Fwd: (Subjective) experience

[Russ Abbott]

I'll admit that I'm now getting lost in all the words. (It's also distressing that yet another Russell has shown up.) 

Here's a bit of an exchange Nick and I had privately.  He suggested (and I fully agree) that we should continue it on the list.  Nick asked me to respond to his earlier comment about Unicorns. So I said,

Regarding unicorns, you raise an interesting issue. You said, I understand what you mean when you talk of unicorns; that doesn't make me a sneaky believer in unicorns, does it?

I'm not so sure that works with first person statements (subjective experience, qualia). How could anyone know what qualia are without experiencing them?  It's like saying I know what you mean by the taste of chocolate even though I've never tasted it and don't even believe that there is taste such as what you call chocolate. In that case, how could you possibly claim to understand what I mean by the taste of chocolate.

You've probably heard the famous thought experiment of Mary the color-blind scientist.She knew all there is to know about color; she could predict what anyone would say about color by examining the patterns of photons that entered their eyes (and perhaps the firings in their brains as those photon hits were processed). But she herself saw the world in black and white.  Then miraculously, she gained color vision. She has (let's assume) no new knowledge as a result of her new color vision -- since she knew all there was to know about color and color vision already. All she has are new experiences of color -- subjective experiences of color. Has anything changed for her? My answer is "yes." Is yours "no"?

Nick responded.

She doesn't have a new experience Of COLOR.  She sees a colored world.  The world is now from her point of view a colored world. My mary is seeing the colored world directly; your mary is seeing a color experience.  It's the intrusion of the cartesian theatre that I find distressing.   At least.   CF Wittgenstein. 

My response.

I'm not promoting a Cartesian Theater perspective since I take a Cartesian Theater to imply a homunculus, i.e., an internal being (construct) that is standing back from the "performance/exhibit" ongoing in the Cartesian Theater and observing it.  That clearly leads to an infinite regress: How does the homunculus itself work? Does it have it's own Cartesian Theater? Etc.

I would also say that it's MY Mary that is seeing the world directly, that she has an immediate subjective experience of the world, which is what I mean by subjective experience. If there were a homunculus, it would be seeing a color presentation being presented in the Cartesian Theater. 

Perhaps this has just been a big misunderstanding.  When my Mary sees a colored world, I feel perfectly comfortable saying that she is having an experience of color and that (tautologically) she didn't have that experience prior to being able to experience color. You seem to want to reject putting it in those terms.  I don't understand your objection to that way of speaking.

Also, to get back to my question about Mary. I say that something has changed for her (and I would refer to what has changed as (part of) her subjective experience). I gather that you agree that something has changed. How would you characterize the change that's occurred. And recall, we are stipulating that there is no behavioral difference between Mary before and after she gained the ability to see a colored world.

I'm now answering my own question and thinking that you will ask whether there is a neuronal difference. I'll agree that there is and that her way of processing color has changed. If we took brain scans her brain would be functioning differently.  So from that perspective you could argue (and I would agree) that there is an externally observable difference. This brings us to the notion of supervenience. We both agree that there are neuronal differences. I claim that subjective experience supervenes over neuronal phenomena. You say that neuronal phenomena are all there are(?). If that's your position (and perhaps it isn't since I seem to be putting words in your mouth by trying to answer the question from what I take to be your position), it's very much a reductionist perspective.  You are denying the reality of higher level constructs because you can reduce them to lower level phenomena. I say (and that's what my "Reductionist blind spot" was about) that the ability to reduce things to lower level phenomena doesn't eliminate the reality of the higher level phenomena.  In a word processor, words as entities are real even though there is nothing in the computer except bits.

But I want to bring this back to ethics. We would agree that pain has neurologically observable features.  But it seems to me that such observations cannot lead to ethical imperatives unless one associates them with the (subjective) experience of pain.   But I've probably put too much into this post already.

-- Russ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Nick Thompson]

Dear Russell 1

 

Russell 2 has always been with us.  In fact, he is in Australia, where you are about to go! 

 

The People are going to be Really Angry with us:  I can't find anything to disagree with about what you said.  So I, too, have been worrying about the homunculus.... or the mindunculus. 

 

If we have been agreeing all along, they will KILL us.  We better find something to disagree about quick.

 

Surely you disagree with this:  I see the world; part of what falls within my field of view is my own body and its actions.  From what I see, I construct (in childhood, with the help of my hypocritical parents) the distinction between an inner and an outer world, a world in which I can "be" good, while "doing" ill.  This subdivision  is enormously convenient to my body's survival in a society, so it endures, and may even have evolved.  . 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email]

Sent: 6/19/2009 12:08:48 PM

Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: (Subjective) experience

I'll admit that I'm now getting lost in all the words. (It's also distressing that yet another Russell has shown up.) 

Here's a bit of an exchange Nick and I had privately.  He suggested (and I fully agree) that we should continue it on the list.  Nick asked me to respond to his earlier comment about Unicorns. So I said,

Regarding unicorns, you raise an interesting issue. You said, I understand what you mean when you talk of unicorns; that doesn't make me a sneaky believer in unicorns, does it?

I'm not so sure that works with first person statements (subjective experience, qualia). How could anyone know what qualia are without experiencing them?  It's like saying I know what you mean by the taste of chocolate even though I've never tasted it and don't even believe that there is taste such as what you call chocolate. In that case, how could you possibly claim to understand what I mean by the taste of chocolate.

You've probably heard the famous thought experiment of Mary the color-blind scientist.She knew all there is to know about color; she could predict what anyone would say about color by examining the patterns of photons that entered their eyes (and perhaps the firings in their brains as those photon hits were processed). But she herself saw the world in black and white.  Then miraculously, she gained color vision. She has (let's assume) no new knowledge as a result of her new color vision -- since she knew all there was to know about color and color vision already. All she has are new experiences of color -- subjective experiences of color. Has anything changed for her? My answer is "yes." Is yours "no"?

Nick responded.

She doesn't have a new experience Of COLOR.  She sees a colored world.  The world is now from her point of view a colored world. My mary is seeing the colored world directly; your mary is seeing a color experience.  It's the intrusion of the cartesian theatre that I find distressing.   At least.   CF Wittgenstein. 

My response.

I'm not promoting a Cartesian Theater perspective since I take a Cartesian Theater to imply a homunculus, i.e., an internal being (construct) that is standing back from the "performance/exhibit" ongoing in the Cartesian Theater and observing it.  That clearly leads to an infinite regress: How does the homunculus itself work? Does it have it's own Cartesian Theater? Etc.

I would also say that it's MY Mary that is seeing the world directly, that she has an immediate subjective experience of the world, which is what I mean by subjective experience. If there were a homunculus, it would be seeing a color presentation being presented in the Cartesian Theater. 

Perhaps this has just been a big misunderstanding.  When my Mary sees a colored world, I feel perfectly comfortable saying that she is having an experience of color and that (tautologically) she didn't have that experience prior to being able to experience color. You seem to want to reject putting it in those terms.  I don't understand your objection to that way of speaking.

Also, to get back to my question about Mary. I say that something has changed for her (and I would refer to what has changed as (part of) her subjective experience). I gather that you agree that something has changed. How would you characterize the change that's occurred. And recall, we are stipulating that there is no behavioral difference between Mary before and after she gained the ability to see a colored world.

I'm now answering my own question and thinking that you will ask whether there is a neuronal difference. I'll agree that there is and that her way of processing color has changed. If we took brain scans her brain would be functioning differently.  So from that perspective you could argue (and I would agree) that there is an externally observable difference. This brings us to the notion of supervenience. We both agree that there are neuronal differences. I claim that subjective experience supervenes over neuronal phenomena. You say that neuronal phenomena are all there are(?). If that's your position (and perhaps it isn't since I seem to be putting words in your mouth by trying to answer the question from what I take to be your position), it's very much a reductionist perspective.  You are denying the reality of higher level constructs because you can reduce them to lower level phenomena. I say (and that's what my "Reductionist blind spot" was about) that the ability to reduce things to lower level phenomena doesn't eliminate the reality of the higher level phenomena.  In a word processor, words as entities are real even though there is nothing in the computer except bits.

But I want to bring this back to ethics. We would agree that pain has neurologically observable features.  But it seems to me that such observations cannot lead to ethical imperatives unless one associates them with the (subjective) experience of pain.   But I've probably put too much into this post already.

-- Russ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Russ Abbott]

But recently there's been a Russell3.

No, I don't disagree with what you said. But what do you say to the ethical issue?

Religious fundamentalists argue that if it weren't for a belief in God and his commandments we would all behave in what we would all agree is unacceptable ways. Therefore we must preserve God and his commandments; and more fundamentally that morality derives from God.

My position is that morality derives from subjective experience. "Don't do to others what you would not have them do to you" is based primarily on a desire not to suffer (subjectively) and not on a rule that we follow that favors survival.  It's a weaker stand than that of the religious fundamentalists because I have to rely in each person individually and take the position that if we were all sufficiently self-aware, we would all be moral beings--or really that the behavior we would engage in from this state of complete self-awareness would be the sort of thing that we would all consider moral.  So my ethical theory is that morality derives from an awareness of subjective experience.

What sort of ethical theory can you construct without the notion of subjective experience? (Or don't you think it's worthwhile to construct an ethical theory?) I realize that there are Kantian and Utilitarian ethical theories. But they don't really seem to work.  They are too mechanical. But what alternative to you have if you give up self-awareness of subjective experience?

Simply being aware that a certain action will cause you harm (for example) doesn't lead to the imperative not to perform that action on another. After all, what's so bad about harm?  As the saying goes, is doesn't imply ought.  The ought it seems to me comes either from external commands (which I don't think is a good way to proceed) or from subjective experience. Compassion, empathy, etc., (and not just noticing parallels between things) all derive from subjective experience, typically of suffering. And suffering is more than just noticing a mal-function.

-- Russ



-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: [phone]
o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dear Russell 1

 

Russell 2 has always been with us.  In fact, he is in Australia, where you are about to go! 

 

The People are going to be Really Angry with us:  I can't find anything to disagree with about what you said.  So I, too, have been worrying about the homunculus.... or the mindunculus. 

 

If we have been agreeing all along, they will KILL us.  We better find something to disagree about quick.

 

Surely you disagree with this:  I see the world; part of what falls within my field of view is my own body and its actions.  From what I see, I construct (in childhood, with the help of my hypocritical parents) the distinction between an inner and an outer world, a world in which I can "be" good, while "doing" ill.  This subdivision  is enormously convenient to my body's survival in a society, so it endures, and may even have evolved.  . 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email]

Sent: 6/19/2009 12:08:48 PM

Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: (Subjective) experience

I'll admit that I'm now getting lost in all the words. (It's also distressing that yet another Russell has shown up.) 

Here's a bit of an exchange Nick and I had privately.  He suggested (and I fully agree) that we should continue it on the list.  Nick asked me to respond to his earlier comment about Unicorns. So I said,

Regarding unicorns, you raise an interesting issue. You said, I understand what you mean when you talk of unicorns; that doesn't make me a sneaky believer in unicorns, does it?

I'm not so sure that works with first person statements (subjective experience, qualia). How could anyone know what qualia are without experiencing them?  It's like saying I know what you mean by the taste of chocolate even though I've never tasted it and don't even believe that there is taste such as what you call chocolate. In that case, how could you possibly claim to understand what I mean by the taste of chocolate.

You've probably heard the famous thought experiment of Mary the color-blind scientist.She knew all there is to know about color; she could predict what anyone would say about color by examining the patterns of photons that entered their eyes (and perhaps the firings in their brains as those photon hits were processed). But she herself saw the world in black and white.  Then miraculously, she gained color vision. She has (let's assume) no new knowledge as a result of her new color vision -- since she knew all there was to know about color and color vision already. All she has are new experiences of color -- subjective experiences of color. Has anything changed for her? My answer is "yes." Is yours "no"?

Nick responded.

She doesn't have a new experience Of COLOR.  She sees a colored world.  The world is now from her point of view a colored world. My mary is seeing the colored world directly; your mary is seeing a color experience.  It's the intrusion of the cartesian theatre that I find distressing.   At least.   CF Wittgenstein. 

My response.

I'm not promoting a Cartesian Theater perspective since I take a Cartesian Theater to imply a homunculus, i.e., an internal being (construct) that is standing back from the "performance/exhibit" ongoing in the Cartesian Theater and observing it.  That clearly leads to an infinite regress: How does the homunculus itself work? Does it have it's own Cartesian Theater? Etc.

I would also say that it's MY Mary that is seeing the world directly, that she has an immediate subjective experience of the world, which is what I mean by subjective experience. If there were a homunculus, it would be seeing a color presentation being presented in the Cartesian Theater. 

Perhaps this has just been a big misunderstanding.  When my Mary sees a colored world, I feel perfectly comfortable saying that she is having an experience of color and that (tautologically) she didn't have that experience prior to being able to experience color. You seem to want to reject putting it in those terms.  I don't understand your objection to that way of speaking.

Also, to get back to my question about Mary. I say that something has changed for her (and I would refer to what has changed as (part of) her subjective experience). I gather that you agree that something has changed. How would you characterize the change that's occurred. And recall, we are stipulating that there is no behavioral difference between Mary before and after she gained the ability to see a colored world.

I'm now answering my own question and thinking that you will ask whether there is a neuronal difference. I'll agree that there is and that her way of processing color has changed. If we took brain scans her brain would be functioning differently.  So from that perspective you could argue (and I would agree) that there is an externally observable difference. This brings us to the notion of supervenience. We both agree that there are neuronal differences. I claim that subjective experience supervenes over neuronal phenomena. You say that neuronal phenomena are all there are(?). If that's your position (and perhaps it isn't since I seem to be putting words in your mouth by trying to answer the question from what I take to be your position), it's very much a reductionist perspective.  You are denying the reality of higher level constructs because you can reduce them to lower level phenomena. I say (and that's what my "Reductionist blind spot" was about) that the ability to reduce things to lower level phenomena doesn't eliminate the reality of the higher level phenomena.  In a word processor, words as entities are real even though there is nothing in the computer except bits.

But I want to bring this back to ethics. We would agree that pain has neurologically observable features.  But it seems to me that such observations cannot lead to ethical imperatives unless one associates them with the (subjective) experience of pain.   But I've probably put too much into this post already.

-- Russ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Eric Charles]

Hmmm... my first post as an offical list member...

The variety of behaviorism to which Nick ascribes is not that far from William James's Radical Empiricism, which was entirely focused on "experience" proper. If you mean to say that color-blind Mary did not experienced the colors of the world out there, but the miracle-enhanced Mary did experience the colors of the world, then there should be general agreement. Nick would prefer you to more simply say that color-blind Mary did not respond to the colors of the world, while miracle-enhanced Mary did respond to them. The difference, while profound in some conversations is startlingly mundane in most conversations. In either case, it is nonsensical to say that there is no behavioral difference between the two Marys, as it is exactly a behavioral difference that is drawing our interests. Mary woke up one morning and found herself responding to new things! I am completely willing to allow that there might be "no other" behavioral difference, but if you are trying to argue that it is possible to experience colors as different without responding differently to them (in any sense of the word "respond"), then you are saying something strange and dualistic.

For a more common, but equally miraculous example: If you listen to a foreign language long enough, you will start to "experience" sounds differently - by which I mean that you will start to be sensitive to nuances you were not previously sensitive to - by which I mean you will respond differently to things you previously treated as the same.

The only additional caveat that Nick's position requires is that self-knowledge be generated in the same manner that my knowledge-of-others is generated. This is the step that really makes Nick's position behaviorist. If I am learning a foreign language you already understand, then may say "You are experiencing sounds differently" when you see me respond to things I did not previously respond to. You can see that my experience is different than it used to be. Similarly, I know that "I am experiencing sounds differently" when I see myself responding more adeptly in situations in which I previously struggled. The "I" (or the "you") merely designates the thing experiencing sounds differently. The "I" does not in any way indicate that something other than the sounds and the responses are happening. By recursion, self-consciousness is then merely a word for meta-behavior, behavior that is directed at (in response to) other behavior. It is a second-intention experience, as "becoming conscious of" your experience means nothing more than developing actions towards your experience. When seeking for meta-behavior, it is easiest to fall back onto language, i.e. saying "I am getting better at this". However, any meta-behavior will do, i.e., selecting a more difficult language lessons, stepping forward to act as a translator, etc. Thus, the reason that it is interesting to Nick that computers routinely self-report.

The position may be wrong, but it is much more sensible and coherent (and has a closer relation to the normal meaning of words) than it is being given credit for.

Eric

P.S. Beyond this are many messy discussions about description vs. explanation, emergence, etc., that I am sure are also floating around this list-serve. It is all made more complicated by the fact that Nick is the only non-reductive materialist I have ever met, and a non-reductive behaviorist at that. I'm not sure how it's possible, but it is. In fact, far from being reductionist, it often seems that he thinks things are more (not less) than other people do.

P.P.S. I think the deficiency in Russ's professed moral stance is that it is non-developmental. There cannot be anything ethical in "relying on" people to act in certain ways, because it is easy to get people to act in a variety of different ways... Zing-Yang Kuo, a developmental psycho-biologist once famously stated "I will grant you that it is instinctive for cats to hate mice, if you will grant me that it is instinctive for cats to love mice." This while sitting in front of his cages in which cats and mice were living quite peacefully... "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you" is equally strange, as what I want done to me is certainly not what others would typically want done unto them... We don't even have to get into anything kinky for an obvious example: I don't want people giving me birthday presents, but others seem to get angry when I treat them the way I want to be treated - I like people to salt my food heavily, but my in-laws would prefer I didn't do that for them, etc., etc... Nick's ethical stance would be based on treating things that act in certain ways as equal to all other things that act in certain ways, and it wouldn't get much more prescriptive than that. The acts he would be interested in would be very sophisticated actions, or combination of actions - such as "contributing to the conversation". This may seem strange, but again, it is really, really, really, not that different from a stance that treats all things that "experience in a certain way" as equal.

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Russ Abbott]

Somehow I had missed Nick's long discussion of morality and behaviorism when I wrote the message below.  It still seems to me that there are a few issues.

Nick said that I think people would be better off if they believed in an inner life. That's not my position. My position is that the existence of an inner life seems to me to the only viable foundation for ethics, which I take to be the study of morality.  Is it important to have a study of morality? That's another question. I agree with Nick that nature has designed us to behave reasonably--for the most part. But I also believe that the most significant aspect of that design is the existence of an inner life, which combined with mirror neurons, allow us to have empathy and compassion.  I wonder Nick, how you think the design works.

Nick also spoke of behaviorism as denying the existence of an inner life. Nick, you are the psychologist, and I'm not. But I thought that behaviorism was simply the denial of the ability of a third person to be sure about another person's inner life. Not a denial of its existence..

For me the fundamental question comes back to my experiencing the world. I'm not arguing Descartes' position that I think therefore I am. The problem with that is that it takes a brute fact (my experiencing the world) and turns it into a concept (I think) and then uses that concept to derive another concept (I am). 

But I am asserting that (the brute fact of) my first person experiencing of the world is so basic that I see no reason to deny it.  My claiming to have an inner life is not the same thing as having that inner life. But that's true about anything we say: it only refers; it isn't the thing itself.

Now one could reply that it may have seemed similarly obvious that the sun circled the earth and that we now understand that there is a better way to perceive how things are.  If there were a similar substitute for my experiencing the world, if there were third person descriptions that did as good a job as my first person description of expressing what it's like to be alive, I'd consider adopting them. But simply to say that one should agree that pain and pleasure are conceptual constructs and that one would be better off not to believe in them does nothing for me. Yet that seems to be your advice.

Besides believing something is a first person experience.So simply talking about believing presupposes that there are first person experiences. Even though we've been around that bush already I still don't know what Nick's response to it is. I didn't understand the business of if we're both right we're both right--or wrong or however it went.

-- Russ

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 12:01 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:

But recently there's been a Russell3.

No, I don't disagree with what you said. But what do you say to the ethical issue?

Religious fundamentalists argue that if it weren't for a belief in God and his commandments we would all behave in what we would all agree is unacceptable ways. Therefore we must preserve God and his commandments; and more fundamentally that morality derives from God.

My position is that morality derives from subjective experience. "Don't do to others what you would not have them do to you" is based primarily on a desire not to suffer (subjectively) and not on a rule that we follow that favors survival.  It's a weaker stand than that of the religious fundamentalists because I have to rely in each person individually and take the position that if we were all sufficiently self-aware, we would all be moral beings--or really that the behavior we would engage in from this state of complete self-awareness would be the sort of thing that we would all consider moral.  So my ethical theory is that morality derives from an awareness of subjective experience.

What sort of ethical theory can you construct without the notion of subjective experience? (Or don't you think it's worthwhile to construct an ethical theory?) I realize that there are Kantian and Utilitarian ethical theories. But they don't really seem to work.  They are too mechanical. But what alternative to you have if you give up self-awareness of subjective experience?

Simply being aware that a certain action will cause you harm (for example) doesn't lead to the imperative not to perform that action on another. After all, what's so bad about harm?  As the saying goes, is doesn't imply ought.  The ought it seems to me comes either from external commands (which I don't think is a good way to proceed) or from subjective experience. Compassion, empathy, etc., (and not just noticing parallels between things) all derive from subjective experience, typically of suffering. And suffering is more than just noticing a mal-function.

-- Russ

-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: [phone]
o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dear Russell 1

 

Russell 2 has always been with us.  In fact, he is in Australia, where you are about to go! 

 

The People are going to be Really Angry with us:  I can't find anything to disagree with about what you said.  So I, too, have been worrying about the homunculus.... or the mindunculus. 

 

If we have been agreeing all along, they will KILL us.  We better find something to disagree about quick.

 

Surely you disagree with this:  I see the world; part of what falls within my field of view is my own body and its actions.  From what I see, I construct (in childhood, with the help of my hypocritical parents) the distinction between an inner and an outer world, a world in which I can "be" good, while "doing" ill.  This subdivision  is enormously convenient to my body's survival in a society, so it endures, and may even have evolved.  . 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email]

Sent: 6/19/2009 12:08:48 PM

Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: (Subjective) experience

I'll admit that I'm now getting lost in all the words. (It's also distressing that yet another Russell has shown up.) 

Here's a bit of an exchange Nick and I had privately.  He suggested (and I fully agree) that we should continue it on the list.  Nick asked me to respond to his earlier comment about Unicorns. So I said,

Regarding unicorns, you raise an interesting issue. You said, I understand what you mean when you talk of unicorns; that doesn't make me a sneaky believer in unicorns, does it?

I'm not so sure that works with first person statements (subjective experience, qualia). How could anyone know what qualia are without experiencing them?  It's like saying I know what you mean by the taste of chocolate even though I've never tasted it and don't even believe that there is taste such as what you call chocolate. In that case, how could you possibly claim to understand what I mean by the taste of chocolate.

You've probably heard the famous thought experiment of Mary the color-blind scientist.She knew all there is to know about color; she could predict what anyone would say about color by examining the patterns of photons that entered their eyes (and perhaps the firings in their brains as those photon hits were processed). But she herself saw the world in black and white.  Then miraculously, she gained color vision. She has (let's assume) no new knowledge as a result of her new color vision -- since she knew all there was to know about color and color vision already. All she has are new experiences of color -- subjective experiences of color. Has anything changed for her? My answer is "yes." Is yours "no"?

Nick responded.

She doesn't have a new experience Of COLOR.  She sees a colored world.  The world is now from her point of view a colored world. My mary is seeing the colored world directly; your mary is seeing a color experience.  It's the intrusion of the cartesian theatre that I find distressing.   At least.   CF Wittgenstein. 

My response.

I'm not promoting a Cartesian Theater perspective since I take a Cartesian Theater to imply a homunculus, i.e., an internal being (construct) that is standing back from the "performance/exhibit" ongoing in the Cartesian Theater and observing it.  That clearly leads to an infinite regress: How does the homunculus itself work? Does it have it's own Cartesian Theater? Etc.

I would also say that it's MY Mary that is seeing the world directly, that she has an immediate subjective experience of the world, which is what I mean by subjective experience. If there were a homunculus, it would be seeing a color presentation being presented in the Cartesian Theater. 

Perhaps this has just been a big misunderstanding.  When my Mary sees a colored world, I feel perfectly comfortable saying that she is having an experience of color and that (tautologically) she didn't have that experience prior to being able to experience color. You seem to want to reject putting it in those terms.  I don't understand your objection to that way of speaking.

Also, to get back to my question about Mary. I say that something has changed for her (and I would refer to what has changed as (part of) her subjective experience). I gather that you agree that something has changed. How would you characterize the change that's occurred. And recall, we are stipulating that there is no behavioral difference between Mary before and after she gained the ability to see a colored world.

I'm now answering my own question and thinking that you will ask whether there is a neuronal difference. I'll agree that there is and that her way of processing color has changed. If we took brain scans her brain would be functioning differently.  So from that perspective you could argue (and I would agree) that there is an externally observable difference. This brings us to the notion of supervenience. We both agree that there are neuronal differences. I claim that subjective experience supervenes over neuronal phenomena. You say that neuronal phenomena are all there are(?). If that's your position (and perhaps it isn't since I seem to be putting words in your mouth by trying to answer the question from what I take to be your position), it's very much a reductionist perspective.  You are denying the reality of higher level constructs because you can reduce them to lower level phenomena. I say (and that's what my "Reductionist blind spot" was about) that the ability to reduce things to lower level phenomena doesn't eliminate the reality of the higher level phenomena.  In a word processor, words as entities are real even though there is nothing in the computer except bits.

But I want to bring this back to ethics. We would agree that pain has neurologically observable features.  But it seems to me that such observations cannot lead to ethical imperatives unless one associates them with the (subjective) experience of pain.   But I've probably put too much into this post already.

-- Russ

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[Nick Thompson]

Hey, eric.  Welcome aboard. 

 

It's traditional to introduce yourself  with a sentence or two.  Say a few words of ... well ... um ... self description.

 

N

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email]

Sent: 6/19/2009 3:30:19 PM

Subject: [FRIAM] (Subjective) experience - On Mary and behaviorism

Hmmm... my first post as an offical list member...

The variety of behaviorism to which Nick ascribes is not that far from William James's Radical Empiricism, which was entirely focused on "experience" proper. If you mean to say that color-blind Mary did not experienced the colors of the world out there, but the miracle-enhanced Mary did experience the colors of the world, then there should be general agreement. Nick would prefer you to more simply say that color-blind Mary did not respond to the colors of the world, while miracle-enhanced Mary did respond to them. The difference, while profound in some conversations is startlingly mundane in most conversations. In either case, it is nonsensical to say that there is no behavioral difference between the two Marys, as it is exactly a behavioral difference that is drawing our interests. Mary woke up one morning and found herself responding to new things! I am completely willing to allow that there might be "no other" behavioral difference, but if you are trying to argue that it is possible to experience colors as different without responding differently to them (in any sense of the word "respond"), then you are saying something strange and dualistic.

For a more common, but equally miraculous example: If you listen to a foreign language long enough, you will start to "experience" sounds differently - by which I mean that you will start to be sensitive to nuances you were not previously sensitive to - by which I mean you will respond differently to things you previously treated as the same.

The only additional caveat that Nick's position requires is that self-knowledge be generated in the same manner that my knowledge-of-others is generated. This is the step that really makes Nick's position behaviorist. If I am learning a foreign language you already understand, then may say "You are experiencing sounds differently" when you see me respond to things I did not previously respond to. You can see that my experience is different than it used to be. Similarly, I know that "I am experiencing sounds differently" when I see myself responding more adeptly in situations in which I previously struggled. The "I" (or the "you") merely designates the thing experiencing sounds differently. The "I" does not in any way indicate that something other than the sounds and the responses are happening. By recursion, self-consciousness is then merely a word for meta-behavior, behavior that is directed at (in response to) other behavior. It is a second-intention experience, as "becoming conscious of" your experience means nothing more than developing actions towards your experience. When seeking for meta-behavior, it is easiest to fall back onto language, i.e. saying "I am getting better at this". However, any meta-behavior will do, i.e., selecting a more difficult language lessons, stepping forward to act as a translator, etc. Thus, the reason that it is interesting to Nick that computers routinely self-report.

The position may be wrong, but it is much more sensible and coherent (and has a closer relation to the normal meaning of words) than it is being given credit for.

Eric

P.S. Beyond this are many messy discussions about description vs. explanation, emergence, etc., that I am sure are also floating around this list-serve. It is all made more complicated by the fact that Nick is the only non-reductive materialist I have ever met, and a non-reductive behaviorist at that. I'm not sure how it's possible, but it is. In fact, far from being reductionist, it often seems that he thinks things are more (not less) than other people do.

P.P.S. I think the deficiency in Russ's professed moral stance is that it is non-developmental. There cannot be anything ethical in "relying on" people to act in certain ways, because it is easy to get people to act in a variety of different ways... Zing-Yang Kuo, a developmental psycho-biologist once famously stated "I will grant you that it is instinctive for cats to hate mice, if you will grant me that it is instinctive for cats to love mice." This while sitting in front of his cages in which cats and mice were living quite peacefully... "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you" is equally strange, as what I want done to me is certainly not what others would typically want done unto them... We don't even have to get into anything kinky for an obvious example: I don't want people giving me birthday presents, but others seem to get angry when I treat them the way I want to be treated - I like people to salt my food heavily, but my in-laws would prefer I didn't do that for them, etc., etc... Nick's ethical stance would be based on treating things that act in certain ways as equal to all other things that act in certain ways, and it wouldn't get much more prescriptive than that. The acts he would be interested in would be very sophisticated actions, or combination of actions - such as "contributing to the conversation". This may seem strange, but again, it is really, really, really, not that different from a stance that treats all things that "experience in a certain way" as equal.

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[glen e. p. ropella-2]

Russ Abbott emitted this, circa 09-06-19 02:30 PM:
> Nick said that I think people would be better off if they believed in an
> inner life. That's not my position. My position is that the existence of
> an inner life seems to me to the only viable foundation for ethics,

I think it's possible to found ethics on biology (without denying the
existence of "higher level" phenomena), without a unitary "inner self".
 I have two (somewhat glib) referencable reasons to think this: 1)
mirror neurons

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neurons

and 2) various associative patterns in the body (particularly brain/cns):

   Bullies May Enjoy Seeing Others In Pain
   http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081107071816.htm

Without being too reductionist, I think the reasons we avoid
"unacceptable" behavior is simply because we have physiological
structures in our bodies that _tend_ to steer us away from such
behaviors.  Over time or distance, by virtue of inter-individual
variation, the acceptability of actions (as observed in others or
potentiated in ourselves) may vary.


Now, if you think of ethics or morals as what one _ought_ to do, you
have the additional problem of capturing what is [un]acceptable to the
body.  And for that, we have to go back to the concept of "higher level
constructs".  To go back to Mary, the color-blind scientist, a
subjective experience of color is _not_ a higher level construct.  It's
merely a different way to _slice_ the data she already had (at least
within epsilon of her individual boundary with the environment).  The
light that impinges on Mary's boundary is no different.  All the same
data is there.  Mary just manages to slice it in a different way after
the color-blindness is gone.  It's a new _compression_ of the data (a
lossy one at that).  It's a new aspect from which to examine the data.

So, it's not a higher level construct at all.  It's a reduction of the
rich data set into a smaller aspect.  To be clear, subjective color
perception is a lossy compression of the data available.

Given that, to extrapolate willy-nilly, all _feelings_ are compressions
of body states.  E.g. "feeling nauseous" is the slicing (reduction,
compression) of a milieu of physiological data into a unitary aspect
with a name.  That's all any "feeling" is including love, hunger, the
urge to pee, etc.

OK.  Now go back to the foundation of ethics.  A foundation for ethical
behavior is to identify, recognize, maintain the accuracy and precision
of, and act upon feelings, the self-somatosensory data available to the
body.

He who is unethical or immoral is guilty of not paying attention to, and
acting in discordance to, the state of his own body.  He who is ethical
and moral pays close attention to, and acts according to, the state of
his own body.  He who is amoral ignores the state of his body. [grin]

Now I'll crawl back under my rock.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com


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[Nick Thompson]

Dear Glen, and lurkers,

The mirror neuron thing is mind blowing.  I have always found imitation
mysterious, because I could never learn Greek dancing, even when others
were willing to carry me around on their shoulders while I wiggled my feet
ineffectually in the air.  So, suddenly there are neurons that can learn
Greek dancing.  Just didn't seem fair.

Mirror neurons have been taken to support the so called "Theory of MInd".
To save you all the trouble of going to WikiPedia, I will key in the
relevant passage below. Not to put too fine a point on it, TOM is the
gol-derned  silliest idea that was ever foisted on the world.   It is the
idea that knowledge of our emotional states is given and that we use that
knowledge to attribute emotional states to others.  Like, because I smile
when I am happy I know that you are happy when you smile.  But how did I
come by the knowledge that I am happy except by smiling?  (CF James-Lange
theory of emotions.)  

to me the whole flow of knowledge of mental states is in the other
direction, from observation of others to inferences about the self.  Think
about what happens when you are tired.  Have you noticed that other people
start to behave stupidly when you are tired.  Have you noticed that the
kids are always louder when you have a headache.  Emotional perception is
like a constancy problem.  Think about the illuminated Gelb disk that looks
a brilliant white when in fact it is dark.  Why? because it is illuminated
by a hidden light source, and your visual system cannot separate out the
incident light.  When you are tired or have a headache, you are hard
pressed not to interpret your own heightened sensitivity as a fact about
the world, rather than about your self. Your irritability illuminates the
ordinary stupidity of others.  Recognizing one's own "internal" states is a
cognitive achievement, not something that is naively known.  And once one
has figured out that one is localized in one of those big lumbering objects
out there that is irritable on some days and sweet and loving on others,
one is in a much better position to say, "hey! All the people in the room
haven't suddenly gotten stupid!  My big lumbering object is irritable!.  

Even empathy is better understood if one thinks from outside to inside,
rather than the other way around.  Rather than say that because I know what
it is to have muscle pain, I feel  my old dog's pain when he walks with a
limp, it makes more sense to say that I touch painful walking through the
dog.  No, don't laugh.  Think about the last time you hit a tennis ball.
Think about the feel of the ball, of its resistance.  Great feeling, huh!
No.  Hold on!  You lied to me!  I have to bet you have NEVER hit a tennis
ball in your life!  The RACKET hit the tennis ball.  And just as the racket
can become in instrument for feeling a ball, an old dog can become an
instrument for touching pain.  (I owe this example to the phenomenologist
Kenneth Shapiro.)  

Ok.  So now you KNOW I am nuts.

Nick




Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([hidden email])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

Below is the wikipedia passage:

In Philosophy of mind, mirror neurons have become the primary rallying call
of simulation theorists concerning our 'theory of mind.' 'Theory of mind'
refers to our ability to infer another person's mental state (i.e., beliefs
and desires) from their experiences or their behavior. For example, if you
see a person reaching into a jar labeled 'cookies,' you might assume that
he wants a cookie (even if you know the jar is empty) and that he believes
there are cookies in the jar.

There are several competing models which attempt to account for our theory
of mind; the most notable in relation to mirror neurons is simulation
theory. According to simulation theory, theory of mind is available because
we subconsciously empathize with the person we're observing and, accounting
for relevant differences, imagine what we would desire and believe in that
scenario.[55][56] Mirror neurons have been interpreted as the mechanism by
which we simulate others in order to better understand them, and therefore
their discovery has been taken by some as a validation of simulation theory
(which appeared a decade before the discovery of mirror neurons).[57] More
recently, Theory of Mind and Simulation have been seen as complementary
systems, with different developmental time courses.[

> [Original Message]
> From: glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]>
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
> Date: 6/19/2009 4:51:58 PM
> Subject: [FRIAM] Foundations for ethics (was Re: (Subjective) experience)
>
> Russ Abbott emitted this, circa 09-06-19 02:30 PM:
> > Nick said that I think people would be better off if they believed in an
> > inner life. That's not my position. My position is that the existence of
> > an inner life seems to me to the only viable foundation for ethics,
>
> I think it's possible to found ethics on biology (without denying the
> existence of "higher level" phenomena), without a unitary "inner self".
>  I have two (somewhat glib) referencable reasons to think this: 1)
> mirror neurons
>
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neurons
>
> and 2) various associative patterns in the body (particularly brain/cns):
>
>    Bullies May Enjoy Seeing Others In Pain
>    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081107071816.htm
>
> Without being too reductionist, I think the reasons we avoid
> "unacceptable" behavior is simply because we have physiological
> structures in our bodies that _tend_ to steer us away from such
> behaviors.  Over time or distance, by virtue of inter-individual
> variation, the acceptability of actions (as observed in others or
> potentiated in ourselves) may vary.
>
>
> Now, if you think of ethics or morals as what one _ought_ to do, you
> have the additional problem of capturing what is [un]acceptable to the
> body.  And for that, we have to go back to the concept of "higher level
> constructs".  To go back to Mary, the color-blind scientist, a
> subjective experience of color is _not_ a higher level construct.  It's
> merely a different way to _slice_ the data she already had (at least
> within epsilon of her individual boundary with the environment).  The
> light that impinges on Mary's boundary is no different.  All the same
> data is there.  Mary just manages to slice it in a different way after
> the color-blindness is gone.  It's a new _compression_ of the data (a
> lossy one at that).  It's a new aspect from which to examine the data.
>
> So, it's not a higher level construct at all.  It's a reduction of the
> rich data set into a smaller aspect.  To be clear, subjective color
> perception is a lossy compression of the data available.
>
> Given that, to extrapolate willy-nilly, all _feelings_ are compressions
> of body states.  E.g. "feeling nauseous" is the slicing (reduction,
> compression) of a milieu of physiological data into a unitary aspect
> with a name.  That's all any "feeling" is including love, hunger, the
> urge to pee, etc.
>
> OK.  Now go back to the foundation of ethics.  A foundation for ethical
> behavior is to identify, recognize, maintain the accuracy and precision
> of, and act upon feelings, the self-somatosensory data available to the
> body.
>
> He who is unethical or immoral is guilty of not paying attention to, and
> acting in discordance to, the state of his own body.  He who is ethical
> and moral pays close attention to, and acts according to, the state of
> his own body.  He who is amoral ignores the state of his body. [grin]
>
> Now I'll crawl back under my rock.
>
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com
>
>
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> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

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[Nick Thompson]

I seem to have missed Russell3.  Please see comments below in blue 12 bold

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email];[hidden email]

Sent: 6/19/2009 1:01:24 PM

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: (Subjective) experience

But recently there's been a Russell3.

No, I don't disagree with what you said. But what do you say to the ethical issue?

Religious fundamentalists argue that if it weren't for a belief in God and his commandments we would all behave in what we would all agree is unacceptable ways. Therefore we must preserve God and his commandments; and more fundamentally that morality derives from God.

 

nst --> Well, in a previous post, I argued against this position.  I think god arises from our morality, rather  than the other way around.  As David Sloan Wilson has argued, religions are dedicated to creating the conditions that pull for human group regulated behavior ... that is, for creating circumstances in which human bodies will perceive an advantage in behaving groupishly. 

My position is that morality derives from subjective experience. "Don't do to others what you would not have them do to you" is based primarily on a desire not to suffer (subjectively) and not on a rule that we follow that favors survival. 

 

nst --> Dont get hung up on it, but I want to remind you that I am still utterly baffled by the notion of objective experience.

 

 It's a weaker stand than that of the religious fundamentalists because I have to rely in each person individually and take the position that if we were all sufficiently self-aware, we would all be moral beings--or really that the behavior we would engage in from this state of complete self-awareness would be the sort of thing that we would all consider moral.  So my ethical theory is that morality derives from an awareness of subjective experience.

 

What sort of ethical theory can you construct without the notion of subjective experience? (Or don't you think it's worthwhile to construct an ethical theory?)

 

nst -->  I might not, given my proneness to a naturalized ethics.  I confess I am lost, here.  Perhaps you could help me by explaining what is meant by an ethical theory.  I realize that there are Kantian and Utilitarian ethical theories. But they don't really seem to work.  They are too mechanical. But what alternative to you have if you give up self-awareness of subjective experience?

Simply being aware that a certain action will cause you harm (for example) doesn't lead to the imperative not to perform that action on another. After all, what's so bad about harm?  As the saying goes, is doesn't imply ought.  The ought it seems to me comes either from external commands (which I don't think is a good way to proceed) or from subjective experience. Compassion, empathy, etc., (and not just noticing parallels between things) all derive from subjective experience, typically of suffering. And suffering is more than just noticing a mal-function.

 

nst --> Well, I can imagine a theory that explains why people are designed to suffer in these odd, derived ways, but that would be a naturalized ethics, and not an ethical theory in the sense I think you mean. But, I dont see why the suffering needs to be mediated and not direct.  Again, we may have come to the point where we agree to much to conduct an interesting and useful argument. 

 

I think, perhaps, we have exhausted this topic.

 

I would like to get back to self monitoring circuitries in electronic systems.   

-- Russ

nst --> Nick

-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: [phone]
o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dear Russell 1

 

Russell 2 has always been with us.  In fact, he is in Australia, where you are about to go! 

 

The People are going to be Really Angry with us:  I can't find anything to disagree with about what you said.  So I, too, have been worrying about the homunculus.... or the mindunculus. 

 

If we have been agreeing all along, they will KILL us.  We better find something to disagree about quick.

 

Surely you disagree with this:  I see the world; part of what falls within my field of view is my own body and its actions.  From what I see, I construct (in childhood, with the help of my hypocritical parents) the distinction between an inner and an outer world, a world in which I can "be" good, while "doing" ill.  This subdivision  is enormously convenient to my body's survival in a society, so it endures, and may even have evolved.  . 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email]

Sent: 6/19/2009 12:08:48 PM

Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: (Subjective) experience

I'll admit that I'm now getting lost in all the words. (It's also distressing that yet another Russell has shown up.) 

Here's a bit of an exchange Nick and I had privately.  He suggested (and I fully agree) that we should continue it on the list.  Nick asked me to respond to his earlier comment about Unicorns. So I said,

Regarding unicorns, you raise an interesting issue. You said, I understand what you mean when you talk of unicorns; that doesn't make me a sneaky believer in unicorns, does it?

I'm not so sure that works with first person statements (subjective experience, qualia). How could anyone know what qualia are without experiencing them?  It's like saying I know what you mean by the taste of chocolate even though I've never tasted it and don't even believe that there is taste such as what you call chocolate. In that case, how could you possibly claim to understand what I mean by the taste of chocolate.

You've probably heard the famous thought experiment of Mary the color-blind scientist.She knew all there is to know about color; she could predict what anyone would say about color by examining the patterns of photons that entered their eyes (and perhaps the firings in their brains as those photon hits were processed). But she herself saw the world in black and white.  Then miraculously, she gained color vision. She has (let's assume) no new knowledge as a result of her new color vision -- since she knew all there was to know about color and color vision already. All she has are new experiences of color -- subjective experiences of color. Has anything changed for her? My answer is "yes." Is yours "no"?

Nick responded.

She doesn't have a new experience Of COLOR.  She sees a colored world.  The world is now from her point of view a colored world. My mary is seeing the colored world directly; your mary is seeing a color experience.  It's the intrusion of the cartesian theatre that I find distressing.   At least.   CF Wittgenstein. 

My response.

I'm not promoting a Cartesian Theater perspective since I take a Cartesian Theater to imply a homunculus, i.e., an internal being (construct) that is standing back from the "performance/exhibit" ongoing in the Cartesian Theater and observing it.  That clearly leads to an infinite regress: How does the homunculus itself work? Does it have it's own Cartesian Theater? Etc.

I would also say that it's MY Mary that is seeing the world directly, that she has an immediate subjective experience of the world, which is what I mean by subjective experience. If there were a homunculus, it would be seeing a color presentation being presented in the Cartesian Theater. 

Perhaps this has just been a big misunderstanding.  When my Mary sees a colored world, I feel perfectly comfortable saying that she is having an experience of color and that (tautologically) she didn't have that experience prior to being able to experience color. You seem to want to reject putting it in those terms.  I don't understand your objection to that way of speaking.

Also, to get back to my question about Mary. I say that something has changed for her (and I would refer to what has changed as (part of) her subjective experience). I gather that you agree that something has changed. How would you characterize the change that's occurred. And recall, we are stipulating that there is no behavioral difference between Mary before and after she gained the ability to see a colored world.

I'm now answering my own question and thinking that you will ask whether there is a neuronal difference. I'll agree that there is and that her way of processing color has changed. If we took brain scans her brain would be functioning differently.  So from that perspective you could argue (and I would agree) that there is an externally observable difference. This brings us to the notion of supervenience. We both agree that there are neuronal differences. I claim that subjective experience supervenes over neuronal phenomena. You say that neuronal phenomena are all there are(?). If that's your position (and perhaps it isn't since I seem to be putting words in your mouth by trying to answer the question from what I take to be your position), it's very much a reductionist perspective.  You are denying the reality of higher level constructs because you can reduce them to lower level phenomena. I say (and that's what my "Reductionist blind spot" was about) that the ability to reduce things to lower level phenomena doesn't eliminate the reality of the higher level phenomena.  In a word processor, words as entities are real even though there is nothing in the computer except bits.

But I want to bring this back to ethics. We would agree that pain has neurologically observable features.  But it seems to me that such observations cannot lead to ethical imperatives unless one associates them with the (subjective) experience of pain.   But I've probably put too much into this post already.

-- Russ

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[Russ Abbott]

We've definitely exhausted the subject. But I can't resist two things.

1. Ethics is the study of moral systems. The following parallelism seems to work. Ethics is to systems of morality as psychology is to whatever it is that psychologists study. An ethical theory is to ethics as behaviorism is to psychology.


2. Nick wrote,

Rather than say that because I know what it is to have muscle pain, I feel  my old dog's pain when he walks with a limp, it makes more sense to say that I touch painful walking through the dog.  No, don't laugh.  Think about the last time you hit a tennis ball. Think about the feel of the ball, of its resistance.  Great feeling, huh! No.  Hold on!  You lied to me!  I have to bet you have NEVER hit a tennis ball in your life!  The RACKET hit the tennis ball.  And just as the racket can become in instrument for feeling a ball, an old dog can become an instrument for touching pain. 

In particular you wrote, "just as the racket can become [an] instrument for feeling a ball". Since you continue to use phrases like "feeling the ball" I can't understand why you object when I use the same sort of phrase. Also, if it makes you feel better to say "touch" rather than "feel" I guess I'll just understand you to mean "feel" when you say "touch," and you should translate my use of "feel" to be "touch" in your language.  I assume also that when you said "feel the ball", you really meant to say "touch the ball" but that you slipped up. Is that right, or were you deliberately distinguishing between feeling and touching? If so,what distinction you are trying to convey?

-- Russ

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[Steve Smith]

Nick -

Dude!  At the risk of irritating "the People" even further:

I *have* had the experiences you talk about.   Which is why I am prone to accept your theories despite my direct/personal/learned experience being somewhat different.

I remember way too distinctly early experiences about the the self-other duality.  I remember being puzzled by the few other people in my life (two parents one, sibling and *very* occasional other-adults) and how they were "different" than me.  

I remember doing "experiments" in regards to the difference between myself and the world around me.  This was long before my experiences with "deciding to get up" vs "getting up".  

I am still fully caught up in the illusion of my "self" being distinct (qualitatively) from all "other" but my intellect likes the idea of a more "relativistic" experience.

- Steve

Dear Russell 1

 

Russell 2 has always been with us.  In fact, he is in Australia, where you are about to go! 

 

The People are going to be Really Angry with us:  I can't find anything to disagree with about what you said.  So I, too, have been worrying about the homunculus.... or the mindunculus. 

 

If we have been agreeing all along, they will KILL us.  We better find something to disagree about quick.

 

Surely you disagree with this:  I see the world; part of what falls within my field of view is my own body and its actions.  From what I see, I construct (in childhood, with the help of my hypocritical parents) the distinction between an inner and an outer world, a world in which I can "be" good, while "doing" ill.  This subdivision  is enormously convenient to my body's survival in a society, so it endures, and may even have evolved.  . 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email]

Sent: 6/19/2009 12:08:48 PM

Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: (Subjective) experience

I'll admit that I'm now getting lost in all the words. (It's also distressing that yet another Russell has shown up.) 

Here's a bit of an exchange Nick and I had privately.  He suggested (and I fully agree) that we should continue it on the list.  Nick asked me to respond to his earlier comment about Unicorns. So I said,

Regarding unicorns, you raise an interesting issue. You said, I understand what you mean when you talk of unicorns; that doesn't make me a sneaky believer in unicorns, does it?

I'm not so sure that works with first person statements (subjective experience, qualia). How could anyone know what qualia are without experiencing them?  It's like saying I know what you mean by the taste of chocolate even though I've never tasted it and don't even believe that there is taste such as what you call chocolate. In that case, how could you possibly claim to understand what I mean by the taste of chocolate.

You've probably heard the famous thought experiment of Mary the color-blind scientist.She knew all there is to know about color; she could predict what! anyone would say about color by examining the patterns of photons that entered their eyes (and perhaps the firings in their brains as those photon hits were processed). But she herself saw the world in black and white.  Then miraculously, she gained color vision. She has (let's assume) no new knowledge as a result of her new color vision -- since she knew all there was to know about color and color vision already. All she has are new experiences of color -- subjective experiences of color. Has anything changed for her? My answer is "yes." Is yours "no"?

Nick responded.

She doesn't have a new experience Of COLOR.  She sees a colored world.  The world is now from her point of view a colored world. My mary is seeing the colored world directly; your mary is seeing a color experience.  It's the intrusion of the cartesian theatre that I find distressing.   At least.   CF Wittgenstein. 

My response.

I'm not promoting a Cartesian Theater perspective since I take a Cartesian Theater to imply a homunculus, i.e., an internal being (construct) that is standing back from the "performance/exhibit" ongoing in the Cartesian Theater and observing it.  That clearly leads to an infinite regress: How does the homunculus itself work? Does it have it's own Cartesian Theater? Etc.

I would also say that it's MY Mary that is seeing the world directly, that she has an immediate subjective experience of the world, which is what I mean ! by subjective experience. If there were a homunculus, it would be seeing a color presentation being presented in the Cartesian Theater. 

Perhaps this has just been a big misunderstanding.  When my Mary sees a colored world, I feel perfectly comfortable saying that she is having an experience of color and that (tautologically) she didn't have that experience prior to being able to experience color. You seem to want to reject putting it in those terms.  I don't understand your objection to that way of speaking.

Also, to get back to my question about Mary. I say that something has changed for her (and I would refer to what has changed as (part of) her subjective experience). I gather that you agree that something has changed. How would you characterize the change that's occurred. And recall, we are stipulating that there is no behavioral difference between Mary before and after she gained the ability to see a colored world.

I'm now a! nswering my own question and thinking that you will ask whether there is a neuronal difference. I'll agree that there is and that her way of processing color has changed. If we took brain scans her brain would be functioning differently.  So from that perspective you could argue (and I would agree) that there is an externally observable difference. This brings us to the notion of supervenience. We both agree that there are neuronal differences. I claim that subjective experience supervenes over neuronal phenomena. You say that neuronal phenomena are all there are(?). If that's your position (and perhaps it isn't since I seem to be putting words in your mouth by trying to answer the question from what I take to be your position), it's very much a reductionist perspective.  You are denying the reality of higher level constructs because you can reduce them to lower level phenomena. I say (and that's what my "Reductionist blind spot" was about) that the ability to reduce things to lower level phenomena doesn't eliminate the reality of th! e higher level phenomena.  In a word processor, words as entities are real even though there is nothing in the computer except bits.

But I want to bring this back to ethics. We would agree that pain has neurologically observable features.  But it seems to me that such observations cannot lead to ethical imperatives unless one associates them with the (subjective) experience of pain.   But I've probably put too much into this post already.

-- Russ

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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[Russ Abbott]

See below.

-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: [phone]
o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/

On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 7:09 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Comments below in bold comic blue

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email];[hidden email]

Sent: 6/19/2009 11:31:47 PM

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Foundations for ethics (was Re: (Subjective) experience)

We've definitely exhausted the subject. But I can't resist two things.

1. Ethics is the study of moral systems. The following parallelism seems to work. Ethics is to systems of morality as psychology is to whatever it is that psychologists study. An ethical theory is to ethics as behaviorism is to psychology.

nst --> Ok.  In that case, sociobiology is an ethical theory, right?  It explains ethics.  Have I got it? So, from your point of view, I am an ethical naturalist to the extent that I am happy to explain why people are ethical (to the extent that they are), as, indeed, I usually am. 

I have no problem categorizing sociobiology as an ethical theory. It's a nice way of putting it to say that an ethical naturalist attempts to explain why people are ethical.

I think I said more or less the same thing as I think you are implying: that ethical behavior is built upon our nature as human beings.
 

2. Nick wrote,

Rather than say that because I know what it is to have muscle pain, I feel  my old dog's pain when he walks with a limp, it makes more sense to say that I touch painful walking through the dog.  No, don't laugh.  Think about the last time you hit a tennis ball. Think about the feel of the ball, of its resistance.  Great feeling, huh! No.  Hold on!  You lied to me!  I have to bet you have NEVER hit a tennis ball in your life!  The RACKET hit the tennis ball.  And just as the racket can become in instrument for feeling a ball, an old dog can become an instrument for touching pain. 

In particular you wrote, "just as the racket can become [an] instrument for feeling a ball". Since you continue to use phrases like "feeling the ball" I can't understand why you object when I use the same sort of phrase. Also, if it makes you feel better to say "touch" rather than "feel" I guess I'll just understand you to mean "feel" when you say "touch," and you should translate my use of "feel" to be "touch" in your language.  I assume also that when you said "feel the ball", you really meant to say "touch the ball" but that you slipped up. Is that right, or were you deliberately distinguishing between feeling and touching? If so,what distinction you are trying to convey?

 

nst --> Once again, since you disclaimed interest in the Cartesian Theatre model I have had a harder time understanding where we disagree. I certainly don't deny that creatures with sensory systems experience the world.   I experience the world.  you experience the world.  "Touch" the world, "feel" the world, it doesnt matter to me.  To me, literally, touch is to encounter with an extended finger, feel is to encounter with the whole hand.  A similar distinction might be found between their metaphorical extensions.  

I wish you had said that this was all about the Cartesian Theater. As I said, the Catesian Theater contains an obvious infinite regress. I don't know of anyone who seriously argues for the Cartesian Theater. If you are comfortable saying things like "I experience the world." then that seems to me to be good enough. 

I'm not sure I know how you will elaborate what you mean by that -- and perhaps we should just leave it at that. I'm also not sure how you would understand "I feel nauseous" since I don't feel nauseous with my whole hand. But if you don't mind that sort of statements, then I guess we are in agreement. 

I think that the problem arises when you attempt to elaborate what you mean. If you say that "I feel nauseous" means something like certain sensors have certain readings. then that seems to imply a Cartesian Theater with a homunculus who is reading those sensors. So I'm still confused about what you mean and how a robot could feel nauseous.  But perhaps we are just fated not to make sense to each other.
 

 

  I also experience [that you experience the world]; you also experience [that I experience the world].  In exactly that same sense, and by exactly the same means, (but with different data) I experience [that I experience the world].  But what is crucial here is that I dont need to experience [that I experience the world ] in order to experience the world.   

 

-- Russ

 

nst --> Nick

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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