The Missing Manifesto

[Nick Thompson]

THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN PRE-APOLOGIZED FOR.  

Phil Henshaw wrote:
 
Sometimes I can't tell from careful efforts to be rigorous (like the common thread in Whitehead, Ryle and Wittgenstein you point out), whether it refers only to semantics and theories or also refers to physical things.    A lack of clarity on whether a subject concerns the forms of mental constructs or the forms of things outside the mind to which we can only point is the most common of the misplaced referents I know of.   To me it's highly relevant whether the subject is inside or outside our minds, as the former tend to be projections which can be associated with any other and are limitlessly pliable and extendable, and the latter are not.   Does your understanding of category error' include that?
 
 
Ah, Phil,
 
THANKS for this comment.  I feel we are on the verge of getting ANOTHER distinction nailed down.  The answer to your question is in the LAST paragraph below.  Like the Recovering Academic I am, I feel the need to lay some ground work, before I Get To The Point .  But you can skip, if you like.  
 
I am (until somebody convinces me otherwise) a REALIST MATERIALIST [MONIST] ANTI-REDUCTIONIST.  (Actually, I might be an UP-REDUCTIONIST, but we will have to decide, after I lay the position out.)  
 
As a REALIST, I believe that there really is stuff OUT there.   More Faith, than reasoned belief.  The alternatives to Realism that I know are Idealism or Solipsism.   For me, the arguments against these are on heuristic grounds:  believing in either is a stupid, mind-numbing, sophomoric waste of time.  (I am told that Kant would disagree.)   One CAN talk to Idealists;   one just has to be prepared to make translations.  Solipsists, on the other hand, are beyond the pale.  
 
As a MATERIALIST, I believe that everything that is REAL consists of matter and its relations.  To avoid letting idealism in the door here (and thus becoming a dualist) I HAVE to insist that mind things,  such as idealists are fond of talking about,  really consist of relations amongst matter or, more likely, relations amongst relations ............(etc.)......amongst relations amongst matter.  In fact, I am perfectly happy conceding that all matter consists of relations amongst relations .... well, not quite all, obviously, but you see the point.  
 
What does a REALIST MATERIALIST [MONIST] ANTI-REDUCTIONIST say about MIND things.  Well mind things have to be relations amongst matter, just like everything else.  But where are they "located"?  In the head, obviously, right?   BZZZZT! WRONG! That would make me a BRAIN-STATE REDUCTIONIST, which I refuse to be, even for a moment.  NO, mind states are located in the relation between an organism?s surroundings, and an organism's actions.  Thus they are not IN the organism, but they are OF it, in the sense that your automobile is not in you but OF you.  You possess your mind in the roughly same sense that you possess your automobile   It is your mind in the sense that it is indexed to you.   Your mind is the relation between your acts and your circumstances, and it is via your body that your acts and your circumstances can be related.  But your ownership of your mind is no more IN your body than your ownership of your car is IN the paper on which the title is written.    (In Wittgenstein talk, the statement "the mind is in the head" does not warrant conversations about where in the head it can be found, because "the mind is in the head" is a different word game than "the computer is in the briefcase."  Never point to your temple, when you say that I am crazy.    
 
Whether I am an ANTI-REDUCTIONIST or an UP-REDUCTIONIST depends on how one understands reductionism.  Here is a standard definition of reductionism, courtesy of  http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/r.htm#reduc 
 
reductionism
Belief that statements or expressions of one sort can be replaced systematically by statements or expressions of a simpler or more certain kind. Thus, for example, some philosophers have held that arithmetic can be reduced to logic, that the mental can be reduced to the physical, or that the life sciences can be reduced to the physical sciences.
Note that the definition has two parts: the first part implies nothing about levels of organization.  The second part consists of two examples of DOWN reduction.  While I agree that most everyday examples of reduction that are instances  of DOWN reduction,  I think of a reductionism as a rhetorical move that has  nothing essential to do with UP or DOWN in the scale of nature, but with the speakers sense of the ease or certainty of making a claim.  Thus I think of myself as an UP-REDUCTIONIST with respect to the MIND because I think of the mind as "just" (simply, obviously, more certainly) a set of relations rather than (complexly, confusedly, and uneasily) a thing within the head.
 
Why am I so dead set against being a DOWN-REDUCTIONIST?  For the same sorts of reasons that I against being an idealist!  I think that identifying the mind with things going on in the brain leads to a lot of crazy, useless talk.  For one thing, we know absolutely zippo about the brain, yet we know a tremendous amount about the mind.  And since we know of minds from observations of the behavior of people in relation to their circumstances, we ought to speak of MINDS as if that is exactly what they are.  One of the great advantage off this policy is that it leaves open the possibility of speaking of brain states as causes of mind states, which a brain state reductionist is logically forbidden from ever doing.   Nothing can cause itself.  
 
A long way to come to answer what I am sure seemed to you a straight forward question.  I think my answer is "BOTH!", and that the confusion you fear may be deeply included in my way of thinking as a POLICY.   But I think that with some care, error can be avoided.  When I speak of events that you speak of as going on in somebody's head, I am speaking of an evident material relation between that person, his or her behavior, and his or her environment.  And I would say that attributions to the HEAD constitute a category error.   Moreover, I would that speaking of mental events as occurring in the instant is  metonymy (a polite poetic word for "misplaced concreteness") in so far as one is claiming that a thought, feeling, desire, belief, lives in an instant, rather than in a haze of relations with which the current instant is compatible.  So, if you say that you believe that there is coffee in the cup in front of you, I would identify that statement with a particular material relation between your behavior with respect to the cup and the position, temperature, weight of the cup and with a haze of material relations that in general characterize "belief".  .  I would be confirmed in that attribution if, for instance, the cup had no coffee, so that when you reached for it, the cup rose into the air in a unexpected way.  If you assert  only that there is coffee in the cup, I would take this as an entirely different material assertion, and look into the cup to see if there was a dark brown, savory liquid therein.  
 
Does this make any damn sense at all?  Though I am certain you reject it as a position,  BUT DO YOU NOW UNDERSTAND IT?  Because, if so, we could stop talking about it and just refer to it as Nick's #21, like that old joke about commuters and their jokes on the Long Island Railroad.  
 
Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (nthompson at clarku.edu)
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[Phil Henshaw-2]

Well... It was not exactly the succinct and simple response that I think
the subject needs from us... but I certainly believe in the many worlds
viewpoint of perceptual viewpoints, and can see from many viewpoints why
that all can't be successfully reduced, for one case in point, simply
because every physically emergent new thought is itself an
unreconstructed new viewpoint.   You can't have the same thought twice
the same way you can't step into the same river twice.
 
You may see in that statement my recognition of thoughts as individual
physical happenings, that come about in the usual way that emergent
things emerge, from a seed of some beginning, drawing from diverse
resources, in this case of a life's mental and emotional experience, etc
etc.    It's one way to rigorously and systematically distinguish
between thought as physical phenomenon with emergent physical form,
which can be studied by any means available for identifying its
progressions.   Well, that's my method, anyway, studying the
progression.  
 
Tracing the developmental history of a thought is easier to do with the
development of a train of thought that develops over the course of a day
or a month or something, than with an 'instant' thought like 'wow what a
babe' or 'wow what a hunk' or whatever.    Even with those spontaneous
unguarded notions I do believe I can perceive a clear sort of 'con
trail' or 'thermal trace' of the array of intuitions that were triggered
and conspired to cause the particular thought to flash across my mind.
I guess I just like thinking about thoughts as real things, and have
found it seemingly productive in helping me sort out the many mutually
incompatible mind worlds we each individually fabricate.  
 
It's all real, the real thought, the real language, the real world, even
if we each make up our own very substantially different interface with
it all and make even more of a mess of the situation by being largely
unaware of that fact.    Greatly reducing that is not very realistic of
course, but reducing it somewhat would, I think, lend some important
sanity to our world.    Just the simple observation that everyone
actually does make up their own personal and original interpretative
interface with the rest of the world, and language, and each other, to
me is a great and useful simplification of the otherwise very much more
confusing evidence.   Then that opens the door to noticing the
difference between thought and things.  They're built different, in
several very consistent ways.   "Things are not images, they're stuff",
is one of them, and the main difference I notice there is that things
exist as developmental histories in time, and images are timeless
projections of some climax idea.   That is what's imaginary to me, not
that there's anything wrong with imagination, mind you.    It works for
me anyway.
 

Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040                      
tel: [phone]                
e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com          
explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/>    

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 11:53 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] The Missing Manifesto





THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN PRE-APOLOGIZED FOR.  
 

Phil Henshaw wrote:

 

Sometimes I can't tell from careful efforts to be rigorous (like the
common thread in Whitehead, Ryle and Wittgenstein you point out),
whether it refers only to semantics and theories or also refers to
physical things.    A lack of clarity on whether a subject concerns the
forms of mental constructs or the forms of things outside the mind to
which we can only point is the most common of the misplaced referents I
know of.   To me it's highly relevant whether the subject is inside or
outside our minds, as the former tend to be projections which can be
associated with any other and are limitlessly pliable and extendable,
and the latter are not.   Does your understanding of category error'
include that?

 

 

Ah, Phil,

 

THANKS for this comment.  I feel we are on the verge of getting ANOTHER
distinction nailed down.  The answer to your question is in the LAST
paragraph below.  Like the Recovering Academic I am, I feel the need to
lay some ground work, before I Get To The Point .  But you can skip, if
you like.  

 

I am (until somebody convinces me otherwise) a REALIST MATERIALIST
[MONIST] ANTI-REDUCTIONIST.  (Actually, I might be an UP-REDUCTIONIST,
but we will have to decide, after I lay the position out.)  

 

As a REALIST, I believe that there really is stuff OUT there.   More
Faith, than reasoned belief.  The alternatives to Realism that I know
are Idealism or Solipsism.   For me, the arguments against these are on
heuristic grounds:  believing in either is a stupid, mind-numbing,
sophomoric waste of time.  (I am told that Kant would disagree.)   One
CAN talk to Idealists;   one just has to be prepared to make
translations.  Solipsists, on the other hand, are beyond the pale.  

 

As a MATERIALIST, I believe that everything that is REAL consists of
matter and its relations.  To avoid letting idealism in the door here
(and thus becoming a dualist) I HAVE to insist that mind things,  such
as idealists are fond of talking about,  really consist of relations
amongst matter or, more likely, relations amongst relations
............(etc.)......amongst relations amongst matter.  In fact, I am
perfectly happy conceding that all matter consists of relations amongst
relations .... well, not quite all, obviously, but you see the point.  

 

What does a REALIST MATERIALIST [MONIST] ANTI-REDUCTIONIST say about
MIND things.  Well mind things have to be relations amongst matter, just
like everything else.  But where are they "located"?  In the head,
obviously, right?   BZZZZT! WRONG! That would make me a BRAIN-STATE
REDUCTIONIST, which I refuse to be, even for a moment.  NO, mind states
are located in the relation between an organism?s surroundings, and an
organism's actions.  Thus they are not IN the organism, but they are OF
it, in the sense that your automobile is not in you but OF you.  You
possess your mind in the roughly same sense that you possess your
automobile   It is your mind in the sense that it is indexed to you.
Your mind is the relation between your acts and your circumstances, and
it is via your body that your acts and your circumstances can be
related.  But your ownership of your mind is no more IN your body than
your ownership of your car is IN the paper on which the title is
written.    (In Wittgenstein talk, the statement "the mind is in the
head" does not warrant convers ations about where in the head it can be
found, because "the mind is in the head" is a different word game than
"the computer is in the briefcase."  Never point to your temple, when
you say that I am crazy.    

 

Whether I am an ANTI-REDUCTIONIST or an UP-REDUCTIONIST depends on how
one understands reductionism.  Here is a standard definition of
reductionism, courtesy of
<http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/r.htm#reduc>
http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/r.htm#reduc 

 

reductionism

Belief that statements or expressions of one sort can be replaced
systematically by statements or expressions of a simpler or more certain
kind. Thus, for example, some philosophers have held that
<http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/l5.htm#logz> arithmetic can be
reduced to logic, that  <http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/p5.htm#phys>
the mental can be reduced to the physical, or that
<http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/n.htm#nagel> the life sciences can be
reduced to the physical sciences.

Note that the definition has two parts: the first part implies nothing
about levels of organization.  The second part consists of two examples
of DOWN reduction.  While I agree that most everyday examples of
reduction that are instances  of DOWN reduction,  I think of a
reductionism as a rhetorical move that has  nothing essential to do with
UP or DOWN in the scale of nature, but with the speakers sense of the
ease or certainty of making a claim.  Thus I think of myself as an
UP-REDUCTIONIST with respect to the MIND because I think of the mind as
"just" (simply, obviously, more certainly) a set of relations rather
than (complexly, confusedly, and uneasily) a thing within the head.

 

Why am I so dead set against being a DOWN-REDUCTIONIST?  For the same
sorts of reasons that I against being an idealist!  I think that
identifying the mind with things going on in the brain leads to a lot of
crazy, useless talk.  For one thing, we know absolutely zippo about the
brain, yet we know a tremendous amount about the mind.  And since we
know of minds from observations of the behavior of people in relation to
their circumstances, we ought to speak of MINDS as if that is exactly
what they are.  One of the great advantage off this policy is that it
leaves open the possibility of speaking of brain states as causes of
mind states, which a brain state reductionist is logically forbidden
from ever doing.   Nothing can cause itself.  

 

A long way to come to answer what I am sure seemed to you a straight
forward question.  I think my answer is "BOTH!", and that the confusion
you fear may be deeply included in my way of thinking as a POLICY.   But
I think that with some care, error can be avoided.  When I speak of
events that you speak of as going on in somebody's head, I am speaking
of an evident material relation between that person, his or her
behavior, and his or her environment.  And I would say that attributions
to the HEAD constitute a category error.   Moreover, I would that
speaking of mental events as occurring in the instant is  metonymy (a
polite poetic word for "misplaced concreteness") in so far as one is
claiming that a thought, feeling, desire, belief, lives in an instant,
rather than in a haze of relations with which the current instant is
compatible.  So, if you say that you believe that there is coffee in the
cup in front of you, I would identify that statement with a particular
material relation between your behavior with respect to the cup and the
position, temperature, weight of the cup and with a haze of material
relations that in general characterize "belief".  .  I would be
confirmed in that attribution if, for instance, the cup had no coffee,
so that when you reached for it, the cup rose into the air in a
unexpected way.  If you assert  only that there is coffee in the cup, I
would take this as an entirely different material assertion, and look
into the cup to see if there was a dark brown, savory liquid therein.  

 

Does this make any damn sense at all?  Though I am certain you reject it
as a position,  BUT DO YOU NOW UNDERSTAND IT?  Because, if so, we could
stop talking about it and just refer to it as Nick's #21, like that old
joke about commuters and their jokes on the Long Island Railroad.  

 

Nick

 
 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University
(nthompson at clarku.edu)
 
 
 



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