Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

-1.5
Grande Prairie
Slave Lake
Fort McMurray
-0.5
Jasper
Edmonton
Lloydminster
South - North
Red Deer
Camrose
0.5
Banff
Drumheller
Calgary
Medicine Hat
Lethbridge
1.5
-1.5 -0.5 0.5 1.5
West - East
Figure 3-10. Results of applying MDS to Table 3-1.
“Reading off ” information from a representation intuitively means accessing this
information easily—by using a small number of primitive operations. If this is not
possible, then information might be still be accessed by applying a larger number
of operations, but this will take more time. The ease of accessing information is a
result of the relationship between structure and process.
The structure-process relationship, producing second-order effects, underscores
the value of using relative complexity evidence, a notion that was introduced
in Chapter 2. Imagine that a physical symbol system uses a tabular representation
of distances. Then we would expect it to compute functions involving distance very
quickly, but it would be much slower to answer questions about direction. In contrast,
if the device uses a map-like representation, then we would expect it to answer
questions about direction quickly, but take longer to answer questions about distance
(because, for instance, measuring operations would have to be invoked).
In summary, while structures are arbitrary, structure-process relations are not.
They produce second-order regularities that can affect such measures as relative
complexity evidence. Using such measures to investigate structure-process relations
provides key information about a system’s algorithms and architecture.
88 Chapter 3