics and engineering.
Course outline
The course is made up of eight taught modules and a research project. There are six core modules, which will provide students with a firm basis in both the theory and practice of cognition science and decision-making, and two specialist modules, selected by students from a wide list of options. The options and research project will allow students to pursue their own specific interests, and complete a significant piece of research work.
Core modules:
INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE SCIENCE (convenors David Lagnado and Marius Usher)
This module introduces the foundations of cognitive science, highlighting its interdisciplinary nature. A historical review will include seminal work in computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology and philosophy. The central metaphor of the mind as an information processor will be introduced, and various computational models of cognition discussed, raising questions of cognitive architecture, modularity, symbolic vs. connectionist representation, algorithms for learning and reasoning etc. Philosophical issues will also be explored, including classical theories and current debates in the philosophy of mind.
PRINCIPLES OF COGNITION(convenor Nick Chater)
This module outlines general theoretical principles that underlie cognitive processes across many domains, ranging from perception and memory, to reasoning and decision making. The focus will be on general, quantitative regularities, and the degree to which theories focusing on specific cognitive scientific topics can be constrained by such principles. There will be particular emphasis on understanding cognitive principles that are relevant to theories of decision making. The course will also deal with the issue of which mental processes are subject to general theoretical principles, and which must be understood one-by-one.
JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING(convenor David Lagnado) This module will introduce normative and descriptive models of judgments and choice. Formal models will include the axioms of probability, Bayesian networks, decision theory and game theory. The classic violations of these normative models will be critically discussed, in particular probability biases and choice anomalies. Current psychological models of judgment and choice will be presented, including heuristics and biases; prospect theory; decision field theory; sampling approaches and rational analysis models. These will be evaluated and linked with more general principles of cognition. The implications of this research for practical decision-making, and the use of decision aids, will also be discussed.
KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING & INFERENCE(convenors Nick Chater and Mike Oaksford)
This module introduces the range of computational formalism and methods that are currently used in the cognitive sciences. These will include Bayesian methods, symbolic approaches from artificial intelligence, machine learning techniques, and neural networks. The course will also show how these techniques can be applied to explain specific cognitive phenomena, by describing a range of current computational models. Students will also have the opportunity to develop their own simple computational models of cognitive processes.
PROGRAMMING FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE (convenor Marius Usher) This module introduces students to the basics of programming for cognitive and decision science. It will be made up of two main components: (1) Designing and programming simple laboratory experiments; (2) Computational modelling and simulation. The course will involve both theoretical and practical work. Students will program their own cognitive science experiments, and learn how to build simple computational models and run simulations. These practical projects will be tied in with the empirical and theoretical work covered in other modules (e.g., judgment and decision-making; knowledge, learning and inference).
RESEARCH STATISTICS (convenor Paul Cairns)
This module is intended to give students the more advanced statistical tools that they will need to analyze data in a range of psychological experiments. The course will therefore cover (1) a range of nonparametric tests such as Friedman and Jonckheere; (2) Advanced topics on ANOVA such as post hoc tests, ANCOVA and contrasts; (3) Introduction to multivariate methods such as MANOVA, Factor Analysis, Multiple Regression and the basics of the linear model.
Optional modules will include:
Neural computation: Models of brain function (Anatomy)Topics in Economics and Psychology (Economics)Supervised Learning (Computer Science) Unsupervised Learning (Computer Science) Applied Decision-making (Psychology)Learning and Memory (Psychology)Cognitive Neuroscience (Psychology)Neuropsychology of memory (Cognitive Neuropsychology)Applied cognitive science (Human-computer interaction centre)
Disorders of executive functions (Psychology) Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (Psychology) Brain and Cognitive Development (Psychology) Cognitive Neuropsychiatry (Psychology)
I am thereby developing a conception of Ifa hermeneutics which integrates the conception of an ontology, as understood both in terms of philosophy and in terms of computer science.
My interpretation of Ifa is related to the philosophical conception of ontology because I understand the Ifa system structured in relation to an ontology which ,from one perspective, could be understood to be centred on the relationship between the Ori and the universe. This universe itself is onsts in terms of interactive relationships between various forms of being, both human and nonhuman. In the characterisation of these beings, the conception of consciousness and agency as demonstrated by both biological forms as weell as non- biological forms/entities is central.
The interaction between these ontological forms is developed in Ifa in terms of a hermeneutic form, the Odu, which is understood as a correlation of human cultural forms, verbal language and numerate organisation-the odu patterns-and the agents who are understood as manifest through these cultural forms but as not being exhausted by a description of them purely in terms of human cultural construction but as demonstrating a sense of direction distinctive to them and not derived from human agency-abimbola on the odxu as spirits having their own ori.
To what degree are the cultural forms through which they are realised understood to be implicated in their nature?
See the possible contrast between notions of understanding Yoruba as central to understanding ifa,as in the UNESCO ifa presentation and ohominas contrary position. see also conceptions in the orisha tradition on the reciprocal relationship? Or even dependence on by deity on the human being-karen barber-how man makes God,in achebe-use carefully-how olu came to be made-on the creation and abandonment of gods-soyinka on similar ideas at the end of credo and paradoxical relationship of that to his earlier thrust in the poem-to the development of a metaphysics that develops similar ideas in terms of a particular conception of the relationship between from and essence where the form is a material form, whether ideational, textual or figural,or even simply an object, in the work of modern western occultism,[particularly the work of dion fortune, regardie, Crowley and whitcomb.see the essay on the aim of religion, the method of science.
See also hostage to the devil for a related discussion of spirit.
See also oyubukeres perspective as a scholar of African classical thought and an enthusiast of western esotericism.
On ontology in philosophy see as a beginning-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
In terms of the relationship of my understanding of Ifa to ontology in terms of computer science and information science, the Ifa system could be understood to constitute “a data model that represents a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts” and “is used to reason about the objects within that domain” as wkipedia describes ontology in computer since and information science, where the data model consists of the various modes of being through which the ifa system mediates and the information structures- a metaphysical form codified in terms of both literary and numerical forms in relation to the social knowledge of the diviner-through which this mediation is actualized/ effected. The data model is focused in the Odu and the conceptions they embody. The odu are used to reason about the objects within that domain, using forms of inference distinctive to ifa hermeneutics.
On ontology in computer science and information science-see as a beginning-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_%28computer_science%29
How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical Universe? (Hardcover) by John R. Anderson (Author)
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"The question for me is how can the human mind occur in the physical universe. We now know that the world is governed by physics. We now understand the way biology nestles comfortably within that. The issue is how will the mind do that as well."--Alan Newell, December 4, 1991, Carnegie Mellon University The argument John Anderson gives in this book was inspired by the passage above, from the last lecture by one of the pioneers of cognitive science. Newell describes what, for him, is the pivotal question of scientific inquiry, and Anderson gives an answer that is emerging from the study of brain and behavior. Humans share the same basic cognitive architecture with all primates, but they have evolved abilities to exercise abstract control over cognition and process more complex relational patterns. The human cognitive architecture consists of a set of largely independent modules associated with different brain regions. In this book, Anderson discusses in detail how these various modules can combine to produce behaviors as varied as driving a car and solving an algebraic equation, but focuses principally on two of the modules: the declarative and procedural. The declarative module involves a memory system that, moment by moment, attempts to give each person the most appropriate possible window into his or her past. The procedural module involves a central system that strives to develop a set of productions that will enable the most adaptive response from any state of the modules. Newell argued that the answer to his question must take the form of a cognitive architecture, and Anderson organizes his answer around the ACT-R architecture, but broadens it by bringing in research from all areas of cognitive science, including how recent work in brain imaging maps onto the cognitive architecture.
Amazon.com book description. Accessed 29/05/07
Compare weitjh your similar claims about ifa hermeneutics in relation to relating thepresent with the past and the future in your ifa/van gogh essay and with onwuejeogwu in his afa book and his conception of time in his inaugural plus your conception of wenger and matwoods work as creative sytntesais of diverse facrors under the inspiratipon oif the phenomena they studied
