Some key Ralwinian themes (and an intellectual joke):
- Philosophers have been wrestling with the problem of "the meaning of meaning" for ages, but Ralwin's contribution to the discussion is his view of the "sense of self" in terms of sociobiosemiotics. Almost as an aside, Ralwin also formulates a significant extension of Bayesian Probability Theorem.
- Most people know that the Bayesian Probability Theorem links all sensory data and all world-model content. Each piece of sensory information implies a state of the world because, and only because, the reception of that piece of sensory information is predicted by the hypothesis that the world is in that state, and not predicted by other hypotheses. If we see a red ball, we believe that a red ball is there because we don't expect to see a red ball unless a red ball is there, and we do expect to see a red ball if a red ball is there. Ralwin extends this theorem to encompass sensory information about one's internal model of the world and one's place within it.
- It is very likely that human intelligence derives not from the need to outwit tigers, but the need to outwit other humans. This is illustrated by a famous joke. Two evolutionary biologists were running frantically from a large, hungry lion. Gasping, the first one said: "This is hopeless. We can't possibly outrun a lion." The second one said: "I don't have to outrun the lion. I just have to outrun you."
- Intelligence has an evolutionary advantage because it enables us to model, predict, and manipulate reality. This includes not only Joe Caveman inventing the bow and arrow, but Chris Tribal-Chief outwitting his political rivals and Sandy Spear-Maker realizing that the reason her spears keep breaking is that she's being too impatient while making them. That is, the "reality" we model includes not just things, but other humans and our own model of the self.
- This kind of chain of reasoning is important, because it ends with a conclusion about how the world (including the internal world) works, or about how the world can be altered. When designing a bicycle, the hypothesis "a round object can traverse ground without bumping" is a statement about the external world. The hypotheses "it'd be a good idea to think about round objects", or "the key problem is to figure out how to interface with the ground", or even "I feel like designing a bicycle", are statements about the internal world.
Sadly, what would have been Ralwin's definitive work in this area, "Models Of Self Disclosure" was unfinished at the time of his death, but his collaborators at the McDonald Institute and elsewhere are continuing his work.
