Re: Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

[Nick Thompson]

Eric,

 

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you are interested in what follows. 

 

---

ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ BELOW THIS LINE

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I think, Eric,  you left the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:   

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

 

 

Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there, concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs later:

 

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course.

 

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say – and perhaps James would not agree – that  “that opinion upon which human scientists are fated to agree “ is exactly, and only, what is meant by the truth.  So, there is a truth “out there”, beyond what you, or I, or any other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function of “home” in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we will terminate the discussion of where it is. 

 

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk’s work.  The kind of question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.  For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please, so Peirce will not hear you), “the REASON that scientists converge on some opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce never would have tolerated it.    

---

SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU! 

---

If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don’t want to go into the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier message, not to this one.   

 

Nick

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

 

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science."

Exactly! Let me try another tact.

1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in which things worked differently from each other.

2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.) Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e., ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this, leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

 

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct, and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas characteristic of successful science.

5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science of the mind would fail pathetically.

6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in either scientific circles or philosophical ones.

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.

If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.

Best,

Eric

 

 

 

 

 

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

 

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role -- except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

 

[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

 

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense) on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required (in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences of one's) experiences.

 

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

 

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

 

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things without having what I would call subjective experience.

 

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

 

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it. 

 

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science.

 

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

 

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity? (Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective experience.)

 

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really to attribute those processes to computers or software.

 

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

See Larding below:

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

 

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the following.

 

--------------

 

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand. 

 

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.

[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

 

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another ‘s behavior toward you is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

 

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil’s Advocate questions, in some ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I was nuts, and we let it go at that. 

 

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.)

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

 

--------------

 

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question, if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected" mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

 

 

 

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate" attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood: cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing someone.

--
⇔ glen

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[John Kennison]

I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to apply it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all we have are relics from the past  --maybe we are uncertain which objects and/or documents really go back to a historical period under examination--but we have some way of testing for various relations between these relics. Se then look for a theory of the past which best accounts for the relics that we have. We may be able to measure how well different theories do this accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then history.

But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth about what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not be recoverable.


________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric,

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you are interested in what follows.

________________________________
ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ BELOW THIS LINE
________________________________
I think, Eric,  you left the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.


Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there, concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs later:

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course.

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say – and perhaps James would not agree – that  “that opinion upon which human scientists are fated to agree “ is exactly, and only, what is meant by the truth.  So, there is a truth “out there”, beyond what you, or I, or any other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function of “home” in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we will terminate the discussion of where it is.

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk’s work.  The kind of question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.  For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please, so Peirce will not hear you), “the REASON that scientists converge on some opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce never would have tolerated it.
________________________________
SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU!
________________________________
If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don’t want to go into the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier message, not to this one.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science."
Exactly! Let me try another tact.
1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in which things worked differently from each other.
2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.) Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e., ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this, leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct, and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas characteristic of successful science.
5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science of the mind would fail pathetically.
6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in either scientific circles or philosophical ones.
7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.
If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.
Best,
Eric

















-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role -- except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense) on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required (in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences of one's) experiences.

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things without having what I would call subjective experience.

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it.

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science.

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity? (Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective experience.)

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really to attribute those processes to computers or software.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the following.

--------------

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand.

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.
[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another ‘s behavior toward you is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil’s Advocate questions, in some ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I was nuts, and we let it go at that.

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.)
[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

--------------

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question, if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected" mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?
[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]



On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate" attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood: cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing someone.

--
⇔ glen

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[Eric Charles-2]

Nick,

I worked hard on phrasing those parts ;- ) The first part is specifically worded to avoid the red flags that pragmatism-talk might throw up for some people... I don't think an argument about the psychology that flows from pragmatism need obligate first discussing Pierce's philosophy of science. But we can certainly do it that way if you want.

Regarding the philosophy of science: Peirce would say that it is startling that investigations about anything leads to convergence of agreement amongst serious investigators. It is borderline miraculous, he asserts, and we must latch onto such situations with tenacity whenever we should encounter them.  We would have no reason, were we blank slates, to assume that worlds should contain such consistencies regarding any things that might be investigated. Indeed, were we interested in the past, we would find that the past is dominated by earnest investigators failing utterly to create long-standing convergence of ideas, and would have every reason to be suspicious of such efforts moving forward.

Knowing full well the problem of induction, Peirce also knows that past agreement about a topic need not guarantee future agreement. Until much time and additional investigation has passed, there was no reason to think that the identification of carbon as the organic element would stand the test of time any better than agreement upon the frock coat as the proper attire for an afternoon (but not morning or evening) stroll. Not only might we mistake transient social convergence of ideas for actual scientific progress, we might have not yet gotten to the crucial experiments that will knock down our imagined structures. We might, at the least, always discover that there was something unique about the context of our investigations. (We might realize, for example, that the ground around Tesla's lab works differently than ground does in most other parts of the world. See also physicists, on the behavior of quantum-scale 'particles'.)

With that in mind, Peirce thinks science work the opposite of the way we are taught to think about science in our early years. It is not that knowledge about anything you can imagine will converge if only we can apply the scientific method to it properly. Rather, science is the process of determining those things about which knowledge converges under investigation. And we can never know what those things are, except that we keep trying to do science and miraculously don't fail at it!

Thus, Peirce would declare "science of psychology is possible" to be a hypothesis! It is akin to the failed hypothesis that we could make a science about bumbs on people's heads, and it is akin to the successful hypothesis that we could make a science of "atoms".

James (IMHO) understands the ramifications of this much better than Peirce does. If a science of psychology is possible, then the very foundation of western thinking about psychology must be thrown out? Why? Because the foundation declares a priori that such a science is impossible. Whatever combination of beliefs and logical inferences led those Big Names to declare such a science to be impossible, that amalgamation of ideas must be wrong. Of most obvious note, metaphysical dualism must be wrong. The mind cannot be something independent of the rest of the investigatable world.

But Peirce has been swayed too much by Kant to see how wrong Kant's views about psychology are. Kant takes the difficulties of doing ANY science, and acts as if they are only problems of doing psychology. It is a bum move.

If we are not a priori dualists, then we have no reason to believe that the problem of knowing another person's mind are any different than the problem of knowing anything else about the world.

Best,

Eric

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:51 AM, John Kennison <[hidden email]> wrote:

I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to apply it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all we have are relics from the past  --maybe we are uncertain which objects and/or documents really go back to a historical period under examination--but we have some way of testing for various relations between these relics. Se then look for a theory of the past which best accounts for the relics that we have. We may be able to measure how well different theories do this accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then history.

But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth about what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not be recoverable.


________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric,

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you are interested in what follows.

________________________________
ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ BELOW THIS LINE
________________________________
I think, Eric,  you left the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.


Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there, concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs later:

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course.

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say – and perhaps James would not agree – that  “that opinion upon which human scientists are fated to agree “ is exactly, and only, what is meant by the truth.  So, there is a truth “out there”, beyond what you, or I, or any other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function of “home” in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we will terminate the discussion of where it is.

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk’s work.  The kind of question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.  For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please, so Peirce will not hear you), “the REASON that scientists converge on some opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce never would have tolerated it.
________________________________
SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU!
________________________________
If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don’t want to go into the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier message, not to this one.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science."
Exactly! Let me try another tact.
1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in which things worked differently from each other.
2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.) Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e., ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this, leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct, and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas characteristic of successful science.
5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science of the mind would fail pathetically.
6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in either scientific circles or philosophical ones.
7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.
If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.
Best,
Eric

















-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]

email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role -- except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense) on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required (in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences of one's) experiences.

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things without having what I would call subjective experience.

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it.

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science.

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity? (Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective experience.)

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really to attribute those processes to computers or software.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the following.

--------------

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand.

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.
[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another ‘s behavior toward you is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil’s Advocate questions, in some ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I was nuts, and we let it go at that.

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.)
[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

--------------

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question, if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected" mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?
[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate" attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood: cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing someone.

--
⇔ glen

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[gepr]

FWIW, I am interested, despite not being able to see the field because the weeds are in the way.

On 02/23/2016 08:54 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
> I worked hard on phrasing those parts ;- ) The first part is specifically
> worded to avoid the red flags that pragmatism-talk might throw up for some
> people... I don't think an argument about the psychology that flows from
> pragmatism *need* obligate first discussing Pierce's philosophy of science.
> But we can certainly do it that way if you want.

--
⇔ glen

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[Nick Thompson]

Hi, John,

Welcome to the Weeds!

I like the history metaphor.  What I think Peirce would say is everything you describe is experience NOW.  Some of those experiences NOW get understood as experiences THEN.  So, an "experience-then" is just a way of organizing some of the "experiences-now".  There is no experience beyond experience.  Put baldly, that sounds like nothing more than a trivial tautology.   For me, it is a chastening reminder that any knowledge I assert beyond experience is either (1) nonsense or (2) a statement about some experiences.  

I know my Peirce-guru occasionally lurks, here, and I hope he will correct me.   In particular, I wish he could remind me why I care about this enough even to devote a sub thread to it.  

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 12:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to apply it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all we have are relics from the past  --maybe we are uncertain which objects and/or documents really go back to a historical period under examination--but we have some way of testing for various relations between these relics. Se then look for a theory of the past which best accounts for the relics that we have. We may be able to measure how well different theories do this accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then history.

But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth about what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not be recoverable.


________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric,

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you are interested in what follows.

________________________________
ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ BELOW THIS LINE ________________________________ I think, Eric,  you left the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.


Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there, concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs later:

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course.

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say – and perhaps James would not agree – that  “that opinion upon which human scientists are fated to agree “ is exactly, and only, what is meant by the truth.  So, there is a truth “out there”, beyond what you, or I, or any other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function of “home” in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we will terminate the discussion of where it is.

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk’s work.  The kind of question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.  For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please, so Peirce will not hear you), “the REASON that scientists converge on some opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce never would have tolerated it.
________________________________
SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU!
________________________________
If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don’t want to go into the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier message, not to this one.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science."
Exactly! Let me try another tact.
1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in which things worked differently from each other.
2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.) Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e., ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this, leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct, and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas characteristic of successful science.
5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science of the mind would fail pathetically.
6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in either scientific circles or philosophical ones.
7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.
If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.
Best,
Eric

















-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role -- except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense) on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required (in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences of one's) experiences.

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things without having what I would call subjective experience.

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it.

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science.

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity? (Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective experience.)

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really to attribute those processes to computers or software.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the following.

--------------

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand.

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.
[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another ‘s behavior toward you is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil’s Advocate questions, in some ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I was nuts, and we let it go at that.

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.) [NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

--------------

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question, if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected" mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?
[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]



On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate" attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood: cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing someone.

--
⇔ glen

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[Nick Thompson]

Thanks, Eric, for joining me in the weeds,

 

I think what you have written about Peirce here is the most subtle and persuasive rendition of his position I have ever seen.  I commend it to any other weed-dwellers.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 9:55 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>; M. D. Bybee <[hidden email]>; John Shook <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

 

Nick,

I worked hard on phrasing those parts ;- ) The first part is specifically worded to avoid the red flags that pragmatism-talk might throw up for some people... I don't think an argument about the psychology that flows from pragmatism need obligate first discussing Pierce's philosophy of science. But we can certainly do it that way if you want.

Regarding the philosophy of science: Peirce would say that it is startling that investigations about anything leads to convergence of agreement amongst serious investigators. It is borderline miraculous, he asserts, and we must latch onto such situations with tenacity whenever we should encounter them.  We would have no reason, were we blank slates, to assume that worlds should contain such consistencies regarding any things that might be investigated. Indeed, were we interested in the past, we would find that the past is dominated by earnest investigators failing utterly to create long-standing convergence of ideas, and would have every reason to be suspicious of such efforts moving forward.

Knowing full well the problem of induction, Peirce also knows that past agreement about a topic need not guarantee future agreement. Until much time and additional investigation has passed, there was no reason to think that the identification of carbon as the organic element would stand the test of time any better than agreement upon the frock coat as the proper attire for an afternoon (but not morning or evening) stroll. Not only might we mistake transient social convergence of ideas for actual scientific progress, we might have not yet gotten to the crucial experiments that will knock down our imagined structures. We might, at the least, always discover that there was something unique about the context of our investigations. (We might realize, for example, that the ground around Tesla's lab works differently than ground does in most other parts of the world. See also physicists, on the behavior of quantum-scale 'particles'.)

With that in mind, Peirce thinks science work the opposite of the way we are taught to think about science in our early years. It is not that knowledge about anything you can imagine will converge if only we can apply the scientific method to it properly. Rather, science is the process of determining those things about which knowledge converges under investigation. And we can never know what those things are, except that we keep trying to do science and miraculously don't fail at it!

Thus, Peirce would declare "science of psychology is possible" to be a hypothesis! It is akin to the failed hypothesis that we could make a science about bumbs on people's heads, and it is akin to the successful hypothesis that we could make a science of "atoms".

James (IMHO) understands the ramifications of this much better than Peirce does. If a science of psychology is possible, then the very foundation of western thinking about psychology must be thrown out? Why? Because the foundation declares a priori that such a science is impossible. Whatever combination of beliefs and logical inferences led those Big Names to declare such a science to be impossible, that amalgamation of ideas must be wrong. Of most obvious note, metaphysical dualism must be wrong. The mind cannot be something independent of the rest of the investigatable world.

But Peirce has been swayed too much by Kant to see how wrong Kant's views about psychology are. Kant takes the difficulties of doing ANY science, and acts as if they are only problems of doing psychology. It is a bum move.

If we are not a priori dualists, then we have no reason to believe that the problem of knowing another person's mind are any different than the problem of knowing anything else about the world.

Best,

Eric

 

 

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

 

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:51 AM, John Kennison <[hidden email]> wrote:

I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to apply it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all we have are relics from the past  --maybe we are uncertain which objects and/or documents really go back to a historical period under examination--but we have some way of testing for various relations between these relics. Se then look for a theory of the past which best accounts for the relics that we have. We may be able to measure how well different theories do this accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then history.

But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth about what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not be recoverable.


________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric,

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you are interested in what follows.

________________________________
ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ BELOW THIS LINE
________________________________
I think, Eric,  you left the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.


Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there, concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs later:

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course.

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say – and perhaps James would not agree – that  “that opinion upon which human scientists are fated to agree “ is exactly, and only, what is meant by the truth.  So, there is a truth “out there”, beyond what you, or I, or any other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function of “home” in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we will terminate the discussion of where it is.

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk’s work.  The kind of question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.  For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please, so Peirce will not hear you), “the REASON that scientists converge on some opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce never would have tolerated it.
________________________________
SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU!
________________________________
If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don’t want to go into the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier message, not to this one.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science."
Exactly! Let me try another tact.
1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in which things worked differently from each other.
2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.) Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e., ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this, leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct, and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas characteristic of successful science.
5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science of the mind would fail pathetically.
6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in either scientific circles or philosophical ones.
7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.
If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.
Best,
Eric

















-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]

email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role -- except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense) on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required (in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences of one's) experiences.

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things without having what I would call subjective experience.

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it.

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science.

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity? (Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective experience.)

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really to attribute those processes to computers or software.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the following.

--------------

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand.

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.
[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another ‘s behavior toward you is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil’s Advocate questions, in some ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I was nuts, and we let it go at that.

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.)
[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

--------------

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question, if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected" mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?
[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate" attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood: cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing someone.

--
⇔ glen

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[John Kennison]

Hi Nick,

Thanks for liking my metaphor. In my previous statement I should have noted that "dualism" for a historian is the analog of dualism for a psychologist studying conscioisness. You seem to rejerct both. The crucial questions then, are do you see any talk about "what really happened in the past" as some sort of delusion? Would you go one step further and say the concept that there is a truth about what happened in the past is delusional, for example "We have no way of knowing for certain whether Charlemagne ate eggs on a particulr day during his life(Say January 1, 800 ad) but there is a truth about the matter (either he did or did not) even though it is a truth we can never fully determine?

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:56 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Hi, John,

Welcome to the Weeds!

I like the history metaphor.  What I think Peirce would say is everything you describe is experience NOW.  Some of those experiences NOW get understood as experiences THEN.  So, an "experience-then" is just a way of organizing some of the "experiences-now".  There is no experience beyond experience.  Put baldly, that sounds like nothing more than a trivial tautology.   For me, it is a chastening reminder that any knowledge I assert beyond experience is either (1) nonsense or (2) a statement about some experiences.

I know my Peirce-guru occasionally lurks, here, and I hope he will correct me.   In particular, I wish he could remind me why I care about this enough even to devote a sub thread to it.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 12:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to apply it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all we have are relics from the past  --maybe we are uncertain which objects and/or documents really go back to a historical period under examination--but we have some way of testing for various relations between these relics. Se then look for a theory of the past which best accounts for the relics that we have. We may be able to measure how well different theories do this accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then history.

But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth about what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not be recoverable.


________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric,

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you are interested in what follows.

________________________________
ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ BELOW THIS LINE ________________________________ I think, Eric,  you left the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.


Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there, concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs later:

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course.

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say – and perhaps James would not agree – that  “that opinion upon which human scientists are fated to agree “ is exactly, and only, what is meant by the truth.  So, there is a truth “out there”, beyond what you, or I, or any other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function of “home” in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we will terminate the discussion of where it is.

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk’s work.  The kind of question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.  For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please, so Peirce will not hear you), “the REASON that scientists converge on some opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce never would have tolerated it.
________________________________
SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU!
________________________________
If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don’t want to go into the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier message, not to this one.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science."
Exactly! Let me try another tact.
1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in which things worked differently from each other.
2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.) Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e., ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this, leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct, and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas characteristic of successful science.
5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science of the mind would fail pathetically.
6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in either scientific circles or philosophical ones.
7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.
If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.
Best,
Eric

















-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role -- except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense) on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required (in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences of one's) experiences.

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things without having what I would call subjective experience.

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it.

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science.

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity? (Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective experience.)

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really to attribute those processes to computers or software.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the following.

--------------

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand.

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.
[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another ‘s behavior toward you is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil’s Advocate questions, in some ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I was nuts, and we let it go at that.

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.) [NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

--------------

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question, if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected" mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?
[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]



On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate" attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood: cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing someone.

--
? glen

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[Nick Thompson]

Hi, John,

I wouldn't say delusion, if by "delusion" you meant "seeing something there
that isn't there at all".  The word that gets used in these situations is
more likely to be "confusion".  Asking a question which violates the rules
of language and then attributing the answer to an absence of fact.  "What is
the sound of one hand clapping?"  is a violation of the rule of language
that defines "clapping" as the sound of two hands coming together.   What
would I say if you came to me with a severed hand in a plush box and told me
that you had heard it clap?  I guess, I would have to say that you were
either confused or delusional, or both, depending on how you understand the
term "clap."

I have already read Eric's answer to your Charlemagne conundrum, and commend
it to you.   I would say that there is no fact of  the matter, unless it be
the case that you can imagine a series of experiments that would resolve it.
The word "experiment", here, is used in the Peircean sense to refer to a
planned, logical series of arranged experiences.  Digging for Charlemagne's
breakfast plates would perhaps be an example of such an "experiment".  


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 12:47 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Hi Nick,

Thanks for liking my metaphor. In my previous statement I should have noted
that "dualism" for a historian is the analog of dualism for a psychologist
studying conscioisness. You seem to rejerct both. The crucial questions
then, are do you see any talk about "what really happened in the past" as
some sort of delusion? Would you go one step further and say the concept
that there is a truth about what happened in the past is delusional, for
example "We have no way of knowing for certain whether Charlemagne ate eggs
on a particulr day during his life(Say January 1, 800 ad) but there is a
truth about the matter (either he did or did not) even though it is a truth
we can never fully determine?

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:56 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Hi, John,

Welcome to the Weeds!

I like the history metaphor.  What I think Peirce would say is everything
you describe is experience NOW.  Some of those experiences NOW get
understood as experiences THEN.  So, an "experience-then" is just a way of
organizing some of the "experiences-now".  There is no experience beyond
experience.  Put baldly, that sounds like nothing more than a trivial
tautology.   For me, it is a chastening reminder that any knowledge I assert
beyond experience is either (1) nonsense or (2) a statement about some
experiences.

I know my Peirce-guru occasionally lurks, here, and I hope he will correct
me.   In particular, I wish he could remind me why I care about this enough
even to devote a sub thread to it.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 12:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to apply
it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all we have
are relics from the past  --maybe we are uncertain which objects and/or
documents really go back to a historical period under examination--but we
have some way of testing for various relations between these relics. Se then
look for a theory of the past which best accounts for the relics that we
have. We may be able to measure how well different theories do this
accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then history.

But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth about
what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not be
recoverable.


________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric,

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem
interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often
to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you
are interested in what follows.

________________________________
ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ
BELOW THIS LINE ________________________________ I think, Eric,  you left
the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific
opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be
true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out
there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield
stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.


Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there,
concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is
somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note
the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs
later:

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is
possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of
empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of
investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process
takes its course.

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating
altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say
- and perhaps James would not agree - that  "that opinion upon which human
scientists are fated to agree " is exactly, and only, what is meant by the
truth.  So, there is a truth "out there", beyond what you, or I, or any
other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all
humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which
are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best
mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately
converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a
blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning
what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up
hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function
of "home" in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we
will terminate the discussion of where it is.

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk's work.  The kind of
question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.
For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges
and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please,
so Peirce will not hear you), "the REASON that scientists converge on some
opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience
that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce
never would have tolerated it.
________________________________
SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU!
________________________________
If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don't want to go into
the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier
message, not to this one.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to
do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.
thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and
quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally
empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's
easier to do science."
Exactly! Let me try another tact.
1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in
which things worked differently from each other.
2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of
those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up
empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was
particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.)
Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e.,
ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at
the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this,
leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct
prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be
true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out
there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield
stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology
is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply
cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those
big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that
you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not
yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct,
and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect
efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas
characteristic of successful science.
5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can
imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated
empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science
of the mind would fail pathetically.
6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for
centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started
thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it
went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in
either scientific circles or philosophical ones.
7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is
possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of
empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of
investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process
takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know
without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted
science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying
bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted
sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind
seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and
empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that
progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently
uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.
If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate
with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to
study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be
something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and
categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of
psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.
Best,
Eric

















-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role --
except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

[NST==>"close" is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space
metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be
yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the
more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense)
on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the
same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required
(in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences
of one's) experiences.

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you
entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the
same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations,
feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the
amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time
than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am
up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater
familiarity with me than you do, I don't have any special access to me.
<==nst]

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I
think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More
generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll
agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior
in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking
about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things
without having what I would call subjective experience.

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a
steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things,
than a robot "has" a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about
subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I
agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it.

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to
do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.
thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and
quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally
empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's
easier to do science.

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the
Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_t
he_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is
not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign
relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The
upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with
that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not
having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity?
(Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software
even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective
experience.)

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are
using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really
to attribute those processes to computers or software.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam
[mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On
Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to
defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In
response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the
following.

--------------

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from
where you stand.

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean
distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close
you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.
[NST==>"close" is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space
metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be
yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the
more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another 's behavior toward you
is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You
will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the
notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of
equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and
thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time
we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around
me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking
about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than
you do, I don't have any special access to me.   <==nst]

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer
and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil's Advocate questions, in some
ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I
was nuts, and we let it go at that.

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What
does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that
it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must
they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the
projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the
papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.) [NST==>If you insist that
a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.),
than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot "has" a
mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

--------------

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your
paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question,
if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the
second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a
self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the
same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also
don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality
without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected"
mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?
[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the
Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_t
he_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is
not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign
relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]



On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is
meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with
non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate"
attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be
intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of
the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny
preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way
of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface
isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific
details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's
still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become
intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted
for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a
kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic
rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance
of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different
understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe
the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you
see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are
being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood:
cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like
sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a
sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing
someone.

--
? glen

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[gepr]

So, we've dispensed with the question of whether he ate eggs on a particular day.  But how about something more general like the likelihood he ate eggs on a regular basis?  Hypotheses surrounding such a question might include whether domestic chickens (or other egg-laying animals) were common there and then, whether it was in the diet of particular castes, samples from the stomachs or homes of archeological digs only indirectly related to his actual plates, etc.  The (approximate) truth of the particular is then metascientifically inferred, right?  If so, the question becomes one of bounding scientific results, perhaps of an _order_ (0th, 1st, ..., higher order science).

On 02/23/2016 04:41 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> I would say that there is no fact of  the matter, unless it be
> the case that you can imagine a series of experiments that would resolve it.
> The word "experiment", here, is used in the Peircean sense to refer to a
> planned, logical series of arranged experiences.  Digging for Charlemagne's
> breakfast plates would perhaps be an example of such an "experiment".

You guys just refuse to clip your posts.

--
⇔ glen

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[Nick Thompson]

Hi Glen,

 

So here is the logic as I understand it.  Experience is largely random.  However, some experiences repeat.  The more they repeat, the greater the probability that we live in a statistical world in which they will repeat again.  Think of flipping a coin.  Most coin flips in life are random.  But let's say you flip a coin ten times at it comes up HHHHHHHHHH.   With each additional flip, the probability that the flips are drawn from a population of equal numbers of H's and T's declines.  This is how Peirce understands induction.   If it sounds a lot like your freshman stats class, don't be surprised.  Peirce invented some of that.  There is an additional probabilistic logic, of which your procedure is an example, called abduction.  As we increase the number of kinds of evidence that point toward Charlemagne's eating eggs, the probability of his egg-eating increases. 

 

Pray God I have that right.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 6:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

 

 

So, we've dispensed with the question of whether he ate eggs on a particular day.  But how about something more general like the likelihood he ate eggs on a regular basis?  Hypotheses surrounding such a question might include whether domestic chickens (or other egg-laying animals) were common there and then, whether it was in the diet of particular castes, samples from the stomachs or homes of archeological digs only indirectly related to his actual plates, etc.  The (approximate) truth of the particular is then metascientifically inferred, right?  If so, the question becomes one of bounding scientific results, perhaps of an _order_ (0th, 1st, ..., higher order science).

 

On 02/23/2016 04:41 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> I would say that there is no fact of  the matter, unless it be the

> case that you can imagine a series of experiments that would resolve it.

> The word "experiment", here, is used in the Peircean sense to refer to

> a planned, logical series of arranged experiences.  Digging for

> Charlemagne's breakfast plates would perhaps be an example of such an "experiment".

 

You guys just refuse to clip your posts.

 

--

⇔ glen

 

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[Nick Thompson]

John,

 

Below, reforwarded, is the message from Eric that I so enthusiastically endorsed. 

 

To be completely honest, I have never quite gotten the old Peirce  / young Peirce thing.  I know it’s a thing because many wise people have told me about it.  And there are areas of Peirce’s thought  where I think I do detect a change … say with “abduction”, which seems to begin as affirming the consequent and end up as “inspired guessing”.  In that case, I like Eric, prefer the early Peirce. 

 

As to the rest, I cannot speak and, as the philosopher said, “Of that about which I cannot speak, I should remain silent.”

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 9:55 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>; M. D. Bybee <[hidden email]>; John Shook <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

 

Nick,

I worked hard on phrasing those parts ;- ) The first part is specifically worded to avoid the red flags that pragmatism-talk might throw up for some people... I don't think an argument about the psychology that flows from pragmatism need obligate first discussing Pierce's philosophy of science. But we can certainly do it that way if you want.

Regarding the philosophy of science: Peirce would say that it is startling that investigations about anything leads to convergence of agreement amongst serious investigators. It is borderline miraculous, he asserts, and we must latch onto such situations with tenacity whenever we should encounter them.  We would have no reason, were we blank slates, to assume that worlds should contain such consistencies regarding any things that might be investigated. Indeed, were we interested in the past, we would find that the past is dominated by earnest investigators failing utterly to create long-standing convergence of ideas, and would have every reason to be suspicious of such efforts moving forward.

Knowing full well the problem of induction, Peirce also knows that past agreement about a topic need not guarantee future agreement. Until much time and additional investigation has passed, there was no reason to think that the identification of carbon as the organic element would stand the test of time any better than agreement upon the frock coat as the proper attire for an afternoon (but not morning or evening) stroll. Not only might we mistake transient social convergence of ideas for actual scientific progress, we might have not yet gotten to the crucial experiments that will knock down our imagined structures. We might, at the least, always discover that there was something unique about the context of our investigations. (We might realize, for example, that the ground around Tesla's lab works differently than ground does in most other parts of the world. See also physicists, on the behavior of quantum-scale 'particles'.)

With that in mind, Peirce thinks science work the opposite of the way we are taught to think about science in our early years. It is not that knowledge about anything you can imagine will converge if only we can apply the scientific method to it properly. Rather, science is the process of determining those things about which knowledge converges under investigation. And we can never know what those things are, except that we keep trying to do science and miraculously don't fail at it!

Thus, Peirce would declare "science of psychology is possible" to be a hypothesis! It is akin to the failed hypothesis that we could make a science about bumbs on people's heads, and it is akin to the successful hypothesis that we could make a science of "atoms".

James (IMHO) understands the ramifications of this much better than Peirce does. If a science of psychology is possible, then the very foundation of western thinking about psychology must be thrown out? Why? Because the foundation declares a priori that such a science is impossible. Whatever combination of beliefs and logical inferences led those Big Names to declare such a science to be impossible, that amalgamation of ideas must be wrong. Of most obvious note, metaphysical dualism must be wrong. The mind cannot be something independent of the rest of the investigatable world.

But Peirce has been swayed too much by Kant to see how wrong Kant's views about psychology are. Kant takes the difficulties of doing ANY science, and acts as if they are only problems of doing psychology. It is a bum move.

If we are not a priori dualists, then we have no reason to believe that the problem of knowing another person's mind are any different than the problem of knowing anything else about the world.

Best,

Eric

 

 

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

 

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:51 AM, John Kennison <[hidden email]> wrote:

I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to apply it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all we have are relics from the past  --maybe we are uncertain which objects and/or documents really go back to a historical period under examination--but we have some way of testing for various relations between these relics. Se then look for a theory of the past which best accounts for the relics that we have. We may be able to measure how well different theories do this accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then history.

But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth about what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not be recoverable.


________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric,

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you are interested in what follows.

________________________________
ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ BELOW THIS LINE
________________________________
I think, Eric,  you left the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.


Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there, concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs later:

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course.

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say – and perhaps James would not agree – that  “that opinion upon which human scientists are fated to agree “ is exactly, and only, what is meant by the truth.  So, there is a truth “out there”, beyond what you, or I, or any other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function of “home” in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we will terminate the discussion of where it is.

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk’s work.  The kind of question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.  For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please, so Peirce will not hear you), “the REASON that scientists converge on some opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce never would have tolerated it.
________________________________
SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU!
________________________________
If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don’t want to go into the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier message, not to this one.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science."
Exactly! Let me try another tact.
1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in which things worked differently from each other.
2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.) Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e., ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this, leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct, and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas characteristic of successful science.
5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science of the mind would fail pathetically.
6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in either scientific circles or philosophical ones.
7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.
If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.
Best,
Eric

















-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]

email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role -- except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense) on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required (in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences of one's) experiences.

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things without having what I would call subjective experience.

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it.

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science.

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity? (Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective experience.)

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really to attribute those processes to computers or software.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the following.

--------------

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand.

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.
[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another ‘s behavior toward you is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil’s Advocate questions, in some ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I was nuts, and we let it go at that.

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.)
[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

--------------

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question, if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected" mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?
[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate" attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood: cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing someone.

--
⇔ glen

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[John Kennison]

Eric and Nick,

The issue of whether Charlemagne ate eggs for breakfast is not the question I am raising, it is only an illustration of my question. My actual question (as I now understand it) is whether there is a reality to what did and what did not happen in the past that is independent of what we can figure out scientifically (which, I think, only addresses the issue of what probably happened). This is a real question with real consequences, even though I chose to illustrate with a question that is, admittedly, trivial. (But which I thought was so simple it would make my meaning clear.)

I liked the example of transubstantiation vs consubstantiation and agree that it was pretty silly (even though lots of Christians killed other Christians because they disagreed).

Wait a second, does that mean it is a real issue because it clearly had consequences? Perhaps I should say that people were killed because they said they disagreed.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 1:55 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'; 'M. D. Bybee'; 'John Shook'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

John,

Below, reforwarded, is the message from Eric that I so enthusiastically endorsed.

To be completely honest, I have never quite gotten the old Peirce  / young Peirce thing.  I know it’s a thing because many wise people have told me about it.  And there are areas of Peirce’s thought  where I think I do detect a change … say with “abduction”, which seems to begin as affirming the consequent and end up as “inspired guessing”.  In that case, I like Eric, prefer the early Peirce.

As to the rest, I cannot speak and, as the philosopher said, “Of that about which I cannot speak, I should remain silent.”

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 9:55 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>; M. D. Bybee <[hidden email]>; John Shook <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Nick,
I worked hard on phrasing those parts ;- ) The first part is specifically worded to avoid the red flags that pragmatism-talk might throw up for some people... I don't think an argument about the psychology that flows from pragmatism need obligate first discussing Pierce's philosophy of science. But we can certainly do it that way if you want.

Regarding the philosophy of science: Peirce would say that it is startling that investigations about anything leads to convergence of agreement amongst serious investigators. It is borderline miraculous, he asserts, and we must latch onto such situations with tenacity whenever we should encounter them.  We would have no reason, were we blank slates, to assume that worlds should contain such consistencies regarding any things that might be investigated. Indeed, were we interested in the past, we would find that the past is dominated by earnest investigators failing utterly to create long-standing convergence of ideas, and would have every reason to be suspicious of such efforts moving forward.

Knowing full well the problem of induction, Peirce also knows that past agreement about a topic need not guarantee future agreement. Until much time and additional investigation has passed, there was no reason to think that the identification of carbon as the organic element would stand the test of time any better than agreement upon the frock coat as the proper attire for an afternoon (but not morning or evening) stroll. Not only might we mistake transient social convergence of ideas for actual scientific progress, we might have not yet gotten to the crucial experiments that will knock down our imagined structures. We might, at the least, always discover that there was something unique about the context of our investigations. (We might realize, for example, that the ground around Tesla's lab works differently than ground does in most other parts of the world. See also physicists, on the behavior of quantum-scale 'particles'.)
With that in mind, Peirce thinks science work the opposite of the way we are taught to think about science in our early years. It is not that knowledge about anything you can imagine will converge if only we can apply the scientific method to it properly. Rather, science is the process of determining those things about which knowledge converges under investigation. And we can never know what those things are, except that we keep trying to do science and miraculously don't fail at it!
Thus, Peirce would declare "science of psychology is possible" to be a hypothesis! It is akin to the failed hypothesis that we could make a science about bumbs on people's heads, and it is akin to the successful hypothesis that we could make a science of "atoms".
James (IMHO) understands the ramifications of this much better than Peirce does. If a science of psychology is possible, then the very foundation of western thinking about psychology must be thrown out? Why? Because the foundation declares a priori that such a science is impossible. Whatever combination of beliefs and logical inferences led those Big Names to declare such a science to be impossible, that amalgamation of ideas must be wrong. Of most obvious note, metaphysical dualism must be wrong. The mind cannot be something independent of the rest of the investigatable world.

But Peirce has been swayed too much by Kant to see how wrong Kant's views about psychology are. Kant takes the difficulties of doing ANY science, and acts as if they are only problems of doing psychology. It is a bum move.

If we are not a priori dualists, then we have no reason to believe that the problem of knowing another person's mind are any different than the problem of knowing anything else about the world.
Best,
Eric




-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:51 AM, John Kennison <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to apply it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all we have are relics from the past  --maybe we are uncertain which objects and/or documents really go back to a historical period under examination--but we have some way of testing for various relations between these relics. Se then look for a theory of the past which best accounts for the relics that we have. We may be able to measure how well different theories do this accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then history.

But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth about what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not be recoverable.


________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric,

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you are interested in what follows.

________________________________
ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ BELOW THIS LINE
________________________________
I think, Eric,  you left the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.


Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there, concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs later:

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course.

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say – and perhaps James would not agree – that  “that opinion upon which human scientists are fated to agree “ is exactly, and only, what is meant by the truth.  So, there is a truth “out there”, beyond what you, or I, or any other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function of “home” in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we will terminate the discussion of where it is.

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk’s work.  The kind of question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.  For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please, so Peirce will not hear you), “the REASON that scientists converge on some opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce never would have tolerated it.
________________________________
SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU!
________________________________
If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don’t want to go into the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier message, not to this one.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science."
Exactly! Let me try another tact.
1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in which things worked differently from each other.
2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.) Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e., ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this, leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct, and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas characteristic of successful science.
5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science of the mind would fail pathetically.
6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in either scientific circles or philosophical ones.
7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.
If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.
Best,
Eric

















-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:
I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role -- except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense) on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required (in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences of one's) experiences.

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things without having what I would call subjective experience.

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it.

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's easier to do science.

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity? (Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective experience.)

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really to attribute those processes to computers or software.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:
See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the following.

--------------

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand.

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.
[NST==>”close” is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another ‘s behavior toward you is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than you do, I don’t have any special access to me.   <==nst]

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil’s Advocate questions, in some ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I was nuts, and we let it go at that.

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.)
[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.), than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot “has” a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

--------------

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question, if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected" mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?
[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]



On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate" attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood: cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing someone.

--
? glen

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[gepr]

This implies what I tried to state explicitly with the idea of 0th, 1st, 2nd ... order science.  It's only indirectly related to the concept of probability of truth[†].  0th order would be an approachable, extant, limit ... aka a "fact".  1st order would be the inferences (by whatever inferential method you choose) you can make from facts.  2nd order would be inferences you can make from both 0th and 1st order sentences.  Etc. This sort of structure handles both likelihood and cumulative consequences.  But it depends fundamentally on the structures of the inferential methods at and between orders.

[†] A probability some 0th order fact obtains is a kind of "flattening" or projection of all the other ith order sentences down to 0th order (perhaps a 0th order with a different structure than the 0th order used to establish the initial facts).

On 02/24/2016 11:52 AM, John Kennison wrote:
> The issue of whether Charlemagne ate eggs for breakfast is not the question I am raising, it is only an illustration of my question. My actual question (as I now understand it) is whether there is a reality to what did and what did not happen in the past that is independent of what we can figure out scientifically (which, I think, only addresses the issue of what probably happened). This is a real question with real consequences, even though I chose to illustrate with a question that is, admittedly, trivial. (But which I thought was so simple it would make my meaning clear.)
>
> I liked the example of transubstantiation vs consubstantiation and agree that it was pretty silly (even though lots of Christians killed other Christians because they disagreed).
>
> Wait a second, does that mean it is a real issue because it clearly had consequences? Perhaps I should say that people were killed because they said they disagreed.


--
⇔ glen

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[John Kennison]

Glen,

What you said now looks very good to me.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of glen [[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 3:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

This implies what I tried to state explicitly with the idea of 0th, 1st, 2nd ... order science.  It's only indirectly related to the concept of probability of truth[†].  0th order would be an approachable, extant, limit ... aka a "fact".  1st order would be the inferences (by whatever inferential method you choose) you can make from facts.  2nd order would be inferences you can make from both 0th and 1st order sentences.  Etc. This sort of structure handles both likelihood and cumulative consequences.  But it depends fundamentally on the structures of the inferential methods at and between orders.

[†] A probability some 0th order fact obtains is a kind of "flattening" or projection of all the other ith order sentences down to 0th order (perhaps a 0th order with a different structure than the 0th order used to establish the initial facts).

On 02/24/2016 11:52 AM, John Kennison wrote:
> The issue of whether Charlemagne ate eggs for breakfast is not the question I am raising, it is only an illustration of my question. My actual question (as I now understand it) is whether there is a reality to what did and what did not happen in the past that is independent of what we can figure out scientifically (which, I think, only addresses the issue of what probably happened). This is a real question with real consequences, even though I chose to illustrate with a question that is, admittedly, trivial. (But which I thought was so simple it would make my meaning clear.)
>
> I liked the example of transubstantiation vs consubstantiation and agree that it was pretty silly (even though lots of Christians killed other Christians because they disagreed).
>
> Wait a second, does that mean it is a real issue because it clearly had consequences? Perhaps I should say that people were killed because they said they disagreed.


--
⇔ glen

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[Nick Thompson]

Hi, John,

Don't worry.  Nobody took you for somebody who actually cared about
Charlemagne's breakfast menu.  

The point you raise about transubstantiation is I think one that neatly
divides pragmatists.  "If it makes a difference in the behavior of
Christians, the assertion, 'This is the blood and body of christ' has
meaning" is I think the more Jamesian view.  The more Peircean view would
be, I think, "On sober examination by humans examining their experiences
with the substances offered in communion, and the behavior of humans with
respect to the substances, we would have to conclude not only that they were
wine and a wafer, but that everybody in the room KNEW they were was wine and
a wafer.  Who, after all, would drink raw blood that had been left out on
the counter all night?  Hence, the ritual assertion of the nature of the
wine and wafer is nonsense.  

As always, I hope the Peirce experts on the list will correct me.  There are
at least two who have not spoken yet.  

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric and Nick,

The issue of whether Charlemagne ate eggs for breakfast is not the question
I am raising, it is only an illustration of my question. My actual question
(as I now understand it) is whether there is a reality to what did and what
did not happen in the past that is independent of what we can figure out
scientifically (which, I think, only addresses the issue of what probably
happened). This is a real question with real consequences, even though I
chose to illustrate with a question that is, admittedly, trivial. (But which
I thought was so simple it would make my meaning clear.)

I liked the example of transubstantiation vs consubstantiation and agree
that it was pretty silly (even though lots of Christians killed other
Christians because they disagreed).

Wait a second, does that mean it is a real issue because it clearly had
consequences? Perhaps I should say that people were killed because they said
they disagreed.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 1:55 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'; 'M. D. Bybee';
'John Shook'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

John,

Below, reforwarded, is the message from Eric that I so enthusiastically
endorsed.

To be completely honest, I have never quite gotten the old Peirce  / young
Peirce thing.  I know it's a thing because many wise people have told me
about it.  And there are areas of Peirce's thought  where I think I do
detect a change . say with "abduction", which seems to begin as affirming
the consequent and end up as "inspired guessing".  In that case, I like
Eric, prefer the early Peirce.

As to the rest, I cannot speak and, as the philosopher said, "Of that about
which I cannot speak, I should remain silent."

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 9:55 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>;
M. D. Bybee <[hidden email]>; John Shook <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Nick,
I worked hard on phrasing those parts ;- ) The first part is specifically
worded to avoid the red flags that pragmatism-talk might throw up for some
people... I don't think an argument about the psychology that flows from
pragmatism need obligate first discussing Pierce's philosophy of science.
But we can certainly do it that way if you want.

Regarding the philosophy of science: Peirce would say that it is startling
that investigations about anything leads to convergence of agreement amongst
serious investigators. It is borderline miraculous, he asserts, and we must
latch onto such situations with tenacity whenever we should encounter them.
We would have no reason, were we blank slates, to assume that worlds should
contain such consistencies regarding any things that might be investigated.
Indeed, were we interested in the past, we would find that the past is
dominated by earnest investigators failing utterly to create long-standing
convergence of ideas, and would have every reason to be suspicious of such
efforts moving forward.

Knowing full well the problem of induction, Peirce also knows that past
agreement about a topic need not guarantee future agreement. Until much time
and additional investigation has passed, there was no reason to think that
the identification of carbon as the organic element would stand the test of
time any better than agreement upon the frock coat as the proper attire for
an afternoon (but not morning or evening) stroll. Not only might we mistake
transient social convergence of ideas for actual scientific progress, we
might have not yet gotten to the crucial experiments that will knock down
our imagined structures. We might, at the least, always discover that there
was something unique about the context of our investigations. (We might
realize, for example, that the ground around Tesla's lab works differently
than ground does in most other parts of the world. See also physicists, on
the behavior of quantum-scale 'particles'.) With that in mind, Peirce thinks
science work the opposite of the way we are taught to think about science in
our early years. It is not that knowledge about anything you can imagine
will converge if only we can apply the scientific method to it properly.
Rather, science is the process of determining those things about which
knowledge converges under investigation. And we can never know what those
things are, except that we keep trying to do science and miraculously don't
fail at it!
Thus, Peirce would declare "science of psychology is possible" to be a
hypothesis! It is akin to the failed hypothesis that we could make a science
about bumbs on people's heads, and it is akin to the successful hypothesis
that we could make a science of "atoms".
James (IMHO) understands the ramifications of this much better than Peirce
does. If a science of psychology is possible, then the very foundation of
western thinking about psychology must be thrown out? Why? Because the
foundation declares a priori that such a science is impossible. Whatever
combination of beliefs and logical inferences led those Big Names to declare
such a science to be impossible, that amalgamation of ideas must be wrong.
Of most obvious note, metaphysical dualism must be wrong. The mind cannot be
something independent of the rest of the investigatable world.

But Peirce has been swayed too much by Kant to see how wrong Kant's views
about psychology are. Kant takes the difficulties of doing ANY science, and
acts as if they are only problems of doing psychology. It is a bum move.

If we are not a priori dualists, then we have no reason to believe that the
problem of knowing another person's mind are any different than the problem
of knowing anything else about the world.
Best,
Eric




-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:51 AM, John Kennison
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to apply
it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all we have
are relics from the past  --maybe we are uncertain which objects and/or
documents really go back to a historical period under examination--but we
have some way of testing for various relations between these relics. Se then
look for a theory of the past which best accounts for the relics that we
have. We may be able to measure how well different theories do this
accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then history.

But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth about
what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not be
recoverable.


________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] on
behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric,

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem
interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often
to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you
are interested in what follows.

________________________________
ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ
BELOW THIS LINE ________________________________ I think, Eric,  you left
the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific
opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be
true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out
there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield
stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.


Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there,
concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is
somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note
the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs
later:

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is
possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of
empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of
investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process
takes its course.

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating
altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say
- and perhaps James would not agree - that  "that opinion upon which human
scientists are fated to agree " is exactly, and only, what is meant by the
truth.  So, there is a truth "out there", beyond what you, or I, or any
other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all
humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which
are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best
mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately
converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a
blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning
what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up
hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function
of "home" in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we
will terminate the discussion of where it is.

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk's work.  The kind of
question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.
For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges
and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please,
so Peirce will not hear you), "the REASON that scientists converge on some
opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience
that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce
never would have tolerated it.
________________________________
SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU!
________________________________
If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don't want to go into
the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier
message, not to this one.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam
[mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On
Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to
do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.
thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and
quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally
empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's
easier to do science."
Exactly! Let me try another tact.
1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in
which things worked differently from each other.
2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of
those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up
empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was
particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.)
Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e.,
ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at
the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this,
leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct
prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be
true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out
there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield
stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology
is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply
cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those
big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that
you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not
yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct,
and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect
efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas
characteristic of successful science.
5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can
imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated
empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science
of the mind would fail pathetically.
6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for
centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started
thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it
went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in
either scientific circles or philosophical ones.
7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is
possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of
empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of
investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process
takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know
without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted
science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying
bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted
sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind
seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and
empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that
progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently
uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.
If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate
with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to
study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be
something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and
categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of
psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.
Best,
Eric

















-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email:
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:echarles@american
.edu<mailto:[hidden email]>>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:russ.abbott@gmai
l.com<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:
I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role --
except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

[NST==>"close" is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space
metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be
yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the
more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense)
on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the
same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required
(in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences
of one's) experiences.

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you
entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the
same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations,
feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the
amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time
than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am
up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater
familiarity with me than you do, I don't have any special access to me.
<==nst]

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I
think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More
generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll
agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior
in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking
about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things
without having what I would call subjective experience.

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a
steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things,
than a robot "has" a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about
subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I
agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it.

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to
do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.
thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and
quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally
empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's
easier to do science.

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the
Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_t
he_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is
not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign
relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The
upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with
that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not
having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity?
(Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software
even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective
experience.)

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are
using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really
to attribute those processes to computers or software.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:nickth
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:
See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam
[mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:f
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>] On Behalf Of
Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto
:[hidden email]>>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to
defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In
response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the
following.

--------------

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from
where you stand.

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean
distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close
you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.
[NST==>"close" is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space
metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be
yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the
more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another 's behavior toward you
is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You
will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the
notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of
equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and
thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time
we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around
me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking
about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than
you do, I don't have any special access to me.   <==nst]

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer
and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil's Advocate questions, in some
ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I
was nuts, and we let it go at that.

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What
does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that
it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must
they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the
projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the
papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.) [NST==>If you insist that
a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.),
than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot "has" a
mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

--------------

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your
paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question,
if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the
second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a
self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the
same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also
don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality
without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected"
mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?
[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the
Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_t
he_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is
not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign
relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]



On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]
om<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is
meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with
non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate"
attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be
intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of
the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny
preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way
of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface
isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific
details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's
still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become
intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted
for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a
kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic
rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance
of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different
understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe
the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you
see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are
being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood:
cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like
sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a
sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing
someone.

--
? glen

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[Eric Charles-2]

Nick,

I think the Peirce-James divide is there, but I think it plays out differently than you say.

I have, when in a cranky mood, asserted to my Peirce-obsessed colleagues that there is a difference between the idea "I will have cake" and "I'll have cake" because when I go to write them it happens differently. They role their eyes, and I know it is unfair, but it is honestly ambiguous in Peirce's work exactly why it is unfair.

I think Peirce would say that he is only interested in consequences that logically flow from the idea in question. If I asked you to list all the logically derivable consequences of it being "true" that wafers sometimes turned into flesh at a particular point, in a particular ceremony, at no point would you list amongst those consequences that "Members of religion X are going to be so happy about this they will dance in the street." The latter would be a consequence of our providing evidence that transubstantiation was true, but would not be a consequence of the truth itself.

The scientist-qua-scientist is similarly not, for example, in a position to tell your 4th grade grade teacher how dumb that rule about not ending sentences in prepositions is. We could examine various hypotheses about how people react to such sentences under certain circumstances, but the social convention itself is not "true" or "false".

Now, James, I think, took young Peirce to heart when Peirce said he was illustrating the view of the scientist. James misinterpreted that to be a welcome invitation for someone to explore the views of other types of people. A teacher would be fully within his right, for example, to look me in the eyes and say "I don't give a damn what you think. In my classroom, the rule about prepositions is true." The obvious consequence would by my losing point when I write a sentence "wrong." In time we might have an entire world in which people were corrected whenever they made such faux pas, and in such a world there would be nothing wrong (James asserts) with saying that the rule was "true." All the consequences which logically follow from the rule hold true.

While James is explaining this, that vein on Peirce's forehead throbs. If Peirce manages to say anything at all, he might point out that in 500 years language might have changed to the point where there are no such things as prepositions, or an end of a sentence, and so the idea that such a rule is "true" is clearly crazy (periods are, after all, a fairly recent invention).

Alas, the problem, alluded to in my first paragraph might raise its head at some point. Who is Peirce, after all, to claim a monopoly on determining the consequences of an idea? Why can't at least some social conventions count? We know that "they are spelled differently" shouldn't count, and "experiment A will yield results B, but only under conditions C" should count, but where between them do we draw the line? And, should different people be allowed to draw the line in different places?

Best,

Eric

 

On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:56 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi, John,

Don't worry.  Nobody took you for somebody who actually cared about
Charlemagne's breakfast menu.

The point you raise about transubstantiation is I think one that neatly
divides pragmatists.  "If it makes a difference in the behavior of
Christians, the assertion, 'This is the blood and body of christ' has
meaning" is I think the more Jamesian view.  The more Peircean view would
be, I think, "On sober examination by humans examining their experiences
with the substances offered in communion, and the behavior of humans with
respect to the substances, we would have to conclude not only that they were
wine and a wafer, but that everybody in the room KNEW they were was wine and
a wafer.  Who, after all, would drink raw blood that had been left out on
the counter all night?  Hence, the ritual assertion of the nature of the
wine and wafer is nonsense.

As always, I hope the Peirce experts on the list will correct me.  There are
at least two who have not spoken yet.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric and Nick,

The issue of whether Charlemagne ate eggs for breakfast is not the question
I am raising, it is only an illustration of my question. My actual question
(as I now understand it) is whether there is a reality to what did and what
did not happen in the past that is independent of what we can figure out
scientifically (which, I think, only addresses the issue of what probably
happened). This is a real question with real consequences, even though I
chose to illustrate with a question that is, admittedly, trivial. (But which
I thought was so simple it would make my meaning clear.)

I liked the example of transubstantiation vs consubstantiation and agree
that it was pretty silly (even though lots of Christians killed other
Christians because they disagreed).

Wait a second, does that mean it is a real issue because it clearly had
consequences? Perhaps I should say that people were killed because they said
they disagreed.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 1:55 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'; 'M. D. Bybee';
'John Shook'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

John,

Below, reforwarded, is the message from Eric that I so enthusiastically
endorsed.

To be completely honest, I have never quite gotten the old Peirce  / young
Peirce thing.  I know it's a thing because many wise people have told me
about it.  And there are areas of Peirce's thought  where I think I do

detect a change . say with "abduction", which seems to begin as affirming

the consequent and end up as "inspired guessing".  In that case, I like
Eric, prefer the early Peirce.

As to the rest, I cannot speak and, as the philosopher said, "Of that about
which I cannot speak, I should remain silent."

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 9:55 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>;
M. D. Bybee <[hidden email]>; John Shook <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Nick,
I worked hard on phrasing those parts ;- ) The first part is specifically
worded to avoid the red flags that pragmatism-talk might throw up for some
people... I don't think an argument about the psychology that flows from
pragmatism need obligate first discussing Pierce's philosophy of science.
But we can certainly do it that way if you want.

Regarding the philosophy of science: Peirce would say that it is startling
that investigations about anything leads to convergence of agreement amongst
serious investigators. It is borderline miraculous, he asserts, and we must
latch onto such situations with tenacity whenever we should encounter them.
We would have no reason, were we blank slates, to assume that worlds should
contain such consistencies regarding any things that might be investigated.
Indeed, were we interested in the past, we would find that the past is
dominated by earnest investigators failing utterly to create long-standing
convergence of ideas, and would have every reason to be suspicious of such
efforts moving forward.

Knowing full well the problem of induction, Peirce also knows that past
agreement about a topic need not guarantee future agreement. Until much time
and additional investigation has passed, there was no reason to think that
the identification of carbon as the organic element would stand the test of
time any better than agreement upon the frock coat as the proper attire for
an afternoon (but not morning or evening) stroll. Not only might we mistake
transient social convergence of ideas for actual scientific progress, we
might have not yet gotten to the crucial experiments that will knock down
our imagined structures. We might, at the least, always discover that there
was something unique about the context of our investigations. (We might
realize, for example, that the ground around Tesla's lab works differently
than ground does in most other parts of the world. See also physicists, on
the behavior of quantum-scale 'particles'.) With that in mind, Peirce thinks
science work the opposite of the way we are taught to think about science in
our early years. It is not that knowledge about anything you can imagine
will converge if only we can apply the scientific method to it properly.
Rather, science is the process of determining those things about which
knowledge converges under investigation. And we can never know what those
things are, except that we keep trying to do science and miraculously don't
fail at it!
Thus, Peirce would declare "science of psychology is possible" to be a
hypothesis! It is akin to the failed hypothesis that we could make a science
about bumbs on people's heads, and it is akin to the successful hypothesis
that we could make a science of "atoms".
James (IMHO) understands the ramifications of this much better than Peirce
does. If a science of psychology is possible, then the very foundation of
western thinking about psychology must be thrown out? Why? Because the
foundation declares a priori that such a science is impossible. Whatever
combination of beliefs and logical inferences led those Big Names to declare
such a science to be impossible, that amalgamation of ideas must be wrong.
Of most obvious note, metaphysical dualism must be wrong. The mind cannot be
something independent of the rest of the investigatable world.

But Peirce has been swayed too much by Kant to see how wrong Kant's views
about psychology are. Kant takes the difficulties of doing ANY science, and
acts as if they are only problems of doing psychology. It is a bum move.

If we are not a priori dualists, then we have no reason to believe that the
problem of knowing another person's mind are any different than the problem
of knowing anything else about the world.
Best,
Eric




-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-3867" value="[phone]">[phone]   fax: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-1190" value="[phone]">[phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:51 AM, John Kennison
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to apply
it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all we have
are relics from the past  --maybe we are uncertain which objects and/or
documents really go back to a historical period under examination--but we
have some way of testing for various relations between these relics. Se then
look for a theory of the past which best accounts for the relics that we
have. We may be able to measure how well different theories do this
accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then history.

But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth about
what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not be
recoverable.


________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] on
behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric,

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem
interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often
to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you
are interested in what follows.

________________________________
ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ
BELOW THIS LINE ________________________________ I think, Eric,  you left
the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific
opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be
true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out
there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield
stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.


Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there,
concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is
somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note
the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs
later:

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is
possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of
empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of
investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process
takes its course.

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating
altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say

- and perhaps James would not agree - that  "that opinion upon which human

scientists are fated to agree " is exactly, and only, what is meant by the
truth.  So, there is a truth "out there", beyond what you, or I, or any
other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all
humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which
are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best
mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately
converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a
blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning
what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up
hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function
of "home" in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we
will terminate the discussion of where it is.

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk's work.  The kind of
question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.
For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges
and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please,
so Peirce will not hear you), "the REASON that scientists converge on some
opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience
that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce
never would have tolerated it.
________________________________
SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU!
________________________________
If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don't want to go into
the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier
message, not to this one.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam
[mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On
Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to
do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.
thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and
quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally
empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's
easier to do science."
Exactly! Let me try another tact.
1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in
which things worked differently from each other.
2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of
those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up
empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was
particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.)
Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e.,
ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at
the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this,
leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct
prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be
true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out
there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield
stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology
is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply
cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those
big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that
you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not
yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct,
and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect
efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas
characteristic of successful science.
5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can
imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated
empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science
of the mind would fail pathetically.
6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for
centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started
thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it
went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in
either scientific circles or philosophical ones.
7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is
possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of
empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of
investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process
takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know
without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted
science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying
bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted
sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind
seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and
empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that
progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently
uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.
If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate
with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to
study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be
something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and
categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of
psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.
Best,
Eric

















-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email:
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]
.edu<mailto:[hidden email]>>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]
l.com<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:
I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role --
except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

[NST==>"close" is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space
metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be
yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the
more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense)
on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the
same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required
(in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences
of one's) experiences.

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you
entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the
same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations,
feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the
amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time
than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am
up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater
familiarity with me than you do, I don't have any special access to me.
<==nst]

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I
think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More
generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll
agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior
in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking
about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things
without having what I would call subjective experience.

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a
steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things,
than a robot "has" a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about
subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I
agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it.

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to
do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.
thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and
quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally
empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's
easier to do science.

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the
Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_t
he_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is
not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign
relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The
upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with
that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not
having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity?
(Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software
even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective
experience.)

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are
using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really
to attribute those processes to computers or software.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:
See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam
[mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>] On Behalf Of
Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto
:[hidden email]>>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to
defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In
response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the
following.

--------------

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from
where you stand.

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean
distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close
you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.
[NST==>"close" is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space
metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be
yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the
more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another 's behavior toward you
is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You
will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the
notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of
equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and
thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time
we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around
me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking
about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than
you do, I don't have any special access to me.   <==nst]

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer
and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil's Advocate questions, in some
ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I
was nuts, and we let it go at that.

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What
does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that
it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must
they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the
projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the
papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.) [NST==>If you insist that
a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.),
than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot "has" a
mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

--------------

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your
paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question,
if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the
second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a
self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the
same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also
don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality
without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected"
mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?
[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the
Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_t
he_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is
not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign
relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]



On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]
om<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is
meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with
non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate"
attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be
intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of
the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny
preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way
of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface
isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific
details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's
still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become
intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted
for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a
kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic
rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance
of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different
understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe
the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you
see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are
being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood:
cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like
sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a
sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing
someone.

--
? glen

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[Nick Thompson]

Thanks, Eric,

 

I think the word “logical” is important, and I think it relates, in Peirce’s world, to the word, “experiments.”  Experiments are just procedures for revealing the logical structure of experience. 

 

Anyway, perhaps it’s time for us to take even this “weeds” discussion outside.  Nobody but you, me, and John has participated in a couple of days, and I don’t want to be accused – as I often am – of dragging FRIAM into my den and worrying it to death.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 8:14 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

 

Nick,

I think the Peirce-James divide is there, but I think it plays out differently than you say.

I have, when in a cranky mood, asserted to my Peirce-obsessed colleagues that there is a difference between the idea "I will have cake" and "I'll have cake" because when I go to write them it happens differently. They role their eyes, and I know it is unfair, but it is honestly ambiguous in Peirce's work exactly why it is unfair.

I think Peirce would say that he is only interested in consequences that logically flow from the idea in question. If I asked you to list all the logically derivable consequences of it being "true" that wafers sometimes turned into flesh at a particular point, in a particular ceremony, at no point would you list amongst those consequences that "Members of religion X are going to be so happy about this they will dance in the street." The latter would be a consequence of our providing evidence that transubstantiation was true, but would not be a consequence of the truth itself.

The scientist-qua-scientist is similarly not, for example, in a position to tell your 4th grade grade teacher how dumb that rule about not ending sentences in prepositions is. We could examine various hypotheses about how people react to such sentences under certain circumstances, but the social convention itself is not "true" or "false".

Now, James, I think, took young Peirce to heart when Peirce said he was illustrating the view of the scientist. James misinterpreted that to be a welcome invitation for someone to explore the views of other types of people. A teacher would be fully within his right, for example, to look me in the eyes and say "I don't give a damn what you think. In my classroom, the rule about prepositions is true." The obvious consequence would by my losing point when I write a sentence "wrong." In time we might have an entire world in which people were corrected whenever they made such faux pas, and in such a world there would be nothing wrong (James asserts) with saying that the rule was "true." All the consequences which logically follow from the rule hold true.

While James is explaining this, that vein on Peirce's forehead throbs. If Peirce manages to say anything at all, he might point out that in 500 years language might have changed to the point where there are no such things as prepositions, or an end of a sentence, and so the idea that such a rule is "true" is clearly crazy (periods are, after all, a fairly recent invention).

Alas, the problem, alluded to in my first paragraph might raise its head at some point. Who is Peirce, after all, to claim a monopoly on determining the consequences of an idea? Why can't at least some social conventions count? We know that "they are spelled differently" shouldn't count, and "experiment A will yield results B, but only under conditions C" should count, but where between them do we draw the line? And, should different people be allowed to draw the line in different places?

Best,

Eric

 

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

 

On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:56 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi, John,

Don't worry.  Nobody took you for somebody who actually cared about
Charlemagne's breakfast menu.

The point you raise about transubstantiation is I think one that neatly
divides pragmatists.  "If it makes a difference in the behavior of
Christians, the assertion, 'This is the blood and body of christ' has
meaning" is I think the more Jamesian view.  The more Peircean view would
be, I think, "On sober examination by humans examining their experiences
with the substances offered in communion, and the behavior of humans with
respect to the substances, we would have to conclude not only that they were
wine and a wafer, but that everybody in the room KNEW they were was wine and
a wafer.  Who, after all, would drink raw blood that had been left out on
the counter all night?  Hence, the ritual assertion of the nature of the
wine and wafer is nonsense.

As always, I hope the Peirce experts on the list will correct me.  There are
at least two who have not spoken yet.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric and Nick,

The issue of whether Charlemagne ate eggs for breakfast is not the question
I am raising, it is only an illustration of my question. My actual question
(as I now understand it) is whether there is a reality to what did and what
did not happen in the past that is independent of what we can figure out
scientifically (which, I think, only addresses the issue of what probably
happened). This is a real question with real consequences, even though I
chose to illustrate with a question that is, admittedly, trivial. (But which
I thought was so simple it would make my meaning clear.)

I liked the example of transubstantiation vs consubstantiation and agree
that it was pretty silly (even though lots of Christians killed other
Christians because they disagreed).

Wait a second, does that mean it is a real issue because it clearly had
consequences? Perhaps I should say that people were killed because they said
they disagreed.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 1:55 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'; 'M. D. Bybee';
'John Shook'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

John,

Below, reforwarded, is the message from Eric that I so enthusiastically
endorsed.

To be completely honest, I have never quite gotten the old Peirce  / young
Peirce thing.  I know it's a thing because many wise people have told me
about it.  And there are areas of Peirce's thought  where I think I do

detect a change . say with "abduction", which seems to begin as affirming

the consequent and end up as "inspired guessing".  In that case, I like
Eric, prefer the early Peirce.

As to the rest, I cannot speak and, as the philosopher said, "Of that about
which I cannot speak, I should remain silent."

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 9:55 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>;
M. D. Bybee <[hidden email]>; John Shook <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Nick,
I worked hard on phrasing those parts ;- ) The first part is specifically
worded to avoid the red flags that pragmatism-talk might throw up for some
people... I don't think an argument about the psychology that flows from
pragmatism need obligate first discussing Pierce's philosophy of science.
But we can certainly do it that way if you want.

Regarding the philosophy of science: Peirce would say that it is startling
that investigations about anything leads to convergence of agreement amongst
serious investigators. It is borderline miraculous, he asserts, and we must
latch onto such situations with tenacity whenever we should encounter them.
We would have no reason, were we blank slates, to assume that worlds should
contain such consistencies regarding any things that might be investigated.
Indeed, were we interested in the past, we would find that the past is
dominated by earnest investigators failing utterly to create long-standing
convergence of ideas, and would have every reason to be suspicious of such
efforts moving forward.

Knowing full well the problem of induction, Peirce also knows that past
agreement about a topic need not guarantee future agreement. Until much time
and additional investigation has passed, there was no reason to think that
the identification of carbon as the organic element would stand the test of
time any better than agreement upon the frock coat as the proper attire for
an afternoon (but not morning or evening) stroll. Not only might we mistake
transient social convergence of ideas for actual scientific progress, we
might have not yet gotten to the crucial experiments that will knock down
our imagined structures. We might, at the least, always discover that there
was something unique about the context of our investigations. (We might
realize, for example, that the ground around Tesla's lab works differently
than ground does in most other parts of the world. See also physicists, on
the behavior of quantum-scale 'particles'.) With that in mind, Peirce thinks
science work the opposite of the way we are taught to think about science in
our early years. It is not that knowledge about anything you can imagine
will converge if only we can apply the scientific method to it properly.
Rather, science is the process of determining those things about which
knowledge converges under investigation. And we can never know what those
things are, except that we keep trying to do science and miraculously don't
fail at it!
Thus, Peirce would declare "science of psychology is possible" to be a
hypothesis! It is akin to the failed hypothesis that we could make a science
about bumbs on people's heads, and it is akin to the successful hypothesis
that we could make a science of "atoms".
James (IMHO) understands the ramifications of this much better than Peirce
does. If a science of psychology is possible, then the very foundation of
western thinking about psychology must be thrown out? Why? Because the
foundation declares a priori that such a science is impossible. Whatever
combination of beliefs and logical inferences led those Big Names to declare
such a science to be impossible, that amalgamation of ideas must be wrong.
Of most obvious note, metaphysical dualism must be wrong. The mind cannot be
something independent of the rest of the investigatable world.

But Peirce has been swayed too much by Kant to see how wrong Kant's views
about psychology are. Kant takes the difficulties of doing ANY science, and
acts as if they are only problems of doing psychology. It is a bum move.

If we are not a priori dualists, then we have no reason to believe that the
problem of knowing another person's mind are any different than the problem
of knowing anything else about the world.
Best,
Eric




-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-3867">[phone]   fax: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-1190">[phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:51 AM, John Kennison
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to apply
it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all we have
are relics from the past  --maybe we are uncertain which objects and/or
documents really go back to a historical period under examination--but we
have some way of testing for various relations between these relics. Se then
look for a theory of the past which best accounts for the relics that we
have. We may be able to measure how well different theories do this
accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then history.

But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth about
what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not be
recoverable.


________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] on
behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric,

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem
interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often
to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you
are interested in what follows.

________________________________
ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ
BELOW THIS LINE ________________________________ I think, Eric,  you left
the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific
opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be
true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out
there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield
stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.


Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there,
concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is
somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note
the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs
later:

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is
possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of
empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of
investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process
takes its course.

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating
altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say

- and perhaps James would not agree - that  "that opinion upon which human

scientists are fated to agree " is exactly, and only, what is meant by the
truth.  So, there is a truth "out there", beyond what you, or I, or any
other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all
humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which
are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best
mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately
converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a
blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning
what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up
hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function
of "home" in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we
will terminate the discussion of where it is.

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk's work.  The kind of
question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.
For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges
and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please,
so Peirce will not hear you), "the REASON that scientists converge on some
opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience
that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce
never would have tolerated it.
________________________________
SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU!
________________________________
If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don't want to go into
the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier
message, not to this one.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam
[mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On
Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to
do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.
thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and
quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally
empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's
easier to do science."
Exactly! Let me try another tact.
1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in
which things worked differently from each other.
2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of
those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up
empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was
particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.)
Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e.,
ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at
the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this,
leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct
prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be
true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out
there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield
stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology
is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply
cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those
big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that
you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not
yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct,
and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect
efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas
characteristic of successful science.
5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can
imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated
empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science
of the mind would fail pathetically.
6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for
centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started
thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it
went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in
either scientific circles or philosophical ones.
7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is
possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of
empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of
investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process
takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know
without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted
science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying
bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted
sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind
seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and
empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that
progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently
uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.
If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate
with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to
study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be
something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and
categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of
psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.
Best,
Eric

















-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email:
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]
.edu<mailto:[hidden email]>>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]
l.com<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:
I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role --
except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

[NST==>"close" is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space
metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be
yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the
more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense)
on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the
same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required
(in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences
of one's) experiences.

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you
entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the
same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations,
feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the
amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time
than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am
up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater
familiarity with me than you do, I don't have any special access to me.
<==nst]

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I
think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More
generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll
agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior
in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking
about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things
without having what I would call subjective experience.

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a
steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things,
than a robot "has" a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about
subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I
agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it.

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to
do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.
thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and
quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally
empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's
easier to do science.

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the
Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_t
he_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is
not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign
relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The
upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with
that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not
having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity?
(Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software
even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective
experience.)

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are
using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really
to attribute those processes to computers or software.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:
See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam
[mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>] On Behalf Of
Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto
:[hidden email]>>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to
defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In
response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the
following.

--------------

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from
where you stand.

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean
distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close
you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.
[NST==>"close" is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space
metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be
yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the
more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another 's behavior toward you
is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You
will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the
notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of
equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and
thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time
we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around
me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking
about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than
you do, I don't have any special access to me.   <==nst]

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer
and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil's Advocate questions, in some
ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I
was nuts, and we let it go at that.

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What
does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that
it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must
they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the
projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the
papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.) [NST==>If you insist that
a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.),
than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot "has" a
mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

--------------

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your
paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question,
if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the
second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a
self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the
same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also
don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality
without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected"
mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?
[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the
Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_t
he_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is
not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign
relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]



On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]
om<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is
meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with
non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate"
attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be
intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of
the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny
preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way
of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface
isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific
details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's
still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become
intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted
for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a
kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic
rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance
of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different
understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe
the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you
see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are
being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood:
cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like
sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a
sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing
someone.

--
? glen

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[John Kennison]

Glen has also contributed with an idea that I think helps to answer my "real" question. I'll write later about that.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 10:51 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Thanks, Eric,

I think the word “logical” is important, and I think it relates, in Peirce’s world, to the word, “experiments.”  Experiments are just procedures for revealing the logical structure of experience.

Anyway, perhaps it’s time for us to take even this “weeds” discussion outside.  Nobody but you, me, and John has participated in a couple of days, and I don’t want to be accused – as I often am – of dragging FRIAM into my den and worrying it to death.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 8:14 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Nick,
I think the Peirce-James divide is there, but I think it plays out differently than you say.

I have, when in a cranky mood, asserted to my Peirce-obsessed colleagues that there is a difference between the idea "I will have cake" and "I'll have cake" because when I go to write them it happens differently. They role their eyes, and I know it is unfair, but it is honestly ambiguous in Peirce's work exactly why it is unfair.

I think Peirce would say that he is only interested in consequences that logically flow from the idea in question. If I asked you to list all the logically derivable consequences of it being "true" that wafers sometimes turned into flesh at a particular point, in a particular ceremony, at no point would you list amongst those consequences that "Members of religion X are going to be so happy about this they will dance in the street." The latter would be a consequence of our providing evidence that transubstantiation was true, but would not be a consequence of the truth itself.

The scientist-qua-scientist is similarly not, for example, in a position to tell your 4th grade grade teacher how dumb that rule about not ending sentences in prepositions is. We could examine various hypotheses about how people react to such sentences under certain circumstances, but the social convention itself is not "true" or "false".
Now, James, I think, took young Peirce to heart when Peirce said he was illustrating the view of the scientist. James misinterpreted that to be a welcome invitation for someone to explore the views of other types of people. A teacher would be fully within his right, for example, to look me in the eyes and say "I don't give a damn what you think. In my classroom, the rule about prepositions is true." The obvious consequence would by my losing point when I write a sentence "wrong." In time we might have an entire world in which people were corrected whenever they made such faux pas, and in such a world there would be nothing wrong (James asserts) with saying that the rule was "true." All the consequences which logically follow from the rule hold true.

While James is explaining this, that vein on Peirce's forehead throbs. If Peirce manages to say anything at all, he might point out that in 500 years language might have changed to the point where there are no such things as prepositions, or an end of a sentence, and so the idea that such a rule is "true" is clearly crazy (periods are, after all, a fairly recent invention).
Alas, the problem, alluded to in my first paragraph might raise its head at some point. Who is Peirce, after all, to claim a monopoly on determining the consequences of an idea? Why can't at least some social conventions count? We know that "they are spelled differently" shouldn't count, and "experiment A will yield results B, but only under conditions C" should count, but where between them do we draw the line? And, should different people be allowed to draw the line in different places?
Best,
Eric





-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:56 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
Hi, John,

Don't worry.  Nobody took you for somebody who actually cared about
Charlemagne's breakfast menu.

The point you raise about transubstantiation is I think one that neatly
divides pragmatists.  "If it makes a difference in the behavior of
Christians, the assertion, 'This is the blood and body of christ' has
meaning" is I think the more Jamesian view.  The more Peircean view would
be, I think, "On sober examination by humans examining their experiences
with the substances offered in communion, and the behavior of humans with
respect to the substances, we would have to conclude not only that they were
wine and a wafer, but that everybody in the room KNEW they were was wine and
a wafer.  Who, after all, would drink raw blood that had been left out on
the counter all night?  Hence, the ritual assertion of the nature of the
wine and wafer is nonsense.

As always, I hope the Peirce experts on the list will correct me.  There are
at least two who have not spoken yet.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric and Nick,

The issue of whether Charlemagne ate eggs for breakfast is not the question
I am raising, it is only an illustration of my question. My actual question
(as I now understand it) is whether there is a reality to what did and what
did not happen in the past that is independent of what we can figure out
scientifically (which, I think, only addresses the issue of what probably
happened). This is a real question with real consequences, even though I
chose to illustrate with a question that is, admittedly, trivial. (But which
I thought was so simple it would make my meaning clear.)

I liked the example of transubstantiation vs consubstantiation and agree
that it was pretty silly (even though lots of Christians killed other
Christians because they disagreed).

Wait a second, does that mean it is a real issue because it clearly had
consequences? Perhaps I should say that people were killed because they said
they disagreed.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>]
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 1:55 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'; 'M. D. Bybee';
'John Shook'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

John,

Below, reforwarded, is the message from Eric that I so enthusiastically
endorsed.

To be completely honest, I have never quite gotten the old Peirce  / young
Peirce thing.  I know it's a thing because many wise people have told me
about it.  And there are areas of Peirce's thought  where I think I do
detect a change . say with "abduction", which seems to begin as affirming
the consequent and end up as "inspired guessing".  In that case, I like
Eric, prefer the early Peirce.

As to the rest, I cannot speak and, as the philosopher said, "Of that about
which I cannot speak, I should remain silent."

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 9:55 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>;
M. D. Bybee <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>; John Shook <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Nick,
I worked hard on phrasing those parts ;- ) The first part is specifically
worded to avoid the red flags that pragmatism-talk might throw up for some
people... I don't think an argument about the psychology that flows from
pragmatism need obligate first discussing Pierce's philosophy of science.
But we can certainly do it that way if you want.

Regarding the philosophy of science: Peirce would say that it is startling
that investigations about anything leads to convergence of agreement amongst
serious investigators. It is borderline miraculous, he asserts, and we must
latch onto such situations with tenacity whenever we should encounter them.
We would have no reason, were we blank slates, to assume that worlds should
contain such consistencies regarding any things that might be investigated.
Indeed, were we interested in the past, we would find that the past is
dominated by earnest investigators failing utterly to create long-standing
convergence of ideas, and would have every reason to be suspicious of such
efforts moving forward.

Knowing full well the problem of induction, Peirce also knows that past
agreement about a topic need not guarantee future agreement. Until much time
and additional investigation has passed, there was no reason to think that
the identification of carbon as the organic element would stand the test of
time any better than agreement upon the frock coat as the proper attire for
an afternoon (but not morning or evening) stroll. Not only might we mistake
transient social convergence of ideas for actual scientific progress, we
might have not yet gotten to the crucial experiments that will knock down
our imagined structures. We might, at the least, always discover that there
was something unique about the context of our investigations. (We might
realize, for example, that the ground around Tesla's lab works differently
than ground does in most other parts of the world. See also physicists, on
the behavior of quantum-scale 'particles'.) With that in mind, Peirce thinks
science work the opposite of the way we are taught to think about science in
our early years. It is not that knowledge about anything you can imagine
will converge if only we can apply the scientific method to it properly.
Rather, science is the process of determining those things about which
knowledge converges under investigation. And we can never know what those
things are, except that we keep trying to do science and miraculously don't
fail at it!
Thus, Peirce would declare "science of psychology is possible" to be a
hypothesis! It is akin to the failed hypothesis that we could make a science
about bumbs on people's heads, and it is akin to the successful hypothesis
that we could make a science of "atoms".
James (IMHO) understands the ramifications of this much better than Peirce
does. If a science of psychology is possible, then the very foundation of
western thinking about psychology must be thrown out? Why? Because the
foundation declares a priori that such a science is impossible. Whatever
combination of beliefs and logical inferences led those Big Names to declare
such a science to be impossible, that amalgamation of ideas must be wrong.
Of most obvious note, metaphysical dualism must be wrong. The mind cannot be
something independent of the rest of the investigatable world.

But Peirce has been swayed too much by Kant to see how wrong Kant's views
about psychology are. Kant takes the difficulties of doing ANY science, and
acts as if they are only problems of doing psychology. It is a bum move.

If we are not a priori dualists, then we have no reason to believe that the
problem of knowing another person's mind are any different than the problem
of knowing anything else about the world.
Best,
Eric




-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]<tel:%28202%29%20885-3867>   fax: [phone]<tel:%28202%29%20885-1190>
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:51 AM, John Kennison
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:
I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to apply
it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all we have
are relics from the past  --maybe we are uncertain which objects and/or
documents really go back to a historical period under examination--but we
have some way of testing for various relations between these relics. Se then
look for a theory of the past which best accounts for the relics that we
have. We may be able to measure how well different theories do this
accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then history.

But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth about
what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not be
recoverable.


________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>] on
behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric,

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem
interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often
to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you
are interested in what follows.

________________________________
ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ
BELOW THIS LINE ________________________________ I think, Eric,  you left
the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific
opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be
true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out
there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield
stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.


Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there,
concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is
somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note
the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs
later:

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is
possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of
empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of
investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process
takes its course.

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating
altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say
- and perhaps James would not agree - that  "that opinion upon which human
scientists are fated to agree " is exactly, and only, what is meant by the
truth.  So, there is a truth "out there", beyond what you, or I, or any
other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all
humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which
are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best
mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately
converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a
blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning
what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up
hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function
of "home" in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we
will terminate the discussion of where it is.

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk's work.  The kind of
question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.
For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges
and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please,
so Peirce will not hear you), "the REASON that scientists converge on some
opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience
that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce
never would have tolerated it.
________________________________
SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU!
________________________________
If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don't want to go into
the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier
message, not to this one.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam
[mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>] On
Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to
do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.
thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and
quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally
empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's
easier to do science."
Exactly! Let me try another tact.
1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in
which things worked differently from each other.
2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of
those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up
empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was
particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.)
Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e.,
ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at
the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this,
leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct
prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be
true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out
there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield
stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology
is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply
cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those
big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that
you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not
yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct,
and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect
efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas
characteristic of successful science.
5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can
imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated
empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science
of the mind would fail pathetically.
6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for
centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started
thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it
went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in
either scientific circles or philosophical ones.
7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is
possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of
empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of
investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process
takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know
without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted
science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying
bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted
sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind
seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and
empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that
progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently
uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.
If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate
with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to
study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be
something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and
categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of
psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.
Best,
Eric

















-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email:
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>><mailto:echarles@american<mailto:echarles@american>
.edu<mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>><mailto:russ.abbott@gmai<mailto:russ.abbott@gmai>
l.com<http://l.com><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>> wrote:
I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role --
except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

[NST==>"close" is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space
metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be
yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the
more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense)
on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the
same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required
(in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences
of one's) experiences.

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you
entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the
same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations,
feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the
amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time
than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am
up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater
familiarity with me than you do, I don't have any special access to me.
<==nst]

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I
think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More
generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll
agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior
in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking
about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things
without having what I would call subjective experience.

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a
steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things,
than a robot "has" a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about
subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I
agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it.

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to
do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.
thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and
quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally
empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's
easier to do science.

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the
Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_t
he_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is
not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign
relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The
upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with
that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not
having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity?
(Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software
even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective
experience.)

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are
using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really
to attribute those processes to computers or software.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>><mailto:nickth<mailto:nickth>
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>> wrote:
See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam
[mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>><mailto:f<mailto:f>
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>] On Behalf Of
Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto
:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to
defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In
response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the
following.

--------------

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from
where you stand.

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean
distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close
you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.
[NST==>"close" is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space
metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be
yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the
more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another 's behavior toward you
is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You
will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the
notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of
equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and
thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time
we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around
me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking
about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than
you do, I don't have any special access to me.   <==nst]

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer
and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil's Advocate questions, in some
ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I
was nuts, and we let it go at that.

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What
does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that
it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must
they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the
projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the
papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.) [NST==>If you insist that
a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.),
than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot "has" a
mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

--------------

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your
paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question,
if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the
second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a
self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the
same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also
don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality
without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected"
mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?
[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the
Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_t
he_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is
not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign
relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]



On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
om<mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is
meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with
non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate"
attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be
intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of
the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny
preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way
of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface
isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific
details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's
still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become
intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted
for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a
kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic
rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance
of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different
understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe
the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you
see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are
being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood:
cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like
sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a
sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing
someone.

--
? glen

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[Roger Critchlow-2]

This turned up in my Quora feed a few minutes ago:

What is the most effective way to see a person's true personality?

Charles Locke, Producer of lifestyle TV shows. Credits: Fox Life India, CBS Puerto Rico, TuffTV 420 votes

This reminds me of a piece of advice I heard a father offer to his beloved daughter.

"If you really want to learn about your man's character, do not focus on him. He will always be on his best behavior when he's with you. Instead, focus on the behavior of his best friends."

So true. In my experience, best friends can be very different in numerous ways. But they are typically very simil... Read More »

On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:10 AM, John Kennison <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen has also contributed with an idea that I think helps to answer my "real" question. I'll write later about that.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 10:51 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Thanks, Eric,

I think the word “logical” is important, and I think it relates, in Peirce’s world, to the word, “experiments.”  Experiments are just procedures for revealing the logical structure of experience.

Anyway, perhaps it’s time for us to take even this “weeds” discussion outside.  Nobody but you, me, and John has participated in a couple of days, and I don’t want to be accused – as I often am – of dragging FRIAM into my den and worrying it to death.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 8:14 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Nick,
I think the Peirce-James divide is there, but I think it plays out differently than you say.

I have, when in a cranky mood, asserted to my Peirce-obsessed colleagues that there is a difference between the idea "I will have cake" and "I'll have cake" because when I go to write them it happens differently. They role their eyes, and I know it is unfair, but it is honestly ambiguous in Peirce's work exactly why it is unfair.

I think Peirce would say that he is only interested in consequences that logically flow from the idea in question. If I asked you to list all the logically derivable consequences of it being "true" that wafers sometimes turned into flesh at a particular point, in a particular ceremony, at no point would you list amongst those consequences that "Members of religion X are going to be so happy about this they will dance in the street." The latter would be a consequence of our providing evidence that transubstantiation was true, but would not be a consequence of the truth itself.

The scientist-qua-scientist is similarly not, for example, in a position to tell your 4th grade grade teacher how dumb that rule about not ending sentences in prepositions is. We could examine various hypotheses about how people react to such sentences under certain circumstances, but the social convention itself is not "true" or "false".
Now, James, I think, took young Peirce to heart when Peirce said he was illustrating the view of the scientist. James misinterpreted that to be a welcome invitation for someone to explore the views of other types of people. A teacher would be fully within his right, for example, to look me in the eyes and say "I don't give a damn what you think. In my classroom, the rule about prepositions is true." The obvious consequence would by my losing point when I write a sentence "wrong." In time we might have an entire world in which people were corrected whenever they made such faux pas, and in such a world there would be nothing wrong (James asserts) with saying that the rule was "true." All the consequences which logically follow from the rule hold true.

While James is explaining this, that vein on Peirce's forehead throbs. If Peirce manages to say anything at all, he might point out that in 500 years language might have changed to the point where there are no such things as prepositions, or an end of a sentence, and so the idea that such a rule is "true" is clearly crazy (periods are, after all, a fairly recent invention).
Alas, the problem, alluded to in my first paragraph might raise its head at some point. Who is Peirce, after all, to claim a monopoly on determining the consequences of an idea? Why can't at least some social conventions count? We know that "they are spelled differently" shouldn't count, and "experiment A will yield results B, but only under conditions C" should count, but where between them do we draw the line? And, should different people be allowed to draw the line in different places?
Best,
Eric





-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-3867" value="[phone]">[phone]   fax: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-1190" value="[phone]">[phone]

email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:56 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
Hi, John,

Don't worry.  Nobody took you for somebody who actually cared about
Charlemagne's breakfast menu.

The point you raise about transubstantiation is I think one that neatly
divides pragmatists.  "If it makes a difference in the behavior of
Christians, the assertion, 'This is the blood and body of christ' has
meaning" is I think the more Jamesian view.  The more Peircean view would
be, I think, "On sober examination by humans examining their experiences
with the substances offered in communion, and the behavior of humans with
respect to the substances, we would have to conclude not only that they were
wine and a wafer, but that everybody in the room KNEW they were was wine and
a wafer.  Who, after all, would drink raw blood that had been left out on
the counter all night?  Hence, the ritual assertion of the nature of the
wine and wafer is nonsense.

As always, I hope the Peirce experts on the list will correct me.  There are
at least two who have not spoken yet.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric and Nick,

The issue of whether Charlemagne ate eggs for breakfast is not the question
I am raising, it is only an illustration of my question. My actual question
(as I now understand it) is whether there is a reality to what did and what
did not happen in the past that is independent of what we can figure out
scientifically (which, I think, only addresses the issue of what probably
happened). This is a real question with real consequences, even though I
chose to illustrate with a question that is, admittedly, trivial. (But which
I thought was so simple it would make my meaning clear.)

I liked the example of transubstantiation vs consubstantiation and agree
that it was pretty silly (even though lots of Christians killed other
Christians because they disagreed).

Wait a second, does that mean it is a real issue because it clearly had
consequences? Perhaps I should say that people were killed because they said
they disagreed.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>]
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 1:55 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'; 'M. D. Bybee';
'John Shook'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

John,

Below, reforwarded, is the message from Eric that I so enthusiastically
endorsed.

To be completely honest, I have never quite gotten the old Peirce  / young
Peirce thing.  I know it's a thing because many wise people have told me
about it.  And there are areas of Peirce's thought  where I think I do
detect a change . say with "abduction", which seems to begin as affirming
the consequent and end up as "inspired guessing".  In that case, I like
Eric, prefer the early Peirce.

As to the rest, I cannot speak and, as the philosopher said, "Of that about
which I cannot speak, I should remain silent."

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 9:55 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>;
M. D. Bybee <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>; John Shook <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Nick,
I worked hard on phrasing those parts ;- ) The first part is specifically
worded to avoid the red flags that pragmatism-talk might throw up for some
people... I don't think an argument about the psychology that flows from
pragmatism need obligate first discussing Pierce's philosophy of science.
But we can certainly do it that way if you want.

Regarding the philosophy of science: Peirce would say that it is startling
that investigations about anything leads to convergence of agreement amongst
serious investigators. It is borderline miraculous, he asserts, and we must
latch onto such situations with tenacity whenever we should encounter them.
We would have no reason, were we blank slates, to assume that worlds should
contain such consistencies regarding any things that might be investigated.
Indeed, were we interested in the past, we would find that the past is
dominated by earnest investigators failing utterly to create long-standing
convergence of ideas, and would have every reason to be suspicious of such
efforts moving forward.

Knowing full well the problem of induction, Peirce also knows that past
agreement about a topic need not guarantee future agreement. Until much time
and additional investigation has passed, there was no reason to think that
the identification of carbon as the organic element would stand the test of
time any better than agreement upon the frock coat as the proper attire for
an afternoon (but not morning or evening) stroll. Not only might we mistake
transient social convergence of ideas for actual scientific progress, we
might have not yet gotten to the crucial experiments that will knock down
our imagined structures. We might, at the least, always discover that there
was something unique about the context of our investigations. (We might
realize, for example, that the ground around Tesla's lab works differently
than ground does in most other parts of the world. See also physicists, on
the behavior of quantum-scale 'particles'.) With that in mind, Peirce thinks
science work the opposite of the way we are taught to think about science in
our early years. It is not that knowledge about anything you can imagine
will converge if only we can apply the scientific method to it properly.
Rather, science is the process of determining those things about which
knowledge converges under investigation. And we can never know what those
things are, except that we keep trying to do science and miraculously don't
fail at it!
Thus, Peirce would declare "science of psychology is possible" to be a
hypothesis! It is akin to the failed hypothesis that we could make a science
about bumbs on people's heads, and it is akin to the successful hypothesis
that we could make a science of "atoms".
James (IMHO) understands the ramifications of this much better than Peirce
does. If a science of psychology is possible, then the very foundation of
western thinking about psychology must be thrown out? Why? Because the
foundation declares a priori that such a science is impossible. Whatever
combination of beliefs and logical inferences led those Big Names to declare
such a science to be impossible, that amalgamation of ideas must be wrong.
Of most obvious note, metaphysical dualism must be wrong. The mind cannot be
something independent of the rest of the investigatable world.

But Peirce has been swayed too much by Kant to see how wrong Kant's views
about psychology are. Kant takes the difficulties of doing ANY science, and
acts as if they are only problems of doing psychology. It is a bum move.

If we are not a priori dualists, then we have no reason to believe that the
problem of knowing another person's mind are any different than the problem
of knowing anything else about the world.
Best,
Eric




-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016

phone: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-3867" value="[phone]">[phone]<tel:%28202%29%20885-3867>   fax: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-1190" value="[phone]">[phone]<tel:%28202%29%20885-1190>
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:51 AM, John Kennison
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>> wrote:
I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to apply
it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all we have
are relics from the past  --maybe we are uncertain which objects and/or
documents really go back to a historical period under examination--but we
have some way of testing for various relations between these relics. Se then
look for a theory of the past which best accounts for the relics that we
have. We may be able to measure how well different theories do this
accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then history.

But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth about
what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not be
recoverable.


________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>] on
behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>]

Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 1:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Weeds of pragmatism: Subjectivity and intimacy

Eric,

I really like all of you said.  What follows is a cavil, and will problem
interest most readers as much as the bickering among monks about how often
to wash their hair shirts.   Please do not reply to this message unless you
are interested in what follows.

________________________________
ONLY PERSONS UNINTERESTED IN THE WEEDIEST THICKETS OF PRAGMATISM SHOULD READ
BELOW THIS LINE ________________________________ I think, Eric,  you left
the door open for dualism, when you describe the settlement of scientific
opinion, and I need to close it behind you.  You wrote:

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be
true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out
there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield
stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.


Here you imply that science is possible because there is Truth out there,
concerning which human experience is fated to converge.  The real world is
somehow responsible for the convergence of opinion among scientists.   Note
the subtle difference in the way you presented it only a few paragraphs
later:

7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is
possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of
empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of
investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process
takes its course.

Here, you focus exclusively on the convergence of opinion, eliminating
altogether the notion of a truth outside human experience.  Peirce would say
- and perhaps James would not agree - that  "that opinion upon which human
scientists are fated to agree " is exactly, and only, what is meant by the
truth.  So, there is a truth "out there", beyond what you, or I, or any
other individuals might come to believe,  but not a truth beyond what all
humans might come to believe.  All we know now is that those opinions which
are enduring and coherent with other enduring opinions have the best
mathematical chance of being those opinions upon which we will ultimately
converge.  Lets say we are in a group of geographers wandering in a
blizzard.  We are completely disoriented and we have no consensus concerning
what is the right direction home.  Some propose going down hill, some up
hill, some following the slope to the right or left.  What is the function
of "home" in our discussion.  It is the place which, when we get there, we
will terminate the discussion of where it is.

To all intents and purposes, this distinction is monk's work.  The kind of
question only true believers in pragmatism could trouble themselves with.
For the rest of you, who need to get on with your work of building bridges
and electing politicians, you need only say to yourselves (quietly, please,
so Peirce will not hear you), "the REASON that scientists converge on some
opinion is that there is something outside the world of human experience
that beckons them toward it.  Some Truth.  But that is dualism, and Peirce
never would have tolerated it.
________________________________
SEE.  I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BORE YOU!
________________________________
If you want to continue the previous conversation, but don't want to go into
the Weeds Of Pragmatism with me  and Eric, I suggest you reply to an earlier
message, not to this one.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam

[mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>] On
Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Russ said: "Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to
do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.
thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and
quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally
empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's
easier to do science."
Exactly! Let me try another tact.
1) We could imagine (with various levels of clarity) any number of worlds in
which things worked differently from each other.
2) "Doing science" is largely a process of trying to figure out which of
those worlds we live in, by searching for the best way to divide up
empirical evidence, so that it is reliable and can be agreed up. (Peirce was
particularly fascinated with the advances made in 18th century chemistry.)
Scientists search for more and more stable ways to view the world, i.e.,
ways which stand up to more and more empirical scrutiny. (Early attempts at
the periodic table, though imperfect, serve as an excellent example of this,
leading to countless confirmatory experiments, including the correct
prediction of the properties of yet-to-be-isolated elements.)

3) In order to do science about something, we need only one thing to be
true: It can be investigated empirically. That is, it is something, "out
there" which we can turn our machinations towards, and which will yield
stable results once we find the appropriate methods for its investigation.

4) Many important big-name people have declared that a science of psychology
is impossible, because the stuff under discussion in that context simply
cannot be investigated empirically. Kant, is a prime example. Those
big-names declared that another person's mind was not the type of thing that
you could examine empirically, because the province of the soul did not
yield itself to earthly poking and prodding. If those big-names are correct,
and minds cannot be investigated, by their very nature, we would expect
efforts in that direction to fail-to-produce the convergence-of-ideas
characteristic of successful science.
5) We can imagine a world in which those big-names are correct. We can
imagine a world in which many types of things can be investigated
empirically, but not minds, and in which all attempts to produce a science
of the mind would fail pathetically.
6) The above view has had a virtual strangle hold on Western thinking for
centuries. However, in the late 1800's a few serious scholars started
thinking that "science of psychology" might be given a go, to see how it
went. They were widely dismissed, not allowed to hold their heads high in
either scientific circles or philosophical ones.
7) And that's where we find ourselves. If a science of psychology is
possible, then de facto the subject matter of psychology is some swath of
empirically investigatable happenings, about which a community of
investigators would eventually reach a consensus as the scientific process
takes its course. We might not live in such a world, but we won't know
without trying it. A science of ether winds never worked out. The attempted
science of medieval humours was a bust. A science of studying
bumps-on-people's-heads has been roundly rejected. All sorts of attempted
sciences have not worked out over the years. But the science of the mind
seems to be doing reasonably well. Either that progress is an illusion, and
empirical-psychologists will soon go the way of the phrenologists, or that
progress is evidence that the big-names who thought of "mind" as inherently
uninvestigatable were wrong on a very fundamental level.
If you are to study a romantic partner's mind in order to become intimate
with her, then her mind must be something that can be studied. If I am to
study your feeling of intimacy, then your feeling-of-intimacy must be
something that can be studied. And so on, and so forth. Whatever methods and
categories that leads us two, such is the stuff of the science of
psychology, whether it matches any of our preconceptions, or not.
Best,
Eric

















-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email:

[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
.edu<mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Russ Abbott
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

l.com<http://l.com><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>> wrote:
I'm flattered. Thank you. I can see myself in the Devil's Advocate role --
except for the last part. I'll grant that you can think whatever you want.

[NST==>"close" is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space
metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be
yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the
more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

That won't work for my sense of intimacy. One can be intimate (in my sense)
on the telephone and via written words. Sharing (i.e., participating in the
same) experiences is not required for intimacy in my sense. What is required
(in my sense) is sharing (i.e., talking about one's subjective experiences
of one's) experiences.

 [NST==>You will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you
entertain the notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the
same sort of equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations,
feelings, and thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the
amount of time we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time
than you do around me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am
up to, thinking about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater
familiarity with me than you do, I don't have any special access to me.
<==nst]

What does it mean to infer something if one has no subjective experience? I
think of inferring something as having to do with thinking about it. More
generally what does it mean to think about something in your framework? I'll
agree that thinking involves stuff happening in the brain. So it's behavior
in that sense. But it's not behavior in the sense you seem to be talking
about. So what does it mean in your sense to think about something?

I realize I'm on shaky ground here because computers "think" about things
without having what I would call subjective experience.

[NST==>If you insist that a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a
steel cabinet, etc.), then I can only say that if a robot does mind things,
than a robot "has" a mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

I don't insist that a mind is anything. I don't know how to talk about
subjective experience scientifically. I see no reason to deny it, but I
agree we have made little scientific progress in talking about it.

By the way, Eric's point that the world must be a certain way if we are to
do science doesn't make sense to me. If Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.
thought like that they would have denied the two-slit experiments, and
quantum mechanics wouldn't exist. Science (as you all know) is fundamentally
empirical. You can't demand that the world be a certain way so that it's
easier to do science.

[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the
Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_t
he_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is
not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign
relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]

I looked at (but didn't read in any detail) the Intentionality paper. The
upshot seems to be that non-humans have intentionality. I don't argue with
that. My question for you is still how you reconcile intentionality with not
having subjective experience. What is intentionality without subjectivity?
(Again, I'm moving onto shaky ground since we have "goal-directed" software
even though the software and the computer that runs it has no subjective
experience.)

I guess in both cases in which computers seem to "think" or "plan" we are
using those terms as analogs to what we see ourselves doing and not really
to attribute those processes to computers or software.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:23 PM Nick Thompson

<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>> wrote:
See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam
[mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>] On Behalf Of
Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 3:08 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto

:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjectivity and intimacy

Sorry that I'm not responding to Glen, Jochen, or John, but I've got to
defend Nick's devil's advocate.  Nick, you do keep changing the subject.  In
response to your two suggested definitions of intimacy I asked the
following.

--------------

Version 1: Intimacy is just being so close that you see the same world from
where you stand.

I don't know how to understand that. Do you mean close wrt Euclidean
distance? How does that relate to, for example, pain? No matter how close
you are to someone, you can't see, for example, their toothache.
[NST==>"close" is a metaphor;  I am suggesting a co-location in space
metaphor to substitute for the privacy-inside metaphor which I take to be
yours.  I am suggesting, roughly, that the more experiences we share, the
more we are of one mind.  <==nst]

Version 2: When the self you see projected in another 's behavior toward you
is the same as the self you see projected in your own behavior. [NST==>You
will find this sentence totally unintelligible until you entertain the
notion that the self is an inferred entity, inferred using the same sort of
equipment that we use to infer the motives, aspirations, feelings, and
thoughts of others.  What differs between you and me is the amount of time
we spend around me.  To the extent that I spend more time than you do around
me, I am probably a better source of info about what I am up to, thinking
about, etc., ceteris paribus.  Thus, I may greater familiarity with me than
you do, I don't have any special access to me.   <==nst]

If I remember what happened when we last did this Russ, you made me clearer
and a clearer (and Eric, who wrote the Devil's Advocate questions, in some
ways modeled himself after you), but in the end, you just concluded that I
was nuts, and we let it go at that.

I don't know how to understand that either. What do you mean by "self?" What
does it mean to project it toward someone? What does it mean to say that
it's the same self as the one you project? Over what period of time must
they be the same? If we're talking about behavior would it matter if the
projecting entity were a robot? (Perhaps you answered those questions in the
papers I haven't read. Sorry if that's the case.) [NST==>If you insist that
a mind is a thing that is enclosed in a head (or a steel cabinet, etc.),
than I can only say that if a robot does mind things, than a robot "has" a
mind.  But I rebel against the metaphor.  <==nst]

--------------

You responded with a long (and clear and definitive) extract from your
paper. But I don't see how it answers my questions. Wrt the first question,
if we're talking about behavior, distance doesn't see relevant. Wrt the
second question, the extract doesn't (seem to) talk about what you mean by a
self or what it means for the projected behaviors of two of them to be "the
same" -- or even what projected behavior means. Is it the case that you also
don't "believe in" intentionality? After all how can there be intentionality
without a subjective intent? And if that's the case, what does "projected"
mean? Is it the same as oriented in 3D space?
[NST==>I have to run, now, but please see  Intentionality is the Mark of the
Vital<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281409844_Intentionality_is_t
he_mark_of_the_vital> .  Ethology is thick with intentionality. Language is
not an necessary condition for intentionalty.  All is required is the sign
relation (cf Peirce). <==nst]



On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM glen

<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>><mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

om<mailto:[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>>> wrote:

I may as well chime in, too, since none of what's been said so far is
meaningful to me.  My concept of intimacy runs along M-W's 2nd entry:

    2 :  to communicate delicately and indirectly

This is almost nothing to do with subjectivity and almost nothing to do with
non-private knowledge (things others know).  It has to do with "delicate"
attention to detail and, perhaps, manipulation.  A robot could easily be
intimate with a human, and demonstrate such intimacy by catering to many of
the tiny things the human prefers/enjoys, even if each and every tiny
preference is publicly known.  Similarly, 2 robots could be intimate by way
of a _special_ inter-robot interface.  But the specialness of the interface
isn't its privacy or uniqueness.  It's in its handling of whatever specific
details are appropriate to those robots.

Even if inter-subjectivity is merely the intertwining of experiences, it's
still largely unrelated to intimacy.  Two complete strangers can become
intimate almost instantaneously, because/if their interfaces are pre-adapted
for a specific coupling.  There it wouldn't be inter-subjectivity, but a
kind of similarity of type.  And that might be mostly or entirely genetic
rather than ontogenic.

And I have to again be some sort of Morlockian champion for the irrelevance
of thought.  2 strangers can be intimate and hold _radically_ different
understandings of the world(s) presented to them ... at least if we believe
the tales told to us in countless novels. 8^)


On 02/22/2016 12:40 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Nice to see FRIAM is still alive!
> I like this definition as well: "Intimacy is just being so close that you
see the same world from where you stand". In a family for example we are
being so close that we roughly see and experience the same world.
>
> I still believe that the solution to the hard problem lies in Hollywood:
cinemas are built like theaters. If we see a film about a person, it is like
sitting in his or her cartesian theater. We see what the person sees. In a
sense, we feel what the feels as well, especially the pain of loosing
someone.

--
? glen

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[gepr]

Imputing a point, perhaps; observing a person(ality) directly is 0th order.  The inferences one draws from that, the model you build in your head from the 0th order, is 1st order.  Then you also observe their friends' person(alities) to get 0th order observations from them and infer another 1st order model of them.  Then you compare the set of 1st order models, which is a 2nd order inference.

I thought about it this morning and I think I like the word "derivative" better than "order" ... but "derivative" seems to evoke  "deductive".  The way one derives a higher order structure from a lower order one can be arbitrary.  Plus "derive" attributes too much intention, discipline, or rigor to the process.  "Order" is less judgemental.

On 02/25/2016 12:17 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:

> This turned up in my Quora feed a few minutes ago:
>
>> What is the most effective way to see a person's true personality?
>>
>> Charles Locke - Producer of lifestyle TV shows. Credits: Fox Life India, CBS Puerto Rico, TuffTV
>> 420 votes
>>>
>>> This reminds me of a piece of advice I heard a father offer to his beloved
>>> daughter.
>>>
>>> "If you really want to learn about your man's character, do not focus on
>>> *him*. He will always be on his best behavior when he's with you. Instead,
>>> focus on the behavior of his best friends."
>>>
>>> So true. In my experience, best friends can be very different in numerous
>>> ways. But they are typically very simil...

--
⇔ glen

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