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Re: Hard problem vs. free swill

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thompnickson2

Re: Hard problem vs. free swill

Some times, more times than I like to admit, I have no idea what I am going to do next. And on many of those occasions, my wife does. It’s all inferences; fallible inferences of future action based on prior experience with the person (self or other) under similar circumstances.

I think that’s all we got!

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of doug carmichael
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2020 9:33 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Hard problem vs. free will

On free will. Isn’t there a spectrum of predictability? She will get up in the morning and have coffee, but I am less sure about her reaction to the front page of today’s New York Times. That spectrum of predictability (people will stay on the socially sanctioned side of the road when driving) is enough for society to hold together. (and we may be losing it)

I like Bergson’s view. A simple one cell organism responds to things in its environment, like light or ph and its reaction predictable. As the organism gets more complex, the range of things it can respond to in the environment such as shapes and tastes - and the range of responses, increases - until the point where predictability is impossible. This is free will. Seems reasonable to me.

On Jun 28, 2020, at 7:39 AM, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

The two questions are related. We cannot predict how someone else will act and we don't know what it is like to be someone else because we don't know the history of the other person. To use Nick's words we don't know the personal slice of the world for this person, how it has experienced the world so far.

If we could predict how someone else will act there would be no free will. If we could experience what it is like to be someone else directly there would be no hard problem of consciousness.

I think intimate knowledge of someone allows you to predict how the person will act to a certain degree. You could say two minds have merged into one. The two persons still have free will, but they are "similar wills" so to speak.

In the same way intimate knowledge of the history of person allows you to experience the world as the person does, for example by seeing a movie about the life of a person. Watching this movie you experience the same events that the person has experienced.

In this sense being married for 25 or more years is like watching the same movie, the movie of your life :-)

-J.

-------- Original message --------
From: Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]>
Date: 6/28/20 16:07 (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] God

I am not sure I agree with the arguments from you Russ. You say "People aren't the same, but they are similar - and human society functions because we can predict to some extent what other people are likely to do [...]. We have also evolved the ability to 'put ourselves in somebody else's skin', taking into account the obvious external differences."

But we cannot predict what someone else will do, only if we know the person really well - for instance if it is your wife or husband for 30 years. In whodunit films it becomes clear in the end why people have acted they way they did, but only in hindsight. In hindsight we almost always can say why people acted the way they did, but we cannot predict it beforehand. You say hindsight is 20/20 for this in English, right?

We also haven't evolved the ability to "put ourselves in somebody else's skin". It is not impossible, but can be very difficult and requires detailed knowledge and imagination. This is the reason why Hollywood has invented cinemas to show us how what it is like to be somebody else (the GoPro cameras in modern days have the same function).

Therefore I tend to disagree with both statements.

-J.

-------- Original message --------
From: Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]>
Date: 6/28/20 15:07 (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] God

Russ,

Your views on these matters are very similar to my own.

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 2:11 AM Russell Standish <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi Nick - finally took a look at your paper. I didn't read it to the nth detail, but from what I understand, your scepticism about "ejective anthropmorphism" (nice term by the way) stands on two legs:

1) What exactly is priveleged about introspection?

2) That the process of ejective anthropomorphism starts from an
identity between the target behaviour and the observers behaviour,
which is structy false. The example being given of a dog scratching at
a door to get in.

In response, I would say there is plenty of privelege in
introspection. For example, proprioception is entirely priveleged -
that information is simply now available to external observers.

In terms of the identity of target and observer behaviour, it doesn't
need to be identical, but it does need to be analogical. The most
important application of this skill is prediction of what other human
beings do. People aren't the same, but they are similar - and human
society functions because we can predict to some extent what other
people are likely to do. I believe this is why self-awareness evoved
in the first place. Something similar may have evolved in dogs, which
are social pack animals. We have also evolved the ability to "put
ourselves in somebody else's skin", taking into account the obvious
external differences. So we can imagine being a dog, and wanting to
get through a door, what would we do. We know we cannot stand up, and
turn the door knob, because we don't have hands, so what would we do,
given we only have paws. Scratching behaviour does seem a likely
behaviour then. That, then is analogical.

So, I'm not exactly convinced :).

Cheers

On Sun, May 24, 2020 at 04:32:05PM -0600, [hidden email] wrote:

> Sorry Russ. It was in a hyperlink:
>
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311349078_The_many_perils_of_ejecti
> ve_anthropomorphism
>
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> [hidden email]
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Russell Standish
> Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2020 4:27 PM
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] God
>
> On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 09:59:37PM -0600, [hidden email] wrote:
> > Hi Russ,
> >
> >
> >
> > Hawking my wares again. I am sorry but SOMEBODY has to read this
> > crap. The argument of this paper is that the flow of inference is
> > actually in the other direction. We model our view of ourselves on our
> experience with others.
> >
>
> What paper? What argument?
>
>
> --
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Principal, High Performance Coders [hidden email]
> http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders [hidden email]
http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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jon zingale

Re: Hard problem vs. free swill

Nick,

Granted determinism, how might an evolutionary theorist or ethologist
approach the question of why we have the illusion of free will at all? It
seems to me that evolutionary theory can describe a deterministic history
just fine, but then I am unsure why we would ever need to develop a sense of
consciousness or a sense of agency. Couldn't nature find a way to have us do
the same without the added expense of reflected experience?

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Prof David West

Re: Hard problem vs. free swill

Jon,

Not sure how Nick would respond, but it seems that your question assumes that evolution has some sort of "discrimination" that would allow it to choose between two or more different adaptational-complexes that have the same or closely comparable outcomes. We have consciousness and a sense of agency because it just happened that way, not because something decided it was necessary.

davew

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020, at 8:25 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:

> Nick,
>
> Granted determinism, how might an evolutionary theorist or ethologist
> approach the question of why we have the illusion of free will at all? It
> seems to me that evolutionary theory can describe a deterministic history
> just fine, but then I am unsure why we would ever need to develop a sense of
> consciousness or a sense of agency. Couldn't nature find a way to have us do
> the same without the added expense of reflected experience?
>
>
>
> --
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>
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thompnickson2

Re: Hard problem vs. free swill

I am about to logon to vFRIAM so I will just say that the answer would be
something lie:

"Everything that is ... is experience. To the extent that experience is OF
anything, it is OF other experiences. Experiences can be "of" other
experiences in two ways, in sequence, and "meta". If I experience another
experience as a dream, that is a meta experience. Evolutionarily speaking,
detecting agency is useful. It's useful, for instance, to detect whether an
object is bright because it has a birght color or bright because it has a
bright light on it. A lot of the circuitry in the retina is devoted to
figuring that sort of thing out. Similarly, when, say, I find some
experience annoying, it's useful to figure out whether that annoying feature
of the experience is arising from me -- fatigue, etc. -- r for particular
feature of the experience. Experiences that are tagge as arising from the
self are forms of meta-experiences. Yeh. Something like that. Yikes! I
am late!

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, July 3, 2020 9:42 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Hard problem vs. free swill

Jon,

Not sure how Nick would respond, but it seems that your question assumes
that evolution has some sort of "discrimination" that would allow it to
choose between two or more different adaptational-complexes that have the
same or closely comparable outcomes. We have consciousness and a sense of
agency because it just happened that way, not because something decided it
was necessary.

davew

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020, at 8:25 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> Nick,
>
> Granted determinism, how might an evolutionary theorist or ethologist
> approach the question of why we have the illusion of free will at all?
> It seems to me that evolutionary theory can describe a deterministic
> history just fine, but then I am unsure why we would ever need to
> develop a sense of consciousness or a sense of agency. Couldn't nature
> find a way to have us do the same without the added expense of reflected
experience?

>
>
>
> --
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>
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