FOUR BRAND NEW COLORS:
Information Nullification in Psychology and the Humanities

William S. Dockens III
University of Uppsala  Sweden
email:

Abstract

A primary difficulty is to formulate an approach that is both free of paradigm territoriality and as independent of arbitrary consensus as possible. One solution, a spectrum from common sense through biological and natural sciences, to business, political and military strategy is subjected to a general systems approach that includes problems of conflict, territoriality and compatibility. To minimize arbitrariness, information’s problems, their consequences and their solutions are formulated within T. Givón’s (1984) approach to syntax provides an optimal division of labor for the search for a generally accepted definition of "information". In addition to presenting a comprehensive picture of syntax, semantics and pragmatics as a unified whole, Givón’s formulation of "the time-stability scale of lexical classes" facilitates a non-hierarchical approach essential to applications in both networks and natural environments.

Three major conclusions, first social and cultural factors can nullify clearly demonstrable empirical facts. Second, the "Prisoner’s Dilemma" is an artifact of specialization. Finally, a neuro mind pattern has emerged that might serve as a more organic, less mechanical basis for a photo computer system’s reasoning.

The Mindscape concept emerges as our link between the objective reality of mathematical biology and the personalities of individuals. Originally formulated by anthropologists to explain irreconcilable differences across cultural and epistemological barriers, this approach takes advantage of game theory connections to integrate the mindscape concept into general systems. The result is a biobehavioral equivalent to "personality theory", an equivalent that may well permit general systems to deliver things only promised by humanist philosophers and psychologists. Mindscape’s greatest promise is its contribution to the resolution of conflicts between groups and personalities.

Key words: Information, syntax, games, GO, Tai-chi, synergetics.

1 The Vienna Problems

Vienna University of Technology lecture hall, June 1996, the animated participants inside were engaged in heated, high tech supported, discussions that at times rivaled the hot summer weather outside. It was the last day of the Second Conference on the Foundations of Information Science (FIS). Discussants represented the earth’s spectrum of disciplines, continents and cultures. Their views and attitudes ranged from the deeply aesthetic to the highly technical. Their problem—define "information".

As the organizers of the conference were well aware, an answer to this problem formulated in a multidiscipline multinational context would almost necessarily differ from any one of the spectrum of specialized working definitions applied daily by respective participants. It was also quite evident that a viable definition of information, formulated at the interfaces between the relevant disciplines might have profound and unpredictable implications, not only for the nations and disciplines directly effected, but also for the first decade or so of the 21^st Century. In fact, to say that a definition of information might have cosmic implications would not be an exaggeration. Result, no conclusion was reached. For an alert behavioral scientist there was a clue, however. Because the participants tended to divide into groups according to "Mindscapes".

New York, the year after the conference in Vienna, physicists debated what they called the "information paradox". The point of contention—what would happen if a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica were dropped down a black hole? According to Einstein, information must be lost as massive stars collapse, tearing holes in the fabric of space-time. Quantum mechanics, by means of a rather complex argument, equates consevation of information with conservation of energy. Thus one of Quantum mechanic’s basic assumptions does not agree with the occurrence of abbarations of space and time that occur as a logical consequence of Einstein’s two theories of relativity. At stake is a basic idea of quantum mechanics, that bits of data never dissappear from the universe.

Once again information was at the center of things. Once again no consensus emerged from the debate. What everyone could agree upon, however. If the two theories are to be unified, neither quantum mechanics nor general relativity will survive unaltered.

This time the behavioral science clue focused on the conflicts between the probability oriented quantum physicists and the deterministic relativity theorists. Paradoxically, the probability people were supporting a law of conservation that is as deterministic as one can get, and the relativists are arguing for a disappearance that would destroy predictability.

Mindscapes (learned epistemologies) comes to the forefront again. Because, as in the Vienna debates, cultural anthropologist Magoroh Maruyama’s (1980 a, b) formulation of "mindscapes" suggests that, with the physicists in New York, interpretation and agreement may depend as much on correspondence between deeply hidden epistemological patterns as upon "facts". That the epistemological distortions can go beyond misinterpretation of concepts to the nullification of physical facts is the subject of this paper.

The main point that Maruyama makes is that some concepts require corresponding epistemo- logical patterns for a correct interpretation. Now to progress from the general to the specific. Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of mindscapes that are relevant to the discusions of the two conferences.   Logic and information were the focus of the debate in both cases. Very little attention was paid to the biopsychological variables of perception or to the philosophical concept or ethics. Though either, or both, of the latter concepts may have little effect on the semantics of operational definitions employed in technical specialties. All four mindscape characteristics combine to have radical influences on the general syntax of "information".

Table1

Table 1. Mindscape Characteristics. After Maruyama, M. 1980b.
Epistemological and Cultural Barriers to Mutualistic Thinking.
Futurics. 4, 2, 97-116.

 

Vienna Circle vs. The Vienna Net

The Vienna Circle addressed a similar linguistic crisis in the 1920s. Then logicians, mathematicians and physicists attempted to lay the foundation for the unification of the physical, biological and social sciences. The philosophy of "logical positivism" that resulted was readily adopted by behaviorists who needed doctrinaire support. However, the exclusive, operational, formal, and atomic, program of logical positivism failed to win the support of either Gestalt psychologists or psychoanalysts. Though positivism’s exclusion of subjective experience was the primary focus of the theoretical conflicts in psychology, epistemological faults were equally responsible for positivism’s failure to influence the language of psychology and psychiatry.

Duhl (1960) (1969) pointed out serious problems with both the language and the methods of behavioral sciences when faced with interdisciplinary problems. Meehl (1954) (1970) (1978) presented extremely damaging evidence concerning psychology’s measurement and hypothesis testing methodology. Added to the studies of David Lykken (1968), the total weight of the criticism came close to reducing psychology’s methodology to the absurd.

For a behavioral science formulated in terms of general systems, a definition of "information" poses an especially pernicious set of epistemological problems at the most fundamental levels of perception, cognition and learning. Because the definition has to be formulated at the interfaces between psychology and linguistics, the humanities (especially philosophy and anthropology) are directly affected. Equally as ominous, history shows that a veritable minefield of paradigmatic conflicts awaits. See Benjafield (1996), Turner (1965) and Reichenbach (1965)

That psychosocial factors can influence the perception of empirical facts is a part of conventional wisdom. That such factors can nullify facts is not so apparent. Of primary concern here, is the observation that if allowed to go unchecked, the paradigmatic conflicts can delay the application of solutions to the problems that up to now have prevented formulation of a generally accepted definition of "information".

The first step is to recognize the main differences between the class of problems presented to the Vienna Circle during the first half of the 20^th Century and the problems FIS faces going into the 21^st.

Mindscapes in Conflict

To begin, the problems that confronted the 1920s Vienna Circle were reasonably amenable to formal and hierarchical approaches characteristic of H-mindscapes. See Table I. In contrast, a temporal network that generates problems that have proven to be only partially amenable to formal, hierarchical, methods confronted the 1996 Conference on the Foundations of Information Science (FIS). Second, the division of labor between science, technology, the behavioral sciences, arts and humanities was much clearer for the Vienna Circle than it was for the Vienna Network. Third, FIS’s multidisciplinary, multicultural, network like, problems appear more amenable to either S- or G-mindscape solutions.

If the Vienna and New York debates are translated into the language and categories of  Table 1,  the barriers against mutual solutions to information problems are brought into sharper focus. All of the barriers are serious, but some are also curious. Some examples.

Of course primary attention is first diverted toward the rows titled cosmology and information, where the views of the physicists in New York land in the first two columns. Relativists tend to land in the H-mindscape column, quantum mechanics in the I-mindscape. The Mindscape approach confirms the serious divisions between the two points of view while pointing to the curious fact that both the relativists (H-mindscape) and quantum mechanics (I-mindscape) take opposite views to those predicted by their respective mindscape characteristics. That means that if each of the two sides was to switch to their opponent’s position, the two sides would be "in character" as far as mindscapes are concerned.

Again referring to Table 1 mindscape theory would also predict that neither perception nor logic would offer much promise for agreement. Especially if the H-mindscape relativists were following their characteristic zero-sum (winner take all) ethical strategy and I-mindscape quantum mechanics was either in zero-sum or negative sum (everybody loses) mode.

In the past, the tendency for natural scientist and technicians to ignore potential behavioral science contributions to such debates was blamed on epistemological difficulties. Translated into the categories and language of Table 1 this means that the only proof that natural science is willing to accept must be based on an inescapably valid physical statement. Since behavioral science and the humanities usually make their contributions by means of perception, logic and ethics, the barriers represented by those three rows in Table 1 are added to the criterion of an inescapably valid physical statement. The net result for both behavioral science and the humanities has usually been either total exclusion or marginal relevance.

The problems faced by the humanities and behavioral sciences in the Vienna information conference can also be formulated in terms of mindscapes. Though the emphasis in Vienna was necessarily on mutual agreement and cooperation, these terms also translate differently, depending on the mindscape. The descriptions that follow are the results of observations and questions raised and put to participants.

Vienna Mindscapes

H-mindscapes assumed that information could be defined in such a precise way as to set a standard for use of the term in the future. I-mindscapes thought that the term could be so loosely defined as to include everybody’s working definition. S-mindscapes took a conciliatory position, searching for a balance between the opposing H- and I-mindscape positions. The position described in this thesis is a G-mindscape approach, where new and exogenous elements are incorporated into an evolving definition of information.

The ethics row in Table 1predicts that neither the H- nor I-mindscapes would be willing to change their views without a struggle. Table 1 The static, S-mindscape solution would most likely be only temporary, since information and information technology seem to be evolving at virus speeds. . G-and S-mindscapes can usually apply a positive sum strategy to come to some mutual agreement. So barring a highly unlikely victory by either the H- or the I-mindscapes, the final hope lies with the G-mindscape alternative. Nevertheless, a G-mindscape solution implies the use of a very subtle, difficult and, in real life situations, dangerous strategy, if harmony is to be established without crippling or disabling either the H- or I-mindscapes.

In natural environments, where analogies from Eigen & Winkler’s LIFE/DEATH GAME are in force, a dangerous but risky strategy involving hypercycles is available. See Eigen & Winkler (1983) and Dockens (1996). But in the artificial environments represented by the New York and Vienna conferences, such "real world" solutions can be precluded on epistemological grounds. Far from trivial, when epistemological exclusion exists to the extent that it can nullify physical facts, the epistemology loses its ecological validity. Nevertheless, consensus can maintain such systems, even in natural environments. If, however, the excluded facts and concomitant concepts can confer an ecological advantage, the results of the nullification may well prove fatal when consensus and cooperation break down.

Table 2. Competition and cooperation in real life situations.

Table 2 summarizes competition and cooperation in real life situations, where cooperation and competition may be maintained either by natural law or by consensus. Relationships may evolve, or be transformed by events, from one category in the table to the other. Some changes in category lead to ominous consequences.

Hyper Darwinian Struggles

With humans, ants and chimpanzees, transformations from cooperation to competition often lead to a breakdown of consensus. The probable result is hyper-Darwinian (war or combat!) conditions typical of Life/Death struggles for space described by Eigen & Winkler’s Laws of the Game. The connections in the present context are direct and, for those familiar with the developments in Information technology, obvious. Because, not only are the latter 20^th Century struggles for cyber space conforming to hyper-Darwinian conditions, academic discussions about definitions and control of information are following the same hyper-Darwinian, territorial patterns.

The nature of mindscape conflicts and ecological advantages of G-mindscape solutions in hyper-Darwinian environments can be demonstrated most economically by introducing the "synchron", an empirically supported, but in some cases taboo, pattern into the information disputes. The peculiar history of opponent processes theory is prime example.

2 The Color Prototype

Toward the end of the 19^th Century, Ewald Hering formulated a theory that captured the distinction between achromatic colors (black white and gray scales) and chromatic colors (the hues between blue, red, green and yellow). Confirmed and named "opponent-processes" by Hurvich & Jameson (1974) the theory was put forward as a model of neural organization. The theory’s position was further enhanced by DeValois & DeValois (1975) who formulated their theory of how color is neurocoded.

"Antagonistic" processes organized in pairs were the foundation of the opponent processes system. According to theorists, interactions between the excitation and inhibition of six pairs of colors (blue-yellow, red-green and black-white) were responsible for the over 16 million color sensations experienced by humans and monkeys. The term "antagonistic" becomes a key concept, because light was assumed to act on each pair so as to yield one of its component colors, while inhibiting the other.

When patterns similar to the one described by Hering’s theory of color perception appeared in anatomy, physiology, genetics, Chinese philosophy and finally physics, it appeared as if the theory of opponent processes was well on the way to becoming the prototype for neural organization. Too, color phenomenon is among the few indisputable cross-cultural experiences that can be used as a reference point for defining "information". In psychology, such divers approaches as Pavlov’s physiological approach to learning and Jung’s quasi-oriental approach to clinical analysis both included aspects of opponent processes phenomena. Add to this the strategic significance of color concepts as a bridge between the mechanical technology focus of natural science and the aesthetic experiences so important to the arts and humanities.

Color is so important to the information technology industry that an International Color Consortium (ICC) has developed a profile that is to function as a description of the color-rendering abilities of monitors, printers, scanners and digital cameras. The software created to define a system’s unique "color identity" is considered here to be analogous to the FIS attempt to create a definition of "information". The links between opponent process color theory, information and game theory are complex, but straightforward.

Eigen & Winkler’s gene population analogy forges and impressive link between color perception, mathematics and game theory. Add DeValois & DeValois’ link between color perception and neurocoding. Combine this with the generative properties of the opponent process pattern, the resemblance between information networks and open systems. Only the logic associated with the word "antagonistic" has stood in the way, and this was only a partial barrier, because the strict, exclusive, formulation of the term "antagonistic" seemed to apply only to the hues.

Gray occurs between black and white. This is consistent with the behavior of opponent pairs in other aspects of physiology disciplines. The problem is that gray also occurs at the interfaces between antagonistic pairs where opponent processes theory maintained that humans and monkeys could not experience "reddish green, Greenish red, yellowish blue and bluish yellow", according to Hering and his followers. However, evidence from psychophysics and learning theory began raising doubts.

Sperling, Sidley, Dockens & Jolliffe (1968) noted problems with blue line spectral sensitivity functions in psychophysics, and Premack (1971) discovered the reversibility of learning’s reinforcement relation. Taken individually, the psychophysical relationship pointed to a red-plus-green mechanism. Premack’s principle was more in line with "common sense" than it was with psychological theories. Together they indicated that the opponent process people might have gotten some of their assumptions wrong. Finally, observation of the four "impossible" colors in the natural environments and in experiments with colors produced by the Danish mode industry offers irrefutable proof that opponent process assumptions need modification.

Four Brand New Colors

My first encounter with a forbidden color was a woman wearing a reddish green blouse. A perfect stranger in NK Department store, artificial lights distorted the effects. Unfortunately there was virtually no possibility of exploring the citing of the "impossible" color. The second encounter was in the form of a magnificent celestial display of bluish yellow and yellowish blue, a gradient of impossible colors in the northern, November skies over Uppsala. Not amenable to direct control, nevertheless, the observations could be repeated any day in November at 15.00 hours. Clouds were the only obstacles.

Experimental control was possible after the third encounter. A silk blouse made by the Danish company Saent Taopiz could be made to seem reddish green or greenish red, depending on surrounding conditions. "Sand" was the name given to the color that looked yellowish, grayish, green in natural light. The "impossible" (or perhaps forbidden?), reddish green or greenish red was achieved by introducing red and green objects that would be reflected by the silk surface. The original observations were made during a birthday party when a bright red tablecloth and red candles combined to produce the "impossible" experience of reddish green.

Of course four colors added to the over sixteen million that can be produced by contemporary computer monitors is not an event that will have any great influence over the mode industry. Nevertheless, implications for cross cultural and multidisciplinary definitions of information are legion.

Information Nullification

It is of primary importance that a wrong assumption in psychophysics, which conflicts with patterns established in virtually all of the interfacing disciplines, can nullify a fact that can so easily be observed in a northern sky. Because the convergence of the quantities represented by wavelength and the subjective qualities of hues mark a convergence seldom seen in behavioral science. Few areas in biology can boast either convergence of neurological, anatomical, physical and biochemical description or the degree of understanding of underlying mechanisms. Nor can any bit of information achieve higher cross-cultural agreement than those represented by color perception.

The point! Though addition of the "impossible" colors make the opponent processes model the prime psychological candidate for information prototype, the G-mindscape pattern of reasoning that opponent processes represents is still excluded from consideration on solely epistemological grounds. Support for this position can be demonstrated both theoretically and empirically, with syntax and mathematics serving as arbiters for the theoretical arguments. Comparisons between actual situations and computer simulations are presented as empirical support, with game theory serving as a conceptual framework. The theoretical difficulties surrounding a definition of "information" are highlighted by complications introduced by adding opponent processes to syntax. Additional pragmatic consequences, beyond those of excluding four colors, will be made evident by examples, and the concluding thought experiment.

3 Syntax’s Divisions of Labor

T. Givón’s (1984) approach to syntax provides a near optimal division of labor in the present context. First, because it presents a comprehensive picture of syntax, semantics and pragmatics as a unified whole. Second, Givón focuses on interconnections while defining the roles of biology, philosophy, anthropology and psychology in the context of linguistics. His pragmatic, non-dualistic resolution of conflicts by means of complex, hybrid and open-ended systems permits near perfect compatibility with the general systems conceptual framework. Finally, his formulation of "the time-stability scale of lexical classes" permits a complete integration with empirical data from laboratory experiments and observations in natural environments reviewed in Dockens (1996).

So by complementing Givóns approach to linguistics with an equally judicious selection of representatives for the four key disciplines, the complete process of defining information can therefore be treated as a branch of mathematical biology. And the concept "information" emerges from convergence at the interfaces between the disciplines represented at the Vienna conference.

Consistent with general systems research, adopting Givóns approach to divisions of labor almost inevitably means adopting the problems associated with the approach.

Psychology and linguistics

Givón’s linguistics describes psychology as "the empirical rock from which many linguistic expeditions have been launched and upon which many have crashed." Avoiding what he interprets as both Skinner’s stimulus/response based trivializing of language and cognition and Comsky´s insistence upon Homo sapiens uniqueness in respect to language, Givón chooses a middle ground between common sense and empirical accountability. Removal of artificial a priori constraints is an important aspect of his program. This role places psychology at the interfaces between biology, philosophy, anthropology and linguistics and in the direct fire from all sides of both the Chomsky-Skinner and the Chomsky-Piaget debates.

Givón’s problems with psychology are quite formidable, but he paints himself into an even tighter corner of philosophy where he adopts a compromise after Kant and Peirce. This Givón describes as a "non-dualistic resolution of the artificial cleavage between empiricist and rationalist". Here again, he strives to avoid what he considers to be the categorical clarity of the Skinner and Chomsky extremes. His pragmatic reason for adopting the Kant and Peirce view, because it "stresses the interactive, mutually-dependent nature of percepts and concepts, environment and organism, input and analyzer, World and Mind."

According to Givón, anthropology anchors the study of language and cognition within the matrix of social structure/function and cultural world view. This forces Givón to "navigate" between what he describes as "the shallows of Whorfian cultural relativism" and "Chomsky’s Eurocentric ‘universalism’".

For Givón, cognition and communication evolved in the context of a need to cooperate for mutual survival. Increasing complexity of cultural patterns imposed increasingly complex tasks, which in their turn required a more intricate communicative code. Feedback loops stabilize a system of coping and surviving which Givón says, "must have always been a matter of making intelligent choices, given the level of information available to the organism at the time". Time and information are both central to his approach to syntax. As would be expected of a linguist, the sentence—or proposition—is the basic unit of information processing in human language in an approach that stresses the non-arbitrariness of structure and function.

A three step strategy

Opting for biology over physics as a metaphor, Givón’s functional-typological approach applies prototype theory to the interface between a number of categories. Prototype (the most typical member of a category) is defined as the member of the interface category that "possesses the greatest number of important characteristic properties". Usually successful, the method yields a "prototype clustering" of members of natural biological, cognitive and behavioral categories around a prototype mean. The pragmatic aspect of Givón’s biological metaphor focuses on synchronic (extant) syntax. Nevertheless, linguistic changes are traced through history, ontogeny (individual maturation) and phylogeny (species evolution).

Givón describes his three-step approach as "intimately bound up and motivated by the structure of human cognition, perception and neuro-psychology". Sentence level analysis is only the first step. Use of syntactic structure to discover the correlations between structure and function in human language is the second step. These first two steps are the primary function of a linguist. The third step—how much the correlations are systematically related to human neurology, perception and cognition—is to be done in cooperation with cognitive psychologist.

Givón’s approach to linguistics dovetails almost perfectly with a game theory approach developed within general systems. See Dockens (1996, a). So, with the important exception of substituting general systems psychiatry for conventional cognitive psychology, Givón’s three-step program and his definition of information will be applied here. The advantages and liabilities of General Systems substitutions from Dockens (1996) will become apparent when evaluated according to the Mindscape characteristics described in Table 1.

Logic and ethics loom as primary problem areas after technology has evolved toward convergence.

Open Systems Revisions

In direct contrast to the harmony that emerged from the Vienna Circle, the problem of a common definition of "information" brings logic and psychology into conflict. The circularity of psychology’s "identity" concepts lead to contradiction from self-reference, contradictions that professional logicians call "irrational". The linear reasoning characteristic of Aristotelian reasoning leads to biobehavioral consequences that professional psychologist call "insane".

Taken in concert, Givón’s syntax and Magoroh Maruyama’s mindscapes permit an analysis of the conflict and a G-mindscape resolution. Focus is on open systems. In this context, Givón’s syntax and General System Psychiatry share the property that once concepts are introduced into the conceptual framework of open, time-based systems each concept becomes inextricably linked to the other concepts that make up the system. This property makes revisions of systems difficult and complicated. Too, both the conclusions and the character of the total system may differ markedly from any of the component specialties.

The revisions necessary for definition of "information" within the game theory framework of Eigen & Winkler (1983) is an example of the differences and similarities of the difficulties encountered by Givón’s syntax and General Systems. In this context, the game the Japanese call GO sets the standard against which all other games are judged. The consequences for behavioral science are as profound as those for information theory.

Games "Artificial Organisms" Play

Simply stated, microgenetics supplies the organism’s priorities. Interactions with the environment permute the priorities by distributing them in time. The result of, and in association with this primarily unconscious activity is play. Play is primarily conscious. When the spontaneous, relatively informal, rules of play are transformed (usually by large brain animals) into more formal rules, the result is a game. More complex than play, ames are quasi conscious. The game gives meaning to the biological flux that includes the behavioral stream.

A game is thus a psychological artifact, to be distinguished from objects associated with play. The objects included in play are called toys. When games become instrumental in the survival of the organism, the toys associated with the games are tools. Both tools and toys are mechanical artifacts. Though not nearly as precise as the biochemical sequences microgenetics, the use and production of mechanical artifacts is, for paleontologists, the most distinguishing feature of Homo sapiens--"the artificial organism". Fortunately for behavioral science, prediction, description and control of human behavior is often made much easier when human groups and individuals define themselves and their cultures by means of psychological and mechanical artifacts. The stick, the wheel, the printing press, the computer are examples of revolutionary mechanical artifacts and language, mathematics, sports and war are revolutionary psychological artifacts.

Games and Häekel’s law

Within the conceptual framework of mathematical biology, the transformation from play to games is analogous to the transformation from toys to tools. Extending Haeckel’s law to include behavioral science, we can succinctly state this principle; Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny and Psychology recapitulates Ontogeny. Thus evolution and learning share similar patterns of development. They begin at birth with the general genetic priorities supplied by evolution, which are extended by the interactions with parents and other aspects of the environment. Mutations, sexual reproduction and continual changes in the environment insure the variation necessary for adaptation to evolutionary and revolutionary changes. It is the generic nature and characteristics of the patterns of development that is a point of contention between Aristiotelian logic and the reasoning that emerges from Eigen & Winkler’s Laws of the Game. Small but significant modifications of conventional definitions of "games" are necessary.

With the exception of one small, but significant modification, Rapoport’s (1970a) definition of a game is applied here. Accepted are: a definition of players, alternatives open to each player, specification of how much each player can know (information!), a termination rule indicating end of game, and a set of payoffs. The substitution of psychological criteria of "sanity" for logical criteria of rationality is the only modification necessary.

Relax the rationality assumption, and recent developments along a broad spectrum of disciplines permits micro-geneticists Eigen & Winkler’s (1983) formulation of LIFE/DEATH GAME theory to give Rapoport’s approach a coherent satisfying structure based on a few simple principles. Consequently, all of the procedures applied in defining colors or cultures can be formulated as a "game". But it is optimistic to assume that Rapoport has, once and for all, answered the question. What, precisely, is a game?

Defining games

Using parlor games as an example, Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) argued convincingly that ordinary concepts are not easily defined with precision. Either something important is left out, or anomalous cases are included. If, in connection with the preceding discussion about opponent processes, I claimed both had occurred, a question would arise, How do we determine what is important and/or anomalous?

Applying the work of mathematical game theorist Anatol Rapoport (1968) (1970a) (1970b) to the definition of "information" controversy, my answer to the question would be, by means of fights, games and debates.

This answer is considerably more complex and relevant than it seems. Complex because in the Life/Death Game context, fights and debates are formulated in terms of the GO game analogy. Relevant to the information debate because my proposed resolution to the definition of "information" problem is analogous to the ICC profile that the International Color Consortium (ICC) is suggesting for color-management systems. See Kieran (1998). The role of the revised opponent processes pattern becomes an essential element in both the theoretical and empirical games surrounding the debates in Vienna and New York. Its omission is therefore a serious point of contention.

An Optimized G-Mindscape Strategy

To function at full strength in the new context, Eigen & Winkler’s interpretation of conflict must be revised to include "T’ai Chi" a Chinese optimization of opponent processes reasoning. This addition makes sense. Over three thousand years of evolution as the logical foundation of the Chinese culture have already solved difficult design problems in reasoning, prediction, mathematical reasoning and conflict, in almost every environment in which a psychological artifact might conceivably need to operate.

Nevertheless, the assertions being made from this point on are tantamount to introducing a Chinese strategy into a complex conflict traditionally reserved for Western academicians. Mathematically and psychologically, this places a G-Mindscape strategy (characteristic of Chinese culture) on an equal level to an H-Mindscape strategy (characteristic of Western European culture). So that the breadth and depth of the ensuing arguments will not be underestimated, Table 3 lists representatives by which comparisons can be made between Western strategies that are dominated by H-Mindscape types and Chinese strategies that are dominated by G-Mindscapes.

Table 3. Comparison between H- and G-Mindscape conflict strategies

A Game from Three Cultural Perspectives

Unlike algorithms (formula by which optimal play and/or prediction can be assured) strategies, even superior strategies, do not insure victory. However, the Chinese methods associated with the G-Mindscape column in Table 3 have proven themselves to be extremely effective against the H-Mindscape strategies of both European and Asian opponents. Life/Death Game theory assumes that genes use HS-Mindscape strategies more characteristic of the Japanese rather than the Chinese. Consequently, a number of culturally motivated modifications of Eigen & Winkler’s theory, computer simulation and mathematical assumptions are necessary. For details the reader is referred to; Boorman (1969), Draeger & Smith (1969), Poundstone (1992) and Rapoport (1968).

To a great degree, Eigen & Winkler integrate biological sciences, natural sciences, information technology and mathematics by introducing the Japanese game "GO" as a game theory analogy. Go’s unique history gives the Life/Death Game capabilities for coping with the real world dynamics implied by the relationships in listed above in Table 2. Eigen & Winkler present demonstrations of how mathematical laws can be simulated by bead games and how bead games, in their turn, can be used to simulate the dynamics by which biological organisms share physical space.

As a consequence of Eigen & Winkler’s formulation, Japanese GO lies at the interfaces between the intuitive and the mathematical, between the living and the mechanical. Too, its balance between the global strategies and local tactics has, for millennia, made GO the favorite prototype and metaphor for military, political and business strategists of the Far East.

The same qualities have also led to GO becoming a standard prototype for computer programmers striving to simulate the subtleties of human reasoning. Even GO’s end game (when both the dynamics and complexity are reduced to the simplicity necessary for extensive mathematical treatment) resembles network problems encountered in Information Technology (IT). The similarities between GO and the Internet are apparent in the description by mathematics professor Elwyn Berlekamp and computer lecturer David Wolfe (1994):

"As a typical game of Go approaches its conclusion, the active regions of play become independent of one another. Play in each region is not affected by play in the others; although one player may make several successive plays in the same region while his opponent chooses to play elsewhere. The overall board position therefore may be regarded as a sum of disjoint partial board positions."

The utility of Berlekamp & Wolfe’s use of combinatorial game theory to determine optimal moves and outcomes is supported by the fact that the authors use mathematical techniques to solve problems that stump top ranking GO professionals. Berlekamp & Wolfe’s approach is important here because they introduce "optimization" and "symmetry" concepts, concepts seldom encountered in the humanities and behavioral sciences. Both are essential to overcome the often justified charge of "triviality" that is directed toward behavioral and humanities contributions to decisions involving serious conflicts.

4 The Omitted Pattern

An important concept is missing from Eigen & Winkler’s description of the LIFE/DEATH GAME, from the Japanese description of GO, from Berlekamp & Wolfe’s mathematical end game strategies and from the vocabulary of the literature describing computer simulations of GO. According to the Chinese, who invented GO, I Ching reasoning is essential for real life optimizations of the LIFE/DEATH GAME analogy. T’ai Chi is the pattern that optimizes I Ching reasoning, the reasoning used to invent the game.

Discovered by the Chinese during the early part of the 20^th Century, T’ai Chi is also the pattern that connects the psychological and intuitive to the mathematical and mechanical. Dismissed by Japanese experts (see Kawabata, 1985 and Takagawa, 1956) reasoning from I Ching (the Book of Changes) lies at the foundations of Chinese philosophical thought. Modifications to opponent processes theory make the pattern, structure and dynamics of color perception indistinguishable from those of T’ai Chi.

The similarities between opponent processes theory and T’ai Chi can now be exploited.   Because revisions to opponent processes theory (made possible by the existence of the four "impossible" colors) permits a near perfect match between the color vision theories of bio psychological laboratories and the color vision analogy from Eigen & Winkler’s Life/Death Game theory. The consequences of the all of the revisions become clearer if viewed from the perspective of Givón’s theory of syntax.

A Revised Syntax

Unfortunately for both Givón’s linguistics, psychology and information science, a perspective between Kant and Pierce will not permit a resolution of the conflict represented by the Chomsky (1959)/Skinner (1957) argument because of some very special relationships between the science of behavior and philosophy. See Turner (1965).

Kenneth MacCorquodale’s (1970) belated reply implicated division of labor as the primary reason why behaviorists did not deem it necessary to reply formally to Chompsky’s thesis. To behaviorist learning theorists Chompsky’s criticisms were irrelevant, uninformed comments by a representative of a faction from psycho-linguistics, another discipline. In his classes at the University of Minnesota, MacCorquodale preferred to use Reichenbach’s (1938) (1947) (1965) division of labor between philosophy, physics, language and psychology.

The actual process of thinking is in part automatic, part erratic, part logically determined. According to Reichenbach, those constituents that can be observed are isolated crystallizations of the largely subconscious currents hidden below a haze of emotional processes. Consequently, any laws of thought are formulated in psychology. These laws must necessarily include both what philosophers judge to be correct thinking and incorrect thinking. In Reichenbach’s view, the actual process of thinking evades distinct philosophical analysis. On the other hand, the distinction between valid and invalid thinking cannot be made within psychological analysis.

Logic, in contrast, concentrates on the results of thinking rather than the thinking processes themselves. Rather than a motive or a propelling force, logic emerges as a regulative that formulates the laws by which we judge thought products to be correct. Reichenbach acknowledges that creative thought processes, even of trained minds, do not move along prepared paths but follow a method of trial and error. Logic’s function is to separate the right from the wrong, to teach how thinking should proceed rather than how thinking does proceed.

Once the result of thinking is obtained, Reichenbach reorders thoughts by constructing a chain of thoughts between "point of departure and point of arrival". Rather than thinking itself, it is the chain (technically called the rational reconstruction) that is analyzed and subjected to the rules and laws of logic. Analysis is divided in to two realms called context of discovery and context of justification. According to Reichenbach, logic is concerned with the context of justification. The context of discovery is left to psychology.

Casts into linguistic form, thinking processes attain a precision that makes them accessible to logical tests, logical validity and non arbitrary rules governing language. It is by means of analysis of language that the philosopher can distinguish meanings and the relationship between meanings from the blurred background of psychological motives and intentions.

Extended to the interfaces between physics and philosophy, Reichenbach defines physics as the analysis of the physical world and philosophy consists of analysis of our knowledge of the physical world. In respect to the differences between the logical forms of Einstein’s theory of relativity and the theory of quanta, Reichenbach’s primary concern was that the implications that a transition form causal laws to probability laws would require a revision of philosophical principles and of logic, a revision that could reach down to the deepest fundamentals of the theory of knowledge. From philosophical ideas and mathematical formulations he constructed a three-valued logic that he said would avoid both the outmoded conceptions of speculative philosophy and the evasion strategy of the operational form of empiricism.

In the deep epistemological studies of Western philosophy, it is apparent that mathematics remains neutral while patterns of reasoning do not. This neutrality can now be exploited.

Mathematical bridges to understanding

Magoroh Maruyama (1980) demonstrates how mathematics may be the only means of communication and understanding across the conceptual gaps between mindscapes. Z.D. Sung (1934) uses mathematics to span the gap between Chinese and Western logic. Like modern Western logic, Chinese logic is inextricably linked to mathematics. Sung describes his book:

"The essential feature of the work is the record of the writer’s discoveries, after his life study on the fundamentals of the subject, namely, the perfect agreement of these symbols with those of the algebraic terms of the expanded expression of a binomial sixth power, and the concord in the numerical value of the two technical terms, assigned in their elementary forms, to the length of day and night of the two solstices in China, or the explanation as to why those technical terms, 9 and 6, are used throughout the whole text in delineation of symbols". Sung (1934) pg i.

The advantages of opponent processes systems are most easily seen when it is desirable to give qualitative descriptions of combinations and permutations. Sung’s examples of descriptions of
I Ching reasoning in relationship to physical wave forms and pendulums are in many ways analogous to DeValois & DeValois’ descriptions of opponent processes relationships to light waves. One difference, both chance and necessity are equal and integral elements of Chinese reasoning. DeValois & DeValois is deterministic. Another, more obvious, difference is the Chinese scholars have generalized and greatly extended opponent processes methods and descriptions to include such diverse subjects as ethics, architecture, military strategy mathematics and meteorological events.

Sung’s description of links between I Ching reasoning and mathematics of the Chinese calendar are supported by William C.C. Hu (1991). Through use of the numbers 3, 5 and 7, Hu links the mathematics of the Chinese calendar to the T’ai Chi concept. That Anita Jacobson-Widding (1979) also uses mathematics to bridge the description gap between African Congo Reasoning and European reasoning permits the construction of Table 4.

Table 4. Reasoning Characteristics and mathematical descriptions of Western European, African and Chinese Cultures.

Reason and Culture

Graphic	Name	Possible states at interface	Mathematics of interface	Stability at interface
	Aristotelian	2	Cusp Catastrophe	Either non-existent or extremely unstable
	Reichenbach Congo	Infinite 1	Synergetics Synergetics	Statistical Variation Dynamic Stability
	Hegel	Infinite	Butterfly	Dynamic Stability
	Chinese I Ching Hexagram	6-64	Broken Symmetry	Dynamic Stability

Though by no means complete, Table 4 is at least representative of the variation in reasoning encountered at the interfaces between cultures and paradigms. The exclusion of four observable colors, purely on logical/epistemological grounds shows how complete and how surreptitious the affects of logic can be, even on "information" that both biology and the psychophysics of color perception would classify as strictly reflexive.

Givón’s Third Step

For the bio psychology necessary for defining a color to be integrated into Givón’s syntax (as part of the cooperation Givón specified in his third step) modifications suggested by the previous discussion will be included. A major problem in psycho linguistics is eliminated as general system’s mathematical biology proves to be a devastating conceptual framework for Chompsky’s somewhat unorthodox biological posture.

First, Chompsky’s (1959) learning theory analysis is neutralized on both theoretical and experimental grounds. His learning theory analysis was too superficial for attention by professional learning theorists. See MacCorquodale (1970). Then, ironically, the experimental procedures used by DeValois & DeValois (1975) to establish our prototype definition of color were made possible by variations of the very Skinnerian procedures Chompsky was criticizing.

In the game theory framework, Skinnerian learning theory need not conflict with Eigen & Winkler’s microgenetics it can complement it. It can act as a learning mechanism and it can replace the informal term "payoff" with the more rigorously defined scientific term "reinforcement". That Skinner’s theory is not used in the present context hurts rather than helps Chompsky’s biological assumptions.

The induction catastrophe theory from Dockens (1996) complies with Givón’s cognitive requirements while sacrificing none of the benefits of Skinnerian learning technology. This is accomplished painlessly by substituting Schoenfeld & Cole’s (1972) theory of reinforcement for schedules for Ferster & Skinner’s (1957), and by replacing conventional Skinnerian definitions of reinforcement with Premack’s (1971) principle. This takes advantage of catastrophe theory mathematics’ ability to integrate dual time schedules, Premack’s priorities and a fractal (cyclic or repeating phenomena), all in two multidimensional mathematical models.

The catastrophe formulation not only eliminates unnecessary divisions between cognitive and behavioral theories. By adopting Schoenfeld & Cole’s formulation of reinforcement schedules, it eliminates troublesome theoretical and procedural differences between operant and Pavlovian condition.

Taken in concert, the behavioral science modifications resolve the learning theory and cognitive theory problems precipitated by Chompsky’s positions in learning and cognition, but it leaves, unresolved the epistemological differences. Chompsky’s criticism takes a pure H-Mindscape position, to Givón’s HSG- and Skinner’s HSG –Mindscapes. Add cultural factors and Givón’s division of labor. The result is still an unresolved epistemological problem, but a problem that has increased in complexity.

Game conflict resolution

When aided by mindscape theory, recent developments in game theory permit a prediction scenario of how the complex definition of "information" problem will most likely be resolved (probably never solved!). However, another most sensitive modification of Givón’s syntax is necessary, this time to the division of labor.

Referring back to Table 1 the first and last columns, it is obvious that H-Mindscapes will reject my G-Mindscape opponent pairs definition of "information" rather than accept changes that would switch their mindscape characteristics from column one to column four. Unlike I-Mindscapes and S-Mindscape, who would permit me to have my definition, while they retain their own! H-Mindscapes will attempt to force a zero-sum conflict. But instead of cooperating by letting H-Mindscapes define the rules that lead to a zero-sum game, that would most likely insure their victory, I will meet them with a typical G-Mindscape positive sum strategy.

As a consequence, the situation deteriorates to the Laws (no rules) column in Table 2, which would make a fight unavoidable. The conflict escalates. Given its importance, resolution of the problem of a common definition for information will not be left to academic debates. It will be settled "outside", where Eigen & Winkler’s Life/Death Game predicts that wei-ch’i/T’ai Chi strategies will be favored by victory over Prisoner’s dilemma.

Following Poundstone’s (1992) study, H-Mindscapes will strike first, an optimal tactic and strategy, according to the "logic" of Prisoner’s dilemma. I would respond with a TIT FOR TAT strategy, a typical G-Mindscape strategy characteristic of wei-ch’i. According to Axelrod (1984) the result will probably be a G-Mindscape victory, which according to Eigen & Winkler (1983) should lead either to the H-mindscape sharing a hypercycle with the other mindscapes, or an H-Mindscape extinction.

Since all, of the strife would be unnecessary from the perspective of common sense or the ethics of the S- and G-Mindscapes, the final modification to Givón’s syntax is to replace logic by reason. This would be tantamount to inserting the cultural patterns of reasoning from Table 4 into the Mindscape characteristics in Table 1. The result would be a change in the division of labor.

At present, academicians assumed that logic describes how people "ought to think" and psychology deals with how people actually do think. This makes logic prescriptive and psychology descriptive. The change in division of labor would lead to psychology becoming prescriptive and logic being relegated to the category of limited tool and/or interesting exercises. Admittedly, psychology as it is formulated today could not fulfill this new role, but general systems could.

The general systems that will play the mediating role in society and mindscape tables can best be described as "mental science", a branch of mathematical biology specialized in the games living organisms play. Mental science will prescribe solely by predicting outcomes and describing scenarios.

Formally, mental science defines "information" as a potential stimulus. The information media acts as an "envelope". This definition is supported operationally by combining the biobehavioral methods of DeValois & DeValois (1975) with the psychophysics of Tanner & Swets (1954). Thus the definition of a color, any color, emerges as the experimental prototype for defining information. The color analogy is extended to higher cognitive levels by adopting micro geneticists Eigen & Winkler’s (1983) Life/Death Game formulation. This definition is incomplete, however, without a direct compling to "Mind".

5 Mental Science and Savanna Reasoning

Bateson (1979) defined "Mind" as "the pattern that connects" and asserted a necessary unity between mind and nature. Here "the pattern" is described in terms of opponent processes.

Present in primates as well as people, opponent processes is attached to a bio system that has had millions of years of evolution to solve difficult design problems. The biochemistry, anatomy, physiology and psychophysics of opponent processes are better known than those of any competing system. Its functions reflect the dynamics generated by the near symmetry of the primate nervous system. For better or for worst, the "savanna reasoning" of our simian ancestors is hard-wired into the system. Conclusions based on its pattern "feel" intuitively correct and "natural", probably as a consequence of its organic origin.

For the most, contemporary Information Technology ignores the qualities of Mind.  
Any concessions to Mind’s organic origins are focused on the mechanistic structures and confined to neuro networks. The one, notable, exception is, fortunately, computer games.  So by default, computer games represent the key interface between behavioral science and information technology. Eigen & Winkler’s Life/Death Game permits a better comparison and more stringent psychological test than those suggested by Turing’s technical specialists. A serious comparison confirms conventional wisdom. Not only are computers counter-intuitive, the whole concept of "information" is counter-intuitive.

The analogy between the Life/Death game and GO serves us well here. In contrast to the extremely, memory-dependent systems characteristic of contemporary Information Technology game players, the opponent process model both recognizes and generates complex patterns and systems by means of relatively simple rules of interaction. Instead of relying on a single complex algorithm capable of recognizing critical patterns, the human Mind depends on a collection of simple algorithms. Examples are readily demonstrated in GO, where experienced players call the simple algorithms "joseki" and "fuseki". Here again, cultural and mindscape barriers can have serious consequences.

Insufficient Information as a Rule

Boorman (1969) warns against applying the Chinese wei-ch’i analogy to real life military strategy, without taking into account the reasoning that lies at the foundations of the game. His example, Hegelian strategists who interpreted Maoist revolutionary strategy as a branch of the dialectic encountered difficulties. Because Mao’s dialectic of discontinuous connections, concentrated dispersions, encircled counter-encirclement, flexibility inflexibility did not imply the insoluble paradoxes that would be experienced by a European Hegelian counterpart. Also of interests to behavioral scientists is Boorman’s second concern that real life military situations do not fulfill the "perfect information" requirement that board games do.

Boorman’s warning focuses on a fundamental weakness of European logic that becomes notice- able if the logic is opposed by opponent processes in natural, rather than academic environments. When confronted by pairs judged to be opposites, European logicians exclude all possibility of both members occurring simultaneously. Like Reichenbach (1965), some pronounce the situation meaningless, "Not even the assertion of the tertium non datur, b or non-b, is meaningful". Reichenbach’s quantum mechanics approach offers a partial solution by creating an intermediate class--"indeterminate". This limits the number of statements classified as tertium non datur. Anthropologist Anita Jacobson-Widding and psychologist C.G. Jung describe the intermediate class as "dynamic" and "mystical" respectively. Quantum mechanics has used the third category to open new dimensions. It is time for behavioral science to scrap the labels and do the same. Again, game theory serves as an excellent example.

For conventional game theorists, logicians and computers, "insufficient information" ends the search. Psychologically, the vast majority of human decisions are based upon what formalists would call insufficient information. Since a state of "optimal information" rarely exists, insufficient information is the rule and insufficient knowledge is a corollary. Where game theorists and logicians differ from psychologists and computer programmers is, the former assume that secrets do not exist, clinical psychologists and industrial programmers are obsessed with secrets. As a crucial element in optimizing I Ching reasoning, the T’ai Chi pattern is a concept that is often purposely distorted or kept secret.

The frequent occurrence of this pattern in mature conceptual systems probably signals the "natural" limit of human patterns of "understanding". Subjects range from the subjective experiences of Western and Chinese mystics, to the general theories of Western and Chinese biological and physical sciences. Appropriately, the term 20^th Century Chinese scholars apply to the opponent processes pattern is "T’ai Chi", which translates, "Grand Ultimate". The Chinese have guarded its secrets carefully.

On page one of his preface, Z.D. Sung (1934) notes:

The uses of Yi have been kept as esoteric secrets by philosophers mainly as a precaution against abuses, and therefore as yet remain a mystery. It is supposed that one who really understands them would know everything and thus attain a knowledge of the future….

Chinese history is filled with pragmatic examples of the advantages conferred by T’ai Chi and the secrets of the I Ching. The affects of both have been dramatically demonstrated to the West. Viewed from the perspective of binary logic, this history and the board of a completed GO game seem like a fanciful collage of magical tricks and/or mysterious forces. Reality is the opposite.

The aim of the following   thought experiment   is to render the defeat of boxers, wrestlers, armies and bankrupt businesses into the opponent processes reasoning developed in the preceding pages. the reader is to assume that the U.S. Government represents European H-Mindscape logic and China, the G-Mindscape opponent processes form of reasoning.

6 The Color of Reason Game: Conclusions

This excerpt is selected from a General Information Agency (GIA) strategy report dated 2032 AD, the year USA and China decided not to engage in a costly war. Instead, a representative from each country competed in "The Color of Reason" a variation of Eigen & Winkler’s Life/Death Game. The committee member who allegedly wrote this white paper sketches the reasons for the USA’s (trans. H- Mindscapes) loss as follows.

"Our embarrassing loss is attributed first and foremost to an inability to fully realize some fundamental differences between the demands of the new game Color of Reason (COR) and our standard prototypes Chess and Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD). Chess and PD are both people oriented, with capture and murder as primary goals. COR is territory oriented, with capture and murder as secondary goals. Our aggressive strategies, laudable for Chess and PD, placed us at a disadvantage, the extent of which was not immediately apparent. Also, PD strategies are based on an analysis that led to our viewing the conflict as a sequence of independent games. The GO playing habits of our opponents made them think in terms of synthesis, which led to a strategy more adapted to a multi-move "supergame". COR. Then there was the problem of "induction".

Faced with the choice of whether to cooperate or to defect, PD decision-makers almost inevitably defect first, without regret. Fortunately, reliable sources warned us of a situation that GO players call a "ladder", but William Poundstone (1992) calls the "backward induction paradox". The ladder presents the unsuspecting PD player with the possibility of winning big when he/she defects, but only after a long string of cooperation moves. The problem, do you end the cooperative string by defecting?

Our GO playing opponents, for whom ladders are routine, faced no paradox. Worst, the optimum tactics, called "josekis" require GO players to cooperate to such an extent that a complete game is analogous to one gigantic backward induction paradox. Since only very skilled players and fools deviate from joseki patterns, we had no other choice than to instruct our representatives to employ the uncomfortable TIT FOR TAT strategy of Anatol Rapoport. This is where serious problems with "intuition" compounded our problems with induction.

The Aristotelian roots of Western European culture equipped our players with a hierarchical logic. Consequently, exploitation of extraordinary deductive prowess and exceptional analytical abilities were obvious top priorities in our development of both strategy and tactics. On the other hand, our induction and non-hierarchical reasoning is quite weak. See Reichenbach (1938) and Dockens (1979). Outstanding work by our analysts showed that the I Ching reasoning of our opponents equaled our strengths and not only lacked our weaknesses. Their abilities at synthesis, induction and bottom up reasoning far surpassed anything that our Aristotelian trained logic or intuition could muster.

Our analysts wisely suggested our players abandoned logic altogether and think mathematically. This would greatly strengthen our overall game performance, and perhaps confer a slight advantage in the end game stages. There was concern, however, about our potential performance both in the opening stages and in the very difficult middle game. This concern, unfortunately, led politicians to ignore the advice of this committee and follow the well meaning, but misguided suggestions of a dirty tricks (DT) department.

Dirty Tricks

We were able to convince DT and their political backers that using a concealed link to a computer would not help them, because unlike Chess, no computer can match the performance of even a mediocre professional GO or COR player. But unlike GO, there were no COR rules requiring that we use conventional white and black pieces--called "stones".

So, DT suggested that we exercise our prerogative as hosts and use red and green stones, but of regulation size, weight and texture. Reliable sources close to our opponents suggested that our opponent’s representative might have problems adjusting. Because he was colorblind and our player had normal color vision, all of the stones would seem to be the same color—but only for the opposition player. The plan should have been aborted when our opponents won the toss and elected to be host to the second part of the competition. But our first strike DT advocates convinced themselves and the politicians that our opponents would have trouble recovering. Besides, we still had the secret source that passed us the information about the color blindness.

The color ploy turned out not to be the advantage imagined for several reasons, none of them anticipated by either DT or our committee. It probably would not have helped if we had anticipated them. After the initial shock of the red and green stones, our opponents’ representative simply sat with his back to the playing board. An assistant told him the moves in terms of black and white. A number of good Chess players can play blindfolded. This was simply a variation. We were fortunate that our representative played well enough to make the second half of the series necessary. Our opponents’ retaliation for the color trick was awesome.

Motivation to find DT’s source was high. Our opponents discovered him and turned him into a double agent. Nevertheless, we were not easy marks for our opponents’ fiendishly diabolical plan. We immediately suspected the double agent when he passed us the information that the playing stones were to be reddish green and bluish yellow. Our experts assured us these colors were physically and psychophysically impossible. They challenged our source for proof. Naturally, nobody could specify a wavelength. But just to make sure, a super computer searched millions of colors, with no result.

No matter, we had been given false information anyway. Our hosts supplied greenish red and yellowish blue stones instead. Confronted with the fact, DT and its color consultants insisted that greenish red and yellowish blue were equally impossible. The idiots continued to insist that the colors were impossible, even when they saw the bloody stones. Anyway, at the competition, everyone on our side was so upset and embarrassed by the "impossible" that moral was low and performance far from optimal.

There were a few attempts by our color research people to produce the impossible colors. Failing, they used they powers of persuasion to convince the funding body that four new colors were neither important nor necessary. A crackpot at the University of Uppsala was the only one to oppose them."

His position, in the present context, Hering’s impossible colors assumption is viewed from the same perspective as mathematicians have come to view Euclid’s fifth postulate. The elimination of the fifth postulate by 19^th Century mathematicians led to a non-Euclidean geometry that added dimensions to our physical knowledge of the universe. Elimination of the four "impossible" colors expands the boundaries of behavioral science. The expansion is connected with the relationships between logic, reasoning and the fourth physical dimension—time.

7 References

Axelrod, R. 1984. The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books
Bateson, G. 1979. Mind and Nature: A necessary unity. Glasgow: Fotana/Collins. Benjafield, J.G. 1996. A History of
          Psychology. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Berlekamp, E & Wolfe, D. 1994. Mathematical Go Endgames: Nightmares for the Professional Go Player. London: Ishi Press
          International.
Bertalanffy, L. von. 1967. Robots, Men and Minds. New York: George Braziller.
Bertalanffy, L. von. 1968. General Systems Theory: Foundations, development, applications. New York: George Braziller.
Boorman, S.A. 1969. The Protracted Game. London: Oxford University Press.
Colinvaux, P.1983. The Fates of Nations: A Biological Theory of History. New York: Penguin.
DeValois, R.L. & DeValois, K.K. 1975. Neural coding of color. In E.C. Carterette & M.P. Friedman (Eds.),
        Handbook of perception. (Vol. 5). New York: Academic Press.
Calhoun, J.B. 1962. Population Density and Social Pathology. Scientific America. 206, (2)(Februrary): 139-148.
Chomsky, N. 1959. "`Verbal Behavior'" by B.F. Skinner," Language, 35, 26-58.
Dockens III, W.S. 1979. Induction/Catastrophe Theory: A behavioral ecological approach to cognition in human individuals.
        Behavioral Science, 24, 94-111.
Dockens III, W.S. 1996 (a). Time's Feminine Arrow: A Behavioral Ecological Assault on Cultural and Epistemological Barriers.
       Behavioral Science, 41, 30-82.
Dockens III, W.S. 1996 (b). The Demotion of Alpha-Homo sapiens: Consciousness, Punctuated Equilibrium, and The Laws Of
       The Game, Presented as an invited paper at Second Conference on the Foundations of Information Science, Vienna
       University. Published in World Futures, 49, 635-653.
Draeger, D.F. & Smith, R.W. (1969) Asian Fighting Arts.Tokyo:Kodansha International Ltd.
Duhl, L.J. 1960. The changing face of mental health: Some ecological contributions. Scientific papers and discussions. American
       Psychiatrical Association. Ass. Dist. Branch. Publ.
Duhl, L.J. 1969 Planning and Predicting: Or What to Do When You Don't Know the Names of the Variables. In Gray, W., Duhl,
       F.J. & Rizzo, N.D. (Eds.) 1969. General Systems Theory and Psychiatry. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Eigen, M. & Winkler, R. 1983. Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance. New York: Alfred A. Knof.
Ferster, C.B. & Skinner, B.F. 1957. Schedules of Reinforcement. New York: Apleton-Century-Crofts.
Givón, T. 1984. Syntax: A Functional-typolological Introduction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Johm Benjamins.
Green, D.M. & Swets, J.A. (1966) Siganl detection theory and psychophysics. New York: Wiley.
Haken, H. 1978. Synergetics. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Hu, W.C.C. 1991. Chinese New Year: Fact and Folklore. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ars Ceramica, Ltd. And lectures and personal
         communication.
Hurvich, L.M. & Jameson, D. 1974. Opponent-processes as a Model of Neural Organization. Amer. Psychologist, 29, 88-102.
Jacobson-Widding, A. 1979. Red-White-Black as a Mode of Thought. Uppsala Sweden: Acta Universitatis Uppsaliensis,
          Almqvist & Wiksell International.
Kawabata, Y. 1985. The Master of Go.  Bungay, Suffolk: Penguin Books.
Kieran, M. 1998. High Profile Color. Publish: The Magazine for Electronic Publishing Professionals. San Francisco:
          International Data Group. September, 63-69.
Korschelt, O. 1965. The Theory and Practice of GO. Rutland, Vermont:Charles E.Tuttle.
Korzybski, A. 1958. Science and Sanity. Fourth Edition. Lakeville, Connecticut: The International Non-Aristotelian Library.
Lykken, D.T. 1968 Statistical significance in Psychological Research, Psychological Bulletin, 3, 151-159.
MacCorquodale, K. 1970. On Chomsky's review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior. Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior,
           13, 83-99.
Malmberg, T. 1980. Human Territoriality. New York: Mouton.
Maruyama, M. 1980a. Mindscapes and Science Theories, Cur. Anthro., 21, 589-608.
Maruyama, M. 1980b. Epistemological and Cultural Barriers to Mutualistic Thinking. Futurics. 4, 2, 97-116.
Meehl, P.E., 1954. Clinical vs statistical prediction. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
Meehl, P.E. 1970. Theory testing in psychology and physics: A methodological paradox. In D.E. Morrison R.E. Henkle (Eds.),
            The significance test controversy. Chicago: Aldine.
Meehl, P.E. 1971. Law and the Fireside Inductions: Some Reflections of a Clinical Psychologist. J.of Social Issues, Vol 27, #4.
Meehl, P.E. 1975. Control and Countercontrol: A Panel Discussion. In T. Thompson, W.S. Dockens (Eds.) Applications of
             Behavior Modification. New York: Academic Press.
Meehl, P.E. 1978. Theoretical Risks and Tabular Asterisks: Sir Ronald and the Slow Progress of Soft Psychology. Journal of
            Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46, 4, 806-834.
Neumann, J., von & Morgenstern,O. 1944. Theory of Games and Economic BehaviorI. Princeton, N.J. Princeton Univ Press.
Popper, K.R. (1972). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson & Co.
Poundstone, W. 1992. Prisoner’s Dilemma. New York: Doubleday.
Premack, D. 1971. Catching up with Common Sense: Reinforcement and Punishment. In Glaser (Ed.) The Nature of
             Reinforcement. New York: Academic Press, 121-150.
Rapoport, A.(Ed.) 1968. Clausewitz On War. London: Pelican Classics.
Rapoport, A. 1970a. N-Person Game Theory: Concepts and Applications. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Rapoport, A. 1970b. Fights Games and Debates. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Reichenbach, H. 1938. Experience and Prediction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reichenbach, H. 1947. Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York: The Macmillan Company.
Reichenbach, H. 1965. Philosophic Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Reichenbach, H. 1971. The Direction of Time. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Schoenfeld, W.N. & Cole, B.K. 1972. Stimulus Schedules: the t-systems. New York: Harper & Row.
Sidley, N.A., Sperling, H.G., Bedarf, E.W., and Hiss, R.H., 1965. Photo Spectral Sensitivity in the Monkey: Methods for
              Determining and Initial Results. Science 150, 6, 1837-1839.
Skinner, B.F. 1957. Verbal Behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Sperling, H.G., Sidley, N.A., Dockens III. W.S. & Jolliffe, C.L. 1968. Increment-Threshold Spectral Sensitivity of Rhesus
              Monkey as a Function of the Spectral Composition of the Background Field. Journal of the Optical Society of America.,
              58,2, 263-268.
Sung, Z.D. 1934. The Symbols of Yi King or The Symbols of the Chinese Logic of Changes. Taipei Taiwan: The Prophet Press.
Takagawa, S. 1956. How to Play go. Tokyo: Gobancho, Chiyoda-ku
Tanner, W.P. & Swets, J.A. (1954). A Decision-making theory of visual detection. Psychological Review, 61, 401-109.
Turing, A.M. 1950. Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59 433-460.
Turner. M.B. 1965. Philosophy and the Science of Behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wrangham, R. & Peterson, D. 1996. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. London: Bloomsbury.

Wm. Dockens CI homepage

CI Website Sections

---

THE INTEGRITY PAPERS 
GENRE WORKS (Works by Other Writers)
MINDWAYS (Global URLs)
CONVERSATIONS
DIALOGUES
POETICS

What's new and Where to find it

---