Gordon Pask - In Memoriam
Messages Received
From umpleby@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 13:51:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Stuart A. Umpleby"
To: Dr Alan Mills
Subject: Re: Gordon Pask - In Memoriam
Wonderful idea. Thanks. I am sure that Gordon would be pleased.
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Stuart Umpleby, Dept. of Management Science, GWU, Wash. DC 20052 USA
tel: 202/994-5219, fax: 202/994-5225, e-mail: umpleby@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
URL: http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~umpleby
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From pan@pangaro.com
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 1996 09:51:57 -0500
From: Paul Pangaro
To: paskmemorial@venus.co.uk
Cc: alan@venus.co.uk
Subject: Re: Gordon Pask - In Memoriam
Thank you for the connection. Placing such a site on the Web is excellent,
especially because Gordon's entailment meshes were a prediction of the
Web's global knowlege connections, albeit his concepts (and
implementations) are far more robust and powerful than what has been made
generally available to date.
May I offer one small suggestions: To call it a "memorial" site emphasizes
the loss. In discussing an event to remember Gordon, probably to occur in
May at the AA, Elizabeth Pask used the word "celebration" precisely to make
a shift. I don't have an immediate offer for an alternative other than to
omit that particular word.
Yours sincerely -Paul Pangaro
_______________________________________________________________
Paul Pangaro, Ph. D. pan@pangaro.com www.pangaro.com
PANGARO Incorporated 66 Slade Street Belmont MA 02178
Voice 617-489-9500 Fax 617-489-9501 Page 617-675-8500
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From astingsh@ksu.ksu.edu
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 08:20:46 -0500 (CDT)
From: kerry miller
To: Psychology and Cyberspace Philosophy
Cc: Dr Alan Mills
Subject: Gordon Pask
I phrase it from the point of view of a 'philosophical mechanic'; that is to
say...
If you think in mechanical terms, you can think of a population of
general-purpose computers called 'brains,' in which, given a suitable
programming language, it is possible to run classes of programs. Now we
are at liberty to redefine an individual as being not one head, one general-
purpose computing machine, but one named class of programs. And we
can interpret the reproduction of this named class of programs, not at all
in a biological sense, but in the sense of reproducing and perhaps
evolving a class of programs bearing the same name.
This is consonant
with the motive of the individual to reproduce himself; it does not
introduce the problem of overpopulating the world with general-purpose
machines; and it does allow for the perpetuation of the individual and the
proper interpretation of the term 'consciousness,' as an inbuilt wish to
reproduce that which specifies *me*.
This isn't of course such a strange point of view, because although you
may be mildly offended if i call you a class of programs, you should
really be equally offended if I insisted that you lived inside your head.
Isn't it evident that you are distributed through a lot of these general-
purpose machines? Don't you love? Don't you dislike? Don't you take part
in the self-images of other people? If you do you are saying that you
partake of the nature of a class of programs. This is simply a statement of
that fact.
I use the word program to designate any well-defined 'formula for' or
class of 'formulae for' with the possibility of having underspecified goals
in it; in other words, it's a heuristic procedure. I refer to the individual as
a class of 'formulae for... me,' where 'me' is my name. And the important
point about this is that these 'formulae for' might be run in any convenient
machine, including the brain...
In a sense there are two parallel sorts of
evolution : there is biological evolution going on, and then, because of
this interpretation of the individual, one can perceive a separate sort of
evolution that I refer to as 'symbolic evolution,' which is perhaps
exemplified by this conference. To avoid overpopulating the world with
general-purpose machines, what we have to do is control the symbolic
evolution process. To do so, I believe that the first thing we must do is
redefine what we mean by an individual, get away from this idea of
individuals as heads.
-- attributed to Gordon Pask, in Bateson, M.C., _Our Own Metaphor_, pp
307-309
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From kauffman@uic.edu
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 22:50:26 -0600
From: "Louis H. Kauffman"
To: paskmemorial@venus.co.uk
Remembering Gordon Pask
by Lou Kauffman
You kept a pattern of crumbs on your plate
For the fairies,
And imagination/infinity was
Always present in the
Crystal pool of your mind.
Through whirlwind topological tangle
Of human conversation
You found the seeds of a
Transcendent reality.
In the whisper of your voice
And the strength of your will
Description and
World described
Become
One.
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From r.barbour@waikato.ac.nzFri Jun 28 10:14:55 1996
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 22:02:46 +1300
From: Bob Barbour
To: paskmemorial@venus.co.uk
Subject: Prof. Gordon Pask
28 June 1996
Hamilton
New Zealand
I am once again reminded of the tyranny of distance.
I found out moments ago that Gordon is dead. His work
has dominated my intellectual thinking from 1979 when
I first read his text Conversation Theory (Pask, 1976).
After having struggled to come to grips with his ideas
the brief visit I had with him in 1986 in Holland was
a turning point in my academic life. A subsequent visit
confirmed the essential humanism of his constructivist
view of the human condition.
Gordon lives on in New Zealand as a versatile P-individual
ever ready to confront simplistic expanations for what
goes on in the learning process.
He was, and is for me, a distant but ever present Guru.
Dr. R.H. (Bob) Barbour
Senior Lecturer Computer Science Education
Centre for Science, Mathematics and Technology Education Research.
University of Waikato
Hamilton
New Zealand
Fax: 64 7 838 4272
Email:r.barbour@waikato.ac.nz
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From BOYDG@vax2.concordia.caFri Jun 28 12:26:33 1996
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 07:59:01 +0000 (HELP)
From: "Gary Boyd [Education/AudioVisual]tel.1-514-848-3459. fax
1-514-848-3441]"
To: PASKMEMORIAL@venus.co.uk
Subject: Turkle renders P-individuals more plausible to many.
Another reference for novices to Cybernetics & especially second order
cybernetics:
It turns out that reading Sherry Turkle's (1995)
Life on the Screen, NYC, Simon & Schuster $25.-US.
Is a good way to make Pask's insight into the various kinds of P-individuals
and their flexible relationship to M-individuals plausible.
My own attempt at this and at further explicating Gordon's
understanding that conversations blossom to become meta-P-individuals
who/which then participate in meta-conversations up through n levels
is given in the Pask Festschrift issue of Systems Research vol.10,3,(1993)
but alas many students and some colleagues wouldn't entertain these
ideas at all. This is understandable because our Self-existence is so
precarious in this world that any challenge to conventional
folk psychology ( and indeed conventionasl individualistic cognitive
psychology) is immediately blocked out. People "don't want to know".
But Sherry Turkle gives concrete stories of life on-line (in cyberspace)
which show the flexibility and complexity of personae -vs- skindividual
relationships (eg in MUDomains).
Gary Boyd, ConcordiaU.
.