Fwd: The Psychology Of Yogurt

[Steve Smith]

Nick (from a private conversation with you, hereby taken public) -

The subject is, Is there anything about the emergence of any higher order property, behavior, etc., that is a Mystery … a question not likely to be dissipated by the stubborn advance of ordinary science.

Ah... this is a well-put question I think.

I don’t think so: you do (right?)

I am not sure.  I think "Mystery" may be an illusion, but a compelling one.  I don't need to pretend not to experience "Mystery" in the face of overwhelming "mystery".

But similarly, I'm not sure I need to invoke Mystery as an alternative to my ignorance or limited perspective.   I strongly suspect that Mystery is a receding horizon...  that we can pursue answers to questions posed by our skyline by approaching it, only to find each summit a false one.    I don't expect we will ever finish the journey, complete the quest, grasp the grail.  We will merely take the journeys, experience the Mystery while we solve the mysteries, some crudely, some eloquently.


and Glen -

> Well, you've gone _way_ beyond what I'm using as my operational
> definition.  I'd like to stick with _humans_, meaning not only the
> genome but also the morphology.

I agree that there is a very interesting conversation about the human mind to be had.  I actually *limited* my own working definition even more, to be my centered around the only thing I think I know much at all about which is, in fact, my own subjective experience of my own mind(s) juxtaposed with the many projections I have of that "mind" onto other (usually only human's) behaviour.

The other stuff was just my covering the bases and avoiding overly constraining too early.

So I *think* you are speaking as much about identity as mind, which I suppose I do not separate much myself.

I too have direct experience with the vagaries of aging and it's effect on the mind.   I helped my wife "walk her father to death" over 7 years of Alzheimers' and then more recently have been engaged with my own Father's walk down a similar path of aphasia and memory (but not identity) loss.   I also have the experience of someone very close to me who believes she is walking the path of memory and identity loss unto nonexistence... the jury is still out, but there are signs for sure.  My own aging process has lead me to leave behind "selves" which appear to no longer exist, mostly around physical ability, but also mental, memory and attention at the forefront.

I believe that this is a modern plague brought to us by having learned to avoid many of the heart/brain maladies of the last generations...  my motto is "what doesn't kill you leaves you open to something worse".

I have huge experiences around what might be diagnoseable as multiple personality disorder.  I do not need blood sugar swings nor the singing of yoghurt biochemistry in my gut (though I don't dismiss that these can cause such experiences) to rotor through a wide range of internal personality states.   This list is subject to but one or two of my personalities, and those who know me in person probably apprehend at least a couple of others.   Aside from the possibility that I also have episodes I'm totally unaware of (what mean's "I"?), all of my distinct (but blurred) identities/selves/personalities/modes are fully aware of eachother.  For example, as "I" write this there is a voice in my head rolling his eyes and muttering "there he goes again, maybe one of us should just hit <delete>?".  And just for the fun of it, you should know that the eye-rolling one (or another) actually does get the <delete> key pressed as often as not here. 

I do not know (sure, maybe I should seek professional help<grin>) why this is my experience or why it does not disturb me (the me's that are me?) more...  I feel not like a cacophany of strangers but a clan of brothers (and a couple of sisters?), all of a single body and memory but of many different minds.  Many differing minds/personalities joined in a weak telepathy, sharing a common memory, but having wildly different opinions and conclusions about the shared experience.   It all sounds a bit psychotic when I say it here, but except (perhaps?) for my missives here, I am apparently pretty functional in society despite this.

So breaking out of this strange anecdote... I guess I should just ask.. Is this what you are calling key to mind?  Identity?

- Sieve




============================================================
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]

Glen,
You covered a lot of ground in this email, and I'm struggling to figure out how to respond. I can't address everything, but I can make a few points.

A) The point of the analogy with the 'solveability' of computers was merely to point out that people often assert there are big mysteries in sciences they do not know very well. In some (but certainly not all) of those situations, people embedded in that science insist NOT that the mystery has been 'solved', but rather that the science has moved beyond dealing with the issue in a way that is at all mysterious. Maybe I did not express the idea well enough, or maybe I am off base with my understanding of computer science. Admittedly, I had only one graduate-level theory of computation class, and that was quite a few years ago. Perhaps Nick is correct that his inquiries about vortexes are a better example. For many people vortexes remain a classic example of a 'natural Mystery', for some so remain rainbows.

B) The best I muster to those who insist upon a 'mind-body problem' is NOT just that the question is poorly posed, but that there is quite a bit of evidence to against their being a problem. If you are arguing against induction, by asserting that even an infinite array of evidence cannot justify the inductive conclusion that 'all' mental processes are things that bodies do... well, you win. But that is a shallow victory, and if it is applicable here, it is only applicable to the same extent that arguments against induction are applicable as a criticism of all science. Empirical psychologists, at least when they are acting as such, are not interested in truth by definition, but in studying identified phenomenon in a systematic manner.

C) I'm not sure what to do with your talk of 'qualia', nor what you mean when you say I can make very few claims about 'the mind'. All I can say is that if the subject matter as defined as being mysteriously-not-tractable, well, then you will always see it as mysterious. Not to pick on your particular example too much, but quite a few researchers in my area (the study of perception-action linkages) focus narrowly on motor control and coordination of locomotive behavior. I have never done such research. However, I have seen SEVERAL talks measuring how perception of the world is affected by things like hip injuries. Hip stability effects (yes, effects) what people see as a climb-up-able step, what they see as a cross-able gap, their experience of safety vs. danger, their feelings of comfort vs. anxiety, etc. All these ARE changed by altering their hip. If 'seeing the stairs as dangerous' and 'feeling anxious' are not examples of 'qualia', then I really have no clue what you are asking me about.

D) We know a lot about brains and nervous systems and how they work. We are far from knowing everything. We also know an awful lot about how the rest of the body works. Again, we are far from knowing everything. However, to act like we are still in the 1700's regarding our understanding of mind-brain relations is just odd. When Descartes wrote, there was in fact a Mystery with a capitol 'M'. Now, not so much. I suppose I must accept your criticism that this is a statement of 'faith' on my part, it is. However, I do not see how it is more a statement of faith than the one a physicist makes when he tells his class that matter is made up of atoms. There are still things about the atomic structure of materials that we don't understand, and the existence or non-existence of atoms was also once a Big Question.

Eric
 


On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 01:32 PM, "glen e. p. ropella" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Well, needless to say, I completely disagree.  First, the analogy with
computers and "solveability" is so completely fallacious it boggles my
mind.  My head just about exploded when I read that. ;-)  We have a
formalism (more than one, actually) and a set of theorems regarding
the
universality of some Turing machines.  We're not even close to having
even a single formalism, let alone a body of theorems, showing that the
mind is generated solely from the body. (An operational closure.)

But, more importantly, the best criticism you'll be able to muster
against those who see a categorical difference between mind and body is
that the problem is ill-posed.  You can't say that all thoughts are
generated from the body with anything coming close to credibility.  The
first, but not the least, objection to such a claim is the quantifier
"all".  You can't even estimate the cardinality of thought.  You can't
say whether language is required for thought.  You can't account for
qualia.  You can _barely_ demonstrate neural correlates between bodily
actions (like speaking or looking) and activity in the brain.  In fact
there is very little you can claim about the mind.  And yet you can
miraculously claim you know, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that all mind
is generated by the body?  Wow.  Talk about an article of faith.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the mind is generated by something other
than the body.  All I'm doing is avoiding conviction within a particular
conclusion[*].  I believe that the body is a medium for the mind (there
may be other media).  In that, we agree.  But I am not so arrogant to
say that the mind is solely a behavior of the body.  (And I'm especially
not so arrogant as to claim we've proven that.)  The difference is
subtle.  All we've done so far is demonstrate that there is an absence
of evidence for the mind without the (a) body.  But absence of
evidence
is NOT evidence of absence.

There is clearly a Big Question.  And that is: What changes can we make
to the body without categorically changing the mind?  Or, vice versa:
What changes can we make to the mind without categorically changing the
body?  We already know many of the changes.  You can change out
someone's hip, for example, without fundamentally altering their mind.

Medically, this Big Question flows down into questions like:

1) Does a person's identity change after a stroke?  Or the onset of
Alzheimer's?  Parkinson's?  Cancer?  A bunion?
2) How is a schizophrenic person different from a "healthy"
person and
what changes can/should we make to "heal" such a person?
3) What is the personhood status of a fetus?  A comatose patient?  A
brain-dead patient?

These aren't just "little mysteries", as you so belittle them.  They
are
instances of the mind-body problem with very practical and often
heartbreaking contexts.

[*] We do have a significant non-whacko population of people who believe
in things like memes, social construction/regulation of the mind,
evo-devo, multi-level selection, extended physiology, etc.  To say the
mind-body problem is solved is to dismiss all these positions and their
backers.

ERIC P. CHARLES wrote circa 11-09-20 07:48 AM:
> Well... yes and no.
> 
> To keep my metaphor in the 'P.S.' going, we also can't say exactly how a
> computer could solve every solvable problem... but that doesn't mean
> there is a Big Question 'solveability' mystery still around. Instead
> there are many little mysteries: How would this particular problem be
> solved?
> 
> For example, the point I was trying to make was that mind and body do
> not differ in the manner the Big Question version of the 'mind-body'
> problem assumes. Mental things are one of the many things that bodies
> do, nothing more. If you accept that (which I am fairly certain you
do),
> then you have already moved beyond thinking there is mystery of how mind
> and body are related. What you (and I) are left with is a bunch
of
> little, normal science questions. What is the exact mechanism of X? How
> does Y develop? etc. Such questions represent scientific unknowns, just
> as do questions about how to synthesize a particular compound. There has
> been much success in solving many of the little mysteries. Many, many,
> brilliant experiments illuminating the mechanisms by which bodies do
> mental things, and explaining how such mechanisms develop. I could
> recommend several large books if desired.
> 
> When people talk about a 'mind-body' problem, they are convinced there
> is still a Big Question. Something like the question of where and how
> the soul enters the body, or the question about how the ethereal mind
> connects with our corporeal mere-matter. Robert's link showed this
> nicely. Though some of that language has been rejected (souls are not
> mentioned much anymore), any sense of Big Question 'mysteriousness'
> indicates that people are still thinking along those lines.


-- 
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com


============================================================
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

Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601

============================================================
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

[glen ep ropella]

Steve Smith wrote circa 11-09-20 12:18 PM:
> So breaking out of this strange anecdote... I guess I should just ask..
> Is this what you are calling key to mind?  Identity?

Sort of.  I am interested in the robustness of the subjective identity.
 But I'm also, and much more, interested in objective continuity ...
e.g. whether your family members will notice a significant change in
your personality after you start taking drug X.

Jochen Fromm wrote circa 11-09-20 11:30 AM:
> For me, one of the big questions in Philosophy and Psychology seems
> to be how the mind emerges from the collision of "knowledge
> molecules" and "biochemical molecules" (aka Yoghurt), from the
> continuous interplay of memes and genes or nature and nurture.

Yes, me too.  However, I'm more focused on (inter)personal impact. But
along your lines, I began reading this book: "Rhythms of the Brain" by
Gyoergy Buzsaki.  It's too dense for me to explicitly extract "knowledge
molecules".  But it does seem to make progress toward the case that
patterns of firing and collective action form the components of the mind.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com


============================================================
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]

Do we all remember that 19th century guy who took an eight-foot tamping rod
through his frontal lobes and lived to tell the tale.  He was not the same
person, by any psychological standard.  He was, though, probably the same
legal entity.  We confuse the two, I think

N

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of glen e. p. ropella
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 12:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)


Well, you've gone _way_ beyond what I'm using as my operational definition.
I'd like to stick with _humans_, meaning not only the genome but also the
morphology.  It's not that I don't care about other animals or organisms ...
or the definition of life.  I like _talking_ about that stuff and I enjoy
some of the biology I end up studying as a result of my job.  But overall,
I'm mostly concerned with me, my family, my friends, etc.  I.e. humans.

When my grandfather had his stroke, he changed in _fundamental_ ways.
His inability to use his right hand is what lead me (even as a kid) to start
experimenting with using my "weak" hand to do tasks only my strong hand was
competent to do.  Everyone around me asserted quite strongly things like
"He's still very intelligent!" and "He's still in there."  I have my doubts.
I think he was an entirely different person, despite some similarities pre-
and post- stroke.

Issues like this are practical, important, and immediate, unlike defining
"life" and whatnot.

Steve Smith wrote circa 11-09-20 11:04 AM:

> I think this is well stated and on point.  However... to ask these
> questions properly we must have a clearer notion of what we mean by mind
> and/or thought and/or identity.   I am using as my working definition of
> mind, the subjective (recursive?) experience "I" have of
> "self-awareness" or "self-consciousness" as a key part of *my* mind.  
> This may differ radically from other's definition here?
>
> Many grant all living creatures to have minds, certainly all mammals,
> probably birds, possibly all vertebrates, maybe anything with more than
> some modest number of neurons...  or maybe anything *with* neurons.   Or
> maybe...
>
> Others extend the notion of life, of consciousness, even of "mind" and
> "awareness" on to what others (myself usually included) to all matter
> (and energy).   Not just the trees and lichen, but the stones and the
> earth, the wind and the interstellar gasses, the electromagnetic and
> gravitational flux of the universe.   But by that time, I'm not sure
> what we are talking about anymore...
>
> I don't want to presume to set the definitions but I propose the

following.

>
> We cannot talk about mind without life.
> We cannot talk about life without some kind of self-organized,
> coherent systems.
>
> I'm game that life (and by extension mind) needn't exist only in a
> matrix of cells, or even in protein or carbon chemistry.
>
> I may be chauvinistic in wanting life to depend on a self-other
> boundary, on identity, on self-awareness.    I know that nature (bio as
> well as non-bio) blurs these boundaries.   What is an individual
> Lichen?   What do a grove of genetically identical poplars know from one
> another?   Where is the boundary of a star, of a swirling bathtub
> vortex?   When is a planet not a planet (Pluto anyone?).
>
> I may be only digging this hole deeper...   but without more definition,
> I think we are blind men fondling the elephant?   Perhaps only infinite
> regress awaits us in this.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com


============================================================
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

[Jochen Fromm-5]

Well formulated Glen. The raw desire for a frozen blueberry Yogurt seems to
have little to do with the mind, and the abstract thought of a Calabi-Yau
manifold in 6 dimensions seems to have little to do with the body. An
example where we feel this perplexing sense would be a situation where body
and mind contradict each other: for instance my body may say I should eat a
frozen blueberry Yogurt now, but my mind says I should not because it
contains too much sugar. Or my body says I should have sex with that
beautiful woman, but my mind says I should not because I am married.

The desire to eat comes from my body, and I can feel it comes from the
inside (in the last instance it comes from the genes who have built a system
which craves for our building blocks sugar and fat). The rule to avoid too
much sugar is clearly learnt. I can feel it comes from the outside if I
recall the rule or listen to the "Super-ego". As you know, Freud called the
representation of the body which is responsible for the desire "id" ("das
Es"), the representation of culture and mind "Super-ego" ("das Über-Ich"),
and the mediator between both the ego ("das Ich"). Each of us has developed
a complex personality which determines how Id and Super-ego interact to form
the Ego. The sinner eats every Yogurt he can, the saint eats none at all and
gives them away to the poor. The Tiger Woods or Bill Clinton type eats every
Yogurt he can while pretending he has eaten only one.

Until we can explain this perplexing sense that there are parts of the body
that seem to have little or nothing to do with the mind (and vice versa) the
mind-body problem is not completely solved. It remains also unsolved as long
as we can not explain how the mind emerges from the body, i.e. from the
interactions of billions of knowledge molecules ("ideas") and Yogurt cells.
In the end, the interactions of course lead to a vast network of neurons
which incorporate all available knowledge and which are made from Yogurt
cells. The devil is in the details. I think the trick here is to consider
the body and the environment, i.e. the adaptive body embedded in a certain
environment. A human being is a complex object living in multiple worlds, it
is as a biological organism a certain instance of nature which meets a
certain instance of culture during development, and both instances come
together to form a unique connection between both worlds.

-J.

----- Original Message -----
From: "glen e. p. ropella" <[hidden email]>
To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 2:35 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: The Psychology Of Yogurt


Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 11-09-19 05:19 PM:
> I realize that you didn't start this thread, so you may be as perplexed as
> I
> am, but, what exactly IS the mind-body problem?

As I understand it, it's the perplexing sense that there are parts
(extended to processes by me if not others) of the body that seem to
have little or nothing to do with the mind.  And vice versa: there seem
to be thoughts that have little or nothing to do with the body.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com




============================================================
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