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individuals. Such dominance can be extracted from our scale data and used to make
better predictions of the group decisions. If such dominance is supported then the
model might be modifiable to take this into account and thus give a better account
of the group discussions and ally choice.
We are only in the foothills of modelling human behaviour. The advantage of con-
sidering music is that perception of it is purely subjective. There can be no argument
or logic as to the nature of the experience for each individual. Only they know what
they felt. This neutral stance means that all the mechanisms of language and com-
munication have got to go into communicating these perceptions. The detection of
perceptual allies seems valuable for extending ones own experiences and this should
lead to using shared metaphors; metaphors that are initially found through direct
shared experiences and later from shared perceptions (Lakoff and Johnson
1980
;
Lakoff
1986
).
Computer modelling opens up the possibility of checking the consistency of how
an unanchored conversation can drift without loss of communication. In here some-
where, is the suggestion of how ontological changes, e.g. changes in conceptual
boundaries, can be made because of the fluidity of the inferential language. In here
is a clue to the mechanism of insight and originality. The progress of human think-
ing and experience seems to be related to our method of communicating between
ourselves; our knowledge seems to exist between us more than it exists within each
of us in isolation.
Computer science, as a subject, has always been puzzling in that it was never
clear where the 'science' component was. There were formal theories that were
principally part of mathematics and there was engineering required for hardware and
software. But where were the experiments that lead to new theories? We discover in
this topic that the science is founded in experimental psychology with the theories
being replaced by modelling people's thought processes and social interactions. It is
through these models that we gain some insight into the complexity of what it is to
be human.
References
Addis T, Gooding D (1999) Learning as collective belief-revision: simulating reasoning about
disparate phenomena, Proceedings of the AISB'99 Symposium on Scientific Creativity, ISBN
1 902 956044
Addis T, Gooding D (2008) Methods for an abductive system in science Foundations of Science,
vol 13, No 1, March 2008
Addis T et al (2004) The abductive loop: Tracking irrational sets (this publication)
Billinge D (2000) An analysis of the communicability of musical predication: a feasibility study
for artistic decision support systems. PhD Thesis, University of Portsmouth
Billinge D, Addis T (2003) The functioning of tropic communication: a mechanism for consistent
figurative descriptions of artistic effect. AISB'03 symposium on AI and creativity in arts and
science, University of Wales at Aberystwyth
Billinge D, Addis T (2004) Music to our ears: a required paradigm shift in computer science
European conference on computing and philosophy. University of Pavia, Italy
