AI Writings : AN ANALYSIS OF STATES

AN ANALYSIS OF STATES

The below analysis is hoped to be of relevance to Knowledge Representation since knowledge of reality is about states and their changes.

There is no change of state wherein there is no “impression” left of the original thing.

You can do three things to anything -

CREATE
REPLACE which is akin to MODIFY. Replacement is an extreme case of modification.
DESTROY. Destruction is an extreme case of replacement wherein one replaces the thing with nothing.

You cannot destroy anything completely - physical or abstract/conceptual. When I rub X and write Y on the board, the ink of X is still preserved. Even if the concept - the variable x - is gone, the physical location of X is still preserved in the Y. When I forget a thought completely forever, the location of that thought i.e. the brain is still preserved. When I supposedly “destroy anything completely”, some property/aspect of the earlier thing is still alive. Thereby, the thing (material or conceptual) with which the earlier thing was connected to, via a property of its, is still preserved. Hence you cannot destroy anything completely - there is always an “impression” of the earlier thing left.

Partial destruction - if something has been partially destroyed, then the difference between the initial and final is material (/ and conceptual). When I remove some of the ink of the X on the board, it goes onto the duster. This is material. So it just changes form.

Now consider the conceptual. When ‘silence’ (a concept) in a classroom becomes ‘noisiness’ (a concept) by the members, firstly, there is no complete destruction of the silence since a property of the silence - the quiet people - is/are still there. Here there is partial destruction - the sound is gone. The difference between the silence and the noisiness is the sound which are air columns in motion. The air columns are matter which cannot be destroyed and the motion of theirs is a concept which, as argued earlier cannot be destroyed completely. So, yes, there is partial conceptual destruction. So yes, partial destruction - (only) in the form of conceptuality - is a reality.

3 Miscellaneous points :

Everything conceptual has a physical basis. Even thoughts are chemical and thus physical realities. Everything in the world thus has a physical basis.

A physical initiation can bring about a conceptual change (a bending a steel rod changes the shape), but not vice versa. A change of thought can bring about a change in one’s actions (physical), but thoughts, as stated earlier, are physical (chemical) realities. There can be no purely conceptual initiation.

Creation is just a side-consequence of replacement/modification.

Now let's get systematic. The reader must have realised that we are playing with the Conceptual and the Material on one side, and Creation, Modification/Replacement, and Destruction on the other. Lets systematically analyze each case :

Conceptual creation - Conceptual creation is equivalent to being rooted in physical creation or is equivalent to conceptual replacement.

When I create a concept of a variable x, my thoughts, which are ultimately a physical reality, are responsible for the creation of the variable x.

When a noise in a class becomes silence, there is replacement of the concept - noise - with that of the concept - silence.

i) Conceptual modification - When noise in a class becomes more noise in a class there is conceptual replacement (which is equivalent to creation, as mentioned above).

When x becomes x + y, there is the same.

ii) Conceptual replacement - When x gets erased and replaced by y (on the board), the location, memory in the mind of the writer (amongst other things) of it still remain.

When a thought changes (lets go -> lets not go), there is physical conversion or replacement of physicality (chemicals), and this can also be seen, from one partial point of view, a case of conceptual creation (creation of a thought - “lets not go”).

Conceptual destruction - As discussed before, it leaves an impression of some property. When a thought becomes completely forgotten, the location (a physical property) of the thought (the brain) and a conceptual property (the place in space where it resided) still remain.

Material Creation - impossible.

Material Modification/Replacement - Material modification may mean material replacement or no material replacement. When I boil water, there is material replacement, and when I bend a steel rod there is no material replacement.

When there is material replacement, both materially and obviously conceptually, there is change. When there is no material replacement, still there is a conceptual change. Conceptually there is a creation. This creation is a replacement of some pre-existing concept.