Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

[thompnickson2]

Hi, everybody,

 

I am striving mightily to get my brain out of the corvid19 cesspit, and Stephen and Glen have been helping me, in part by talking about an old wrangle that Stephen and I have shared over the role of selection (if any) in evolution.   In these arguments, I have always felt that Stephen has strived to maneuver me into the sights of his largest gun, but, whenever he fires it, the shells seem to go whizzing by me as if fired at somebody else entirely.   So this letter is written primarily to Glen and Steve, but I post it here because I think some few of you (Dave?) may have something to say about what I say, here.  

 

I have often said that FRIAM saved my intellectual bacon.  I say this because when I came to Santa Fe in 2006, it was to help my wife help my son and his wife raise my infant grandchildren  -- clearly not a full time job.  I justified the venture to my provost with vague hope that I would attach myself either to the evolutionary psychology group at UNM or to the Santa Fe Institute or both.  In fact, neither panned out. 

 

And thus, cast loose in Santa Fe, I fell into the arms of Stephen, Carl, and Owen, and …   FRIAM.  The attached abstract of  piece I never wrote (because I never could dragoon Gillian Barker into writing for me) reveals the state of my mind at the time.  I was clearly already teetering between selectionist and systemist thinking.  It had dawned on me during my previous sabbatical down the corridor from Lyn Margulis that any theory of natural selection required as a precondition additivity of variance, and nothing that we had learned about epigenesis in the previous gave us much hope that additivity of variance was a likely condition of inheritance.  So, if additivity of variance was not an obvious consequence of epigenetic relations, it must somehow be an achievement of them.  Two possibilities occurred to me at the time: one is that genetic mechanisms were themselves selected for “fairness” – a selectionist explanation; or, that fairness somehow fell out of the underlying chemical and biological structures – a systemist explanation.

 

This is already enough biography to choke a horse, so I shall wrap up, here.  Suffice it to say that, when Stephen showed me Wolfram’s book I was stunned.  Here was a demonstration of how simple rules could generate complex structures without any nudges from any selection mechanism.  Could additivity of variance and, therefore, natural selection, itself “fall out” of chemical and energetic relations.  Could systems coddle natural selection the way rear flank downdrafts coddle a tornado.   Could we have natural selection for free.

 

Only in my late 60’s at the time, I harbored the illusion that I myself could be come a master of the art of computation.  Alas, that ship had sailed.  So, now you see me.  “I yam what I yam,” as Popeye used  to say.  But one thing I yam NOT is the ferocious adherent to genic selection theory that Stephen needs me to be if I am going to be felled by his biggest gun.

 

And now I have to cook dinner for my 13 and 17 year old grandchildren.  The oldest is learning rendering from Stephen.  Life will go on!

 

Ever grateful for your assistance,

 

Nick

 

 

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Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
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[Jochen Fromm-5]

Hi Nick,

have you thought about turning your ideas about the hard problem of consciousness into an article or book? 10 years ago you had this nice idea of a cross section of reality, a unique slice of the same world that is responsible for our subjective experience. Our discussion in 2010 inspired me to write these blog posts (which nobody except Glen read):

http://blog.cas-group.net/2010/11/the-solution-to-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2011/11/path-dependent-subjective-experience/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2013/06/solving_the_problem_of_subjectivity/

I believe this approach is a good explanation for the hard problem. It is what Hollywood has been doing for the last 100 years: showing us what it is like to be someone else. In this sense Hollywood has solved the biggest problem of philosophy. As I said the biggest secrets are often hidden in plain sight.

-J.

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/26/20 23:05 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Cc: [hidden email], [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

Hi, everybody,

 

I am striving mightily to get my brain out of the corvid19 cesspit, and Stephen and Glen have been helping me, in part by talking about an old wrangle that Stephen and I have shared over the role of selection (if any) in evolution.   In these arguments, I have always felt that Stephen has strived to maneuver me into the sights of his largest gun, but, whenever he fires it, the shells seem to go whizzing by me as if fired at somebody else entirely.   So this letter is written primarily to Glen and Steve, but I post it here because I think some few of you (Dave?) may have something to say about what I say, here.  

 

I have often said that FRIAM saved my intellectual bacon.  I say this because when I came to Santa Fe in 2006, it was to help my wife help my son and his wife raise my infant grandchildren  -- clearly not a full time job.  I justified the venture to my provost with vague hope that I would attach myself either to the evolutionary psychology group at UNM or to the Santa Fe Institute or both.  In fact, neither panned out. 

 

And thus, cast loose in Santa Fe, I fell into the arms of Stephen, Carl, and Owen, and …   FRIAM.  The attached abstract of  piece I never wrote (because I never could dragoon Gillian Barker into writing for me) reveals the state of my mind at the time.  I was clearly already teetering between selectionist and systemist thinking.  It had dawned on me during my previous sabbatical down the corridor from Lyn Margulis that any theory of natural selection required as a precondition additivity of variance, and nothing that we had learned about epigenesis in the previous gave us much hope that additivity of variance was a likely condition of inheritance.  So, if additivity of variance was not an obvious consequence of epigenetic relations, it must somehow be an achievement of them.  Two possibilities occurred to me at the time: one is that genetic mechanisms were themselves selected for “fairness” – a selectionist explanation; or, that fairness somehow fell out of the underlying chemical and biological structures – a systemist explanation.

 

This is already enough biography to choke a horse, so I shall wrap up, here.  Suffice it to say that, when Stephen showed me Wolfram’s book I was stunned.  Here was a demonstration of how simple rules could generate complex structures without any nudges from any selection mechanism.  Could additivity of variance and, therefore, natural selection, itself “fall out” of chemical and energetic relations.  Could systems coddle natural selection the way rear flank downdrafts coddle a tornado.   Could we have natural selection for free.

 

Only in my late 60’s at the time, I harbored the illusion that I myself could be come a master of the art of computation.  Alas, that ship had sailed.  So, now you see me.  “I yam what I yam,” as Popeye used  to say.  But one thing I yam NOT is the ferocious adherent to genic selection theory that Stephen needs me to be if I am going to be felled by his biggest gun.

 

And now I have to cook dinner for my 13 and 17 year old grandchildren.  The oldest is learning rendering from Stephen.  Life will go on!

 

Ever grateful for your assistance,

 

Nick

 

 

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...
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Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
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[thompnickson2]

Yikes.  I forgot to attach the attachment.

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2020 4:13 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Cc: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Hi Nick,

 

have you thought about turning your ideas about the hard problem of consciousness into an article or book? 10 years ago you had this nice idea of a cross section of reality, a unique slice of the same world that is responsible for our subjective experience. Our discussion in 2010 inspired me to write these blog posts (which nobody except Glen read):

http://blog.cas-group.net/2010/11/the-solution-to-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2011/11/path-dependent-subjective-experience/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2013/06/solving_the_problem_of_subjectivity/

 

I believe this approach is a good explanation for the hard problem. It is what Hollywood has been doing for the last 100 years: showing us what it is like to be someone else. In this sense Hollywood has solved the biggest problem of philosophy. As I said the biggest secrets are often hidden in plain sight.

 

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/26/20 23:05 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Cc: [hidden email], [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Hi, everybody,

 

I am striving mightily to get my brain out of the corvid19 cesspit, and Stephen and Glen have been helping me, in part by talking about an old wrangle that Stephen and I have shared over the role of selection (if any) in evolution.   In these arguments, I have always felt that Stephen has strived to maneuver me into the sights of his largest gun, but, whenever he fires it, the shells seem to go whizzing by me as if fired at somebody else entirely.   So this letter is written primarily to Glen and Steve, but I post it here because I think some few of you (Dave?) may have something to say about what I say, here.  

 

I have often said that FRIAM saved my intellectual bacon.  I say this because when I came to Santa Fe in 2006, it was to help my wife help my son and his wife raise my infant grandchildren  -- clearly not a full time job.  I justified the venture to my provost with vague hope that I would attach myself either to the evolutionary psychology group at UNM or to the Santa Fe Institute or both.  In fact, neither panned out. 

 

And thus, cast loose in Santa Fe, I fell into the arms of Stephen, Carl, and Owen, and …   FRIAM.  The attached abstract of  piece I never wrote (because I never could dragoon Gillian Barker into writing for me) reveals the state of my mind at the time.  I was clearly already teetering between selectionist and systemist thinking.  It had dawned on me during my previous sabbatical down the corridor from Lyn Margulis that any theory of natural selection required as a precondition additivity of variance, and nothing that we had learned about epigenesis in the previous gave us much hope that additivity of variance was a likely condition of inheritance.  So, if additivity of variance was not an obvious consequence of epigenetic relations, it must somehow be an achievement of them.  Two possibilities occurred to me at the time: one is that genetic mechanisms were themselves selected for “fairness” – a selectionist explanation; or, that fairness somehow fell out of the underlying chemical and biological structures – a systemist explanation.

 

This is already enough biography to choke a horse, so I shall wrap up, here.  Suffice it to say that, when Stephen showed me Wolfram’s book I was stunned.  Here was a demonstration of how simple rules could generate complex structures without any nudges from any selection mechanism.  Could additivity of variance and, therefore, natural selection, itself “fall out” of chemical and energetic relations.  Could systems coddle natural selection the way rear flank downdrafts coddle a tornado.   Could we have natural selection for free.

 

Only in my late 60’s at the time, I harbored the illusion that I myself could be come a master of the art of computation.  Alas, that ship had sailed.  So, now you see me.  “I yam what I yam,” as Popeye used  to say.  But one thing I yam NOT is the ferocious adherent to genic selection theory that Stephen needs me to be if I am going to be felled by his biggest gun.

 

And now I have to cook dinner for my 13 and 17 year old grandchildren.  The oldest is learning rendering from Stephen.  Life will go on!

 

Ever grateful for your assistance,

 

Nick

 

 

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Good work, Nick.  Another example of how both-and is better than either-or.

On Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 4:47 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yikes.  I forgot to attach the attachment.

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2020 4:13 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Cc: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Hi Nick,

 

have you thought about turning your ideas about the hard problem of consciousness into an article or book? 10 years ago you had this nice idea of a cross section of reality, a unique slice of the same world that is responsible for our subjective experience. Our discussion in 2010 inspired me to write these blog posts (which nobody except Glen read):

http://blog.cas-group.net/2010/11/the-solution-to-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2011/11/path-dependent-subjective-experience/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2013/06/solving_the_problem_of_subjectivity/

 

I believe this approach is a good explanation for the hard problem. It is what Hollywood has been doing for the last 100 years: showing us what it is like to be someone else. In this sense Hollywood has solved the biggest problem of philosophy. As I said the biggest secrets are often hidden in plain sight.

 

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/26/20 23:05 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Cc: [hidden email], [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Hi, everybody,

 

I am striving mightily to get my brain out of the corvid19 cesspit, and Stephen and Glen have been helping me, in part by talking about an old wrangle that Stephen and I have shared over the role of selection (if any) in evolution.   In these arguments, I have always felt that Stephen has strived to maneuver me into the sights of his largest gun, but, whenever he fires it, the shells seem to go whizzing by me as if fired at somebody else entirely.   So this letter is written primarily to Glen and Steve, but I post it here because I think some few of you (Dave?) may have something to say about what I say, here.  

 

I have often said that FRIAM saved my intellectual bacon.  I say this because when I came to Santa Fe in 2006, it was to help my wife help my son and his wife raise my infant grandchildren  -- clearly not a full time job.  I justified the venture to my provost with vague hope that I would attach myself either to the evolutionary psychology group at UNM or to the Santa Fe Institute or both.  In fact, neither panned out. 

 

And thus, cast loose in Santa Fe, I fell into the arms of Stephen, Carl, and Owen, and …   FRIAM.  The attached abstract of  piece I never wrote (because I never could dragoon Gillian Barker into writing for me) reveals the state of my mind at the time.  I was clearly already teetering between selectionist and systemist thinking.  It had dawned on me during my previous sabbatical down the corridor from Lyn Margulis that any theory of natural selection required as a precondition additivity of variance, and nothing that we had learned about epigenesis in the previous gave us much hope that additivity of variance was a likely condition of inheritance.  So, if additivity of variance was not an obvious consequence of epigenetic relations, it must somehow be an achievement of them.  Two possibilities occurred to me at the time: one is that genetic mechanisms were themselves selected for “fairness” – a selectionist explanation; or, that fairness somehow fell out of the underlying chemical and biological structures – a systemist explanation.

 

This is already enough biography to choke a horse, so I shall wrap up, here.  Suffice it to say that, when Stephen showed me Wolfram’s book I was stunned.  Here was a demonstration of how simple rules could generate complex structures without any nudges from any selection mechanism.  Could additivity of variance and, therefore, natural selection, itself “fall out” of chemical and energetic relations.  Could systems coddle natural selection the way rear flank downdrafts coddle a tornado.   Could we have natural selection for free.

 

Only in my late 60’s at the time, I harbored the illusion that I myself could be come a master of the art of computation.  Alas, that ship had sailed.  So, now you see me.  “I yam what I yam,” as Popeye used  to say.  But one thing I yam NOT is the ferocious adherent to genic selection theory that Stephen needs me to be if I am going to be felled by his biggest gun.

 

And now I have to cook dinner for my 13 and 17 year old grandchildren.  The oldest is learning rendering from Stephen.  Life will go on!

 

Ever grateful for your assistance,

 

Nick

 

 

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
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[thompnickson2]

Thanks, Frank.  That means a lot to me.  N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2020 5:57 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Good work, Nick.  Another example of how both-and is better than either-or.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 4:47 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yikes.  I forgot to attach the attachment.

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2020 4:13 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Cc: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Hi Nick,

 

have you thought about turning your ideas about the hard problem of consciousness into an article or book? 10 years ago you had this nice idea of a cross section of reality, a unique slice of the same world that is responsible for our subjective experience. Our discussion in 2010 inspired me to write these blog posts (which nobody except Glen read):

http://blog.cas-group.net/2010/11/the-solution-to-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2011/11/path-dependent-subjective-experience/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2013/06/solving_the_problem_of_subjectivity/

 

I believe this approach is a good explanation for the hard problem. It is what Hollywood has been doing for the last 100 years: showing us what it is like to be someone else. In this sense Hollywood has solved the biggest problem of philosophy. As I said the biggest secrets are often hidden in plain sight.

 

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/26/20 23:05 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Cc: [hidden email], [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Hi, everybody,

 

I am striving mightily to get my brain out of the corvid19 cesspit, and Stephen and Glen have been helping me, in part by talking about an old wrangle that Stephen and I have shared over the role of selection (if any) in evolution.   In these arguments, I have always felt that Stephen has strived to maneuver me into the sights of his largest gun, but, whenever he fires it, the shells seem to go whizzing by me as if fired at somebody else entirely.   So this letter is written primarily to Glen and Steve, but I post it here because I think some few of you (Dave?) may have something to say about what I say, here.  

 

I have often said that FRIAM saved my intellectual bacon.  I say this because when I came to Santa Fe in 2006, it was to help my wife help my son and his wife raise my infant grandchildren  -- clearly not a full time job.  I justified the venture to my provost with vague hope that I would attach myself either to the evolutionary psychology group at UNM or to the Santa Fe Institute or both.  In fact, neither panned out. 

 

And thus, cast loose in Santa Fe, I fell into the arms of Stephen, Carl, and Owen, and …   FRIAM.  The attached abstract of  piece I never wrote (because I never could dragoon Gillian Barker into writing for me) reveals the state of my mind at the time.  I was clearly already teetering between selectionist and systemist thinking.  It had dawned on me during my previous sabbatical down the corridor from Lyn Margulis that any theory of natural selection required as a precondition additivity of variance, and nothing that we had learned about epigenesis in the previous gave us much hope that additivity of variance was a likely condition of inheritance.  So, if additivity of variance was not an obvious consequence of epigenetic relations, it must somehow be an achievement of them.  Two possibilities occurred to me at the time: one is that genetic mechanisms were themselves selected for “fairness” – a selectionist explanation; or, that fairness somehow fell out of the underlying chemical and biological structures – a systemist explanation.

 

This is already enough biography to choke a horse, so I shall wrap up, here.  Suffice it to say that, when Stephen showed me Wolfram’s book I was stunned.  Here was a demonstration of how simple rules could generate complex structures without any nudges from any selection mechanism.  Could additivity of variance and, therefore, natural selection, itself “fall out” of chemical and energetic relations.  Could systems coddle natural selection the way rear flank downdrafts coddle a tornado.   Could we have natural selection for free.

 

Only in my late 60’s at the time, I harbored the illusion that I myself could be come a master of the art of computation.  Alas, that ship had sailed.  So, now you see me.  “I yam what I yam,” as Popeye used  to say.  But one thing I yam NOT is the ferocious adherent to genic selection theory that Stephen needs me to be if I am going to be felled by his biggest gun.

 

And now I have to cook dinner for my 13 and 17 year old grandchildren.  The oldest is learning rendering from Stephen.  Life will go on!

 

Ever grateful for your assistance,

 

Nick

 

 

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...
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Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
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[gepr]

Thanks for reposting these!

On 4/26/20 3:12 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> have you thought about turning your ideas about the hard problem of consciousness into an article or book? 10 years ago you had this nice idea of a cross section of reality, a unique slice of the same world that is responsible for our subjective experience. Our discussion in 2010 inspired me to write these blog posts (which nobody except Glen read):
> http://blog.cas-group.net/2010/11/the-solution-to-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/
> http://blog.cas-group.net/2011/11/path-dependent-subjective-experience/
> http://blog.cas-group.net/2013/06/solving_the_problem_of_subjectivity/
>
> I believe this approach is a good explanation for the hard problem. It is what Hollywood has been doing for the last 100 years: showing us what it is like to be someone else. In this sense Hollywood has solved the biggest problem of philosophy. As I said the biggest secrets are often hidden in plain sight.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[gepr]

I've placed a cleaned up copy here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NQ7vi5JCv97WPyC88Ym0DRdERFZSUCyKJsHrx9q5QP8/edit?usp=sharing

I've added a couple of questions as comments on that document. If you care to edit it, let me know your gmail address and I'll add you as an editor.

>     -------- Original message --------
>
>     From: [hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>
>
>     Date: 4/26/20 23:05 (GMT+01:00)
>
>     To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>>
>
>     Cc: [hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>, [hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>
>
>     Subject: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve
>
>      
>
>     Hi, everybody,
>
>      
>
>     I am striving mightily to get my brain out of the corvid19 cesspit, and Stephen and Glen have been helping me, in part by talking about an old wrangle that Stephen and I have shared over the role of selection (if any) in evolution.   In these arguments, I have always felt that Stephen has strived to maneuver me into the sights of his largest gun, but, whenever he fires it, the shells seem to go whizzing by me as if fired at somebody else entirely.   So this letter is written primarily to Glen and Steve, but I post it here because I think some few of you (Dave?) may have something to say about what I say, here.  
>
>      
>
>     I have often said that FRIAM saved my intellectual bacon.  I say this because when I came to Santa Fe in 2006, it was to help my wife help my son and his wife raise my infant grandchildren  -- clearly not a full time job.  I justified the venture to my provost with vague hope that I would attach myself either to the evolutionary psychology group at UNM or to the Santa Fe Institute or both.  In fact, neither panned out. 
>
>      
>
>     And thus, cast loose in Santa Fe, I fell into the arms of Stephen, Carl, and Owen, and …   FRIAM.  The attached abstract of  piece I never wrote (because I never could dragoon Gillian Barker into writing for me) reveals the state of my mind at the time.  I was clearly already teetering between selectionist and systemist thinking.  It had dawned on me during my previous sabbatical down the corridor from Lyn Margulis that any theory of natural selection required /as a precondition/ additivity of variance, and nothing that we had learned about epigenesis in the previous gave us much hope that additivity of variance was a likely condition of inheritance.  So, if additivity of variance was not an obvious consequence of epigenetic relations, it must somehow be an achievement of them.  Two possibilities occurred to me at the time: one is that genetic mechanisms were themselves selected for “fairness” – a selectionist explanation; or, that fairness somehow fell out of the
>     underlying chemical and biological structures – a systemist explanation.
>
>      
>
>     This is already enough biography to choke a horse, so I shall wrap up, here.  Suffice it to say that, when Stephen showed me Wolfram’s book I was stunned.  Here was a demonstration of how simple rules could generate complex structures without any nudges from any selection mechanism.  Could additivity of variance and, therefore, natural selection, itself “fall out” of chemical and energetic relations.  Could systems coddle natural selection the way rear flank downdrafts coddle a tornado.   Could we have natural selection for free.
>
>      
>
>     Only in my late 60’s at the time, I harbored the illusion that I myself could be come a master of the art of computation.  Alas, that ship had sailed.  So, now you see me.  “I yam what I yam,” as Popeye used  to say.  But one thing I yam NOT is the ferocious adherent to genic selection theory that Stephen needs me to be if I am going to be felled by his biggest gun.
>
>      
>
>     And now I have to cook dinner for my 13 and 17 year old grandchildren.  The oldest is learning rendering from Stephen.  Life will go on!

--
☣ uǝlƃ
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[Eric Charles-2]

Yeah Nick.... have you ever thought of writing a book?!? <cough, cough>

On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 6:12 PM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Nick,

have you thought about turning your ideas about the hard problem of consciousness into an article or book? 10 years ago you had this nice idea of a cross section of reality, a unique slice of the same world that is responsible for our subjective experience. Our discussion in 2010 inspired me to write these blog posts (which nobody except Glen read):

http://blog.cas-group.net/2010/11/the-solution-to-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2011/11/path-dependent-subjective-experience/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2013/06/solving_the_problem_of_subjectivity/

I believe this approach is a good explanation for the hard problem. It is what Hollywood has been doing for the last 100 years: showing us what it is like to be someone else. In this sense Hollywood has solved the biggest problem of philosophy. As I said the biggest secrets are often hidden in plain sight.

-J.

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/26/20 23:05 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Cc: [hidden email], [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

Hi, everybody,

 

I am striving mightily to get my brain out of the corvid19 cesspit, and Stephen and Glen have been helping me, in part by talking about an old wrangle that Stephen and I have shared over the role of selection (if any) in evolution.   In these arguments, I have always felt that Stephen has strived to maneuver me into the sights of his largest gun, but, whenever he fires it, the shells seem to go whizzing by me as if fired at somebody else entirely.   So this letter is written primarily to Glen and Steve, but I post it here because I think some few of you (Dave?) may have something to say about what I say, here.  

 

I have often said that FRIAM saved my intellectual bacon.  I say this because when I came to Santa Fe in 2006, it was to help my wife help my son and his wife raise my infant grandchildren  -- clearly not a full time job.  I justified the venture to my provost with vague hope that I would attach myself either to the evolutionary psychology group at UNM or to the Santa Fe Institute or both.  In fact, neither panned out. 

 

And thus, cast loose in Santa Fe, I fell into the arms of Stephen, Carl, and Owen, and …   FRIAM.  The attached abstract of  piece I never wrote (because I never could dragoon Gillian Barker into writing for me) reveals the state of my mind at the time.  I was clearly already teetering between selectionist and systemist thinking.  It had dawned on me during my previous sabbatical down the corridor from Lyn Margulis that any theory of natural selection required as a precondition additivity of variance, and nothing that we had learned about epigenesis in the previous gave us much hope that additivity of variance was a likely condition of inheritance.  So, if additivity of variance was not an obvious consequence of epigenetic relations, it must somehow be an achievement of them.  Two possibilities occurred to me at the time: one is that genetic mechanisms were themselves selected for “fairness” – a selectionist explanation; or, that fairness somehow fell out of the underlying chemical and biological structures – a systemist explanation.

 

This is already enough biography to choke a horse, so I shall wrap up, here.  Suffice it to say that, when Stephen showed me Wolfram’s book I was stunned.  Here was a demonstration of how simple rules could generate complex structures without any nudges from any selection mechanism.  Could additivity of variance and, therefore, natural selection, itself “fall out” of chemical and energetic relations.  Could systems coddle natural selection the way rear flank downdrafts coddle a tornado.   Could we have natural selection for free.

 

Only in my late 60’s at the time, I harbored the illusion that I myself could be come a master of the art of computation.  Alas, that ship had sailed.  So, now you see me.  “I yam what I yam,” as Popeye used  to say.  But one thing I yam NOT is the ferocious adherent to genic selection theory that Stephen needs me to be if I am going to be felled by his biggest gun.

 

And now I have to cook dinner for my 13 and 17 year old grandchildren.  The oldest is learning rendering from Stephen.  Life will go on!

 

Ever grateful for your assistance,

 

Nick

 

 

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Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
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[thompnickson2]

Jochen and Eric

 

I am not writing a book about the hard problem of consciousness because I have never understood what the hard problem of consciousness IS.  Maybe I am not conscious in the way the rest of you are?   For instance, when I miss the wastebasket with a piece of paper I am genuinely unsure whether I am going to get up from my chair and go put it in, or … um …. leave it there for somebody else to pick up.   Once I start to get up from my chair, I am pretty sure, but, hey, if the phone rang at that moment, I might never get across the room, and the wad of paper might still be there the next morning for my wife to cite as further evidence of my male callousness.  The rest of you seem to think that you KNOW what you are going to do in advance of doing it.  If that has anything to do with the hard problem of consciousness, I don’t have that problem.

 

By the way, my wife KNOWS and will tell  you with alacrity, that whatever I might say, I was NEVER going to pick that piece of paper up.  As evidence, she points to the pile of wadded up pieces of  paper wadded around the wastebasket. 

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2020 3:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Yeah Nick.... have you ever thought of writing a book?!? <cough, cough>

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

 

 

On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 6:12 PM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Nick,

 

have you thought about turning your ideas about the hard problem of consciousness into an article or book? 10 years ago you had this nice idea of a cross section of reality, a unique slice of the same world that is responsible for our subjective experience. Our discussion in 2010 inspired me to write these blog posts (which nobody except Glen read):

http://blog.cas-group.net/2010/11/the-solution-to-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2011/11/path-dependent-subjective-experience/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2013/06/solving_the_problem_of_subjectivity/

 

I believe this approach is a good explanation for the hard problem. It is what Hollywood has been doing for the last 100 years: showing us what it is like to be someone else. In this sense Hollywood has solved the biggest problem of philosophy. As I said the biggest secrets are often hidden in plain sight.

 

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/26/20 23:05 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Cc: [hidden email], [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Hi, everybody,

 

I am striving mightily to get my brain out of the corvid19 cesspit, and Stephen and Glen have been helping me, in part by talking about an old wrangle that Stephen and I have shared over the role of selection (if any) in evolution.   In these arguments, I have always felt that Stephen has strived to maneuver me into the sights of his largest gun, but, whenever he fires it, the shells seem to go whizzing by me as if fired at somebody else entirely.   So this letter is written primarily to Glen and Steve, but I post it here because I think some few of you (Dave?) may have something to say about what I say, here.  

 

I have often said that FRIAM saved my intellectual bacon.  I say this because when I came to Santa Fe in 2006, it was to help my wife help my son and his wife raise my infant grandchildren  -- clearly not a full time job.  I justified the venture to my provost with vague hope that I would attach myself either to the evolutionary psychology group at UNM or to the Santa Fe Institute or both.  In fact, neither panned out. 

 

And thus, cast loose in Santa Fe, I fell into the arms of Stephen, Carl, and Owen, and …   FRIAM.  The attached abstract of  piece I never wrote (because I never could dragoon Gillian Barker into writing for me) reveals the state of my mind at the time.  I was clearly already teetering between selectionist and systemist thinking.  It had dawned on me during my previous sabbatical down the corridor from Lyn Margulis that any theory of natural selection required as a precondition additivity of variance, and nothing that we had learned about epigenesis in the previous gave us much hope that additivity of variance was a likely condition of inheritance.  So, if additivity of variance was not an obvious consequence of epigenetic relations, it must somehow be an achievement of them.  Two possibilities occurred to me at the time: one is that genetic mechanisms were themselves selected for “fairness” – a selectionist explanation; or, that fairness somehow fell out of the underlying chemical and biological structures – a systemist explanation.

 

This is already enough biography to choke a horse, so I shall wrap up, here.  Suffice it to say that, when Stephen showed me Wolfram’s book I was stunned.  Here was a demonstration of how simple rules could generate complex structures without any nudges from any selection mechanism.  Could additivity of variance and, therefore, natural selection, itself “fall out” of chemical and energetic relations.  Could systems coddle natural selection the way rear flank downdrafts coddle a tornado.   Could we have natural selection for free.

 

Only in my late 60’s at the time, I harbored the illusion that I myself could be come a master of the art of computation.  Alas, that ship had sailed.  So, now you see me.  “I yam what I yam,” as Popeye used  to say.  But one thing I yam NOT is the ferocious adherent to genic selection theory that Stephen needs me to be if I am going to be felled by his biggest gun.

 

And now I have to cook dinner for my 13 and 17 year old grandchildren.  The oldest is learning rendering from Stephen.  Life will go on!

 

Ever grateful for your assistance,

 

Nick

 

 

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Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
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[gepr]

This seems to contradict what you've said about it being impossible to doubt everything. If I recall the argument, you would say that launching into an action like putting your leg down to get out of bed or jumping a creek or whatever *means* you fully believe (don't doubt) that the floor is there and/or you can jump over the creek. In the situation below, you genuinely doubt whether or not you'll pick up the wad of paper.

If I try to steelman your response, I guess you'll say something like "Right. I don't doubt everything, only conscious things." But if you *did* respond that way, then I win the argument because my objection to your argument was that we do doubt everything, but doubt is a matter of degree, not kind. When doubt is very near zero, maybe you're barely conscious of it, e.g. breathing, you can be pretty sure you'll take the next breath. But if you hold your breath and make the next breath a conscious act, then you're unsure whether you'll take that next breath.

But I think all this is unrelated to the "hard problem", which is all about "what it's like to be some one/thing". If anyone should understand the hard problem, it should be you. >8^D You made the argument in a recent discussion that you use metaphor to bridge the gap between what you know and what others might know ... to pretend a little bit to understand their knowledge even if you don't have tacit knowledge of that thing by mapping it to what you do know. That *is* imagining what it's like to be that other person. Your metaphors are an attempt to *solve* the hard problem.

My rejection of your metaphors reflect my belief that the hard problem cannot be solved. The best we can do is *simulate* one another.

On 4/28/20 3:54 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> I am not writing a book about the hard problem of consciousness because I have never understood what the hard problem of consciousness IS.  Maybe I am not conscious in the way the rest of you are?   For instance, when I miss the wastebasket with a piece of paper I am genuinely unsure whether I am going to get up from my chair and go put it in, or … um …. leave it there for somebody else to pick up.   Once I start to get up from my chair, I am pretty sure, but, hey, if the phone rang at that moment, I might never get across the room, and the wad of paper might still be there the next morning for my wife to cite as further evidence of my male callousness.  The rest of you seem to think that you KNOW what you are going to do in advance of doing it.  If that has anything to do with the hard problem of consciousness, I don’t have that problem.
>
> By the way, my wife KNOWS and will tell  you with alacrity, that whatever I might say, I was NEVER going to pick that piece of paper up.  As evidence, she points to the pile of wadded up pieces of  paper wadded around the wastebasket. 

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[Jochen Fromm-5]

Hi Nick,

I am not sure I understand the wastebasket example, but I would like to encourage you to finish whatever you have started. About the question "why we act" the following book that I just stumbled upon might be interesting:

Why we act: turning bystanders into moral rebels

Catherine A. Sanderson

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674241831

-J.

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/29/20 00:55 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

Jochen and Eric

I am not writing a book about the hard problem of consciousness because I have never understood what the hard problem of consciousness IS.  Maybe I am not conscious in the way the rest of you are?   For instance, when I miss the wastebasket with a piece of paper I am genuinely unsure whether I am going to get up from my chair and go put it in, or … um …. leave it there for somebody else to pick up.   Once I start to get up from my chair, I am pretty sure, but, hey, if the phone rang at that moment, I might never get across the room, and the wad of paper might still be there the next morning for my wife to cite as further evidence of my male callousness.  The rest of you seem to think that you KNOW what you are going to do in advance of doing it.  If that has anything to do with the hard problem of consciousness, I don’t have that problem.

By the way, my wife KNOWS and will tell  you with alacrity, that whatever I might say, I was NEVER going to pick that piece of paper up.  As evidence, she points to the pile of wadded up pieces of  paper wadded around the wastebasket. 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2020 3:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Yeah Nick.... have you ever thought of writing a book?!? <cough, cough>

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

 

 

On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 6:12 PM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Nick,

 

have you thought about turning your ideas about the hard problem of consciousness into an article or book? 10 years ago you had this nice idea of a cross section of reality, a unique slice of the same world that is responsible for our subjective experience. Our discussion in 2010 inspired me to write these blog posts (which nobody except Glen read):

http://blog.cas-group.net/2010/11/the-solution-to-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2011/11/path-dependent-subjective-experience/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2013/06/solving_the_problem_of_subjectivity/

 

I believe this approach is a good explanation for the hard problem. It is what Hollywood has been doing for the last 100 years: showing us what it is like to be someone else. In this sense Hollywood has solved the biggest problem of philosophy. As I said the biggest secrets are often hidden in plain sight.

 

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/26/20 23:05 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Cc: [hidden email], [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Hi, everybody,

 

I am striving mightily to get my brain out of the corvid19 cesspit, and Stephen and Glen have been helping me, in part by talking about an old wrangle that Stephen and I have shared over the role of selection (if any) in evolution.   In these arguments, I have always felt that Stephen has strived to maneuver me into the sights of his largest gun, but, whenever he fires it, the shells seem to go whizzing by me as if fired at somebody else entirely.   So this letter is written primarily to Glen and Steve, but I post it here because I think some few of you (Dave?) may have something to say about what I say, here.  

 

I have often said that FRIAM saved my intellectual bacon.  I say this because when I came to Santa Fe in 2006, it was to help my wife help my son and his wife raise my infant grandchildren  -- clearly not a full time job.  I justified the venture to my provost with vague hope that I would attach myself either to the evolutionary psychology group at UNM or to the Santa Fe Institute or both.  In fact, neither panned out. 

 

And thus, cast loose in Santa Fe, I fell into the arms of Stephen, Carl, and Owen, and …   FRIAM.  The attached abstract of  piece I never wrote (because I never could dragoon Gillian Barker into writing for me) reveals the state of my mind at the time.  I was clearly already teetering between selectionist and systemist thinking.  It had dawned on me during my previous sabbatical down the corridor from Lyn Margulis that any theory of natural selection required as a precondition additivity of variance, and nothing that we had learned about epigenesis in the previous gave us much hope that additivity of variance was a likely condition of inheritance.  So, if additivity of variance was not an obvious consequence of epigenetic relations, it must somehow be an achievement of them.  Two possibilities occurred to me at the time: one is that genetic mechanisms were themselves selected for “fairness” – a selectionist explanation; or, that fairness somehow fell out of the underlying chemical and biological structures – a systemist explanation.

 

This is already enough biography to choke a horse, so I shall wrap up, here.  Suffice it to say that, when Stephen showed me Wolfram’s book I was stunned.  Here was a demonstration of how simple rules could generate complex structures without any nudges from any selection mechanism.  Could additivity of variance and, therefore, natural selection, itself “fall out” of chemical and energetic relations.  Could systems coddle natural selection the way rear flank downdrafts coddle a tornado.   Could we have natural selection for free.

 

Only in my late 60’s at the time, I harbored the illusion that I myself could be come a master of the art of computation.  Alas, that ship had sailed.  So, now you see me.  “I yam what I yam,” as Popeye used  to say.  But one thing I yam NOT is the ferocious adherent to genic selection theory that Stephen needs me to be if I am going to be felled by his biggest gun.

 

And now I have to cook dinner for my 13 and 17 year old grandchildren.  The oldest is learning rendering from Stephen.  Life will go on!

 

Ever grateful for your assistance,

 

Nick

 

 

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...
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Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
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[Eric Charles-2]

I think we should take the inadequacy of the wastebasket example as evidence that Nick is being honest about really, really not understanding what the hard problem is. That leaves us to wonder what Nick SHOULD say about the hard problem. Obviously, to be consistent with his other thinking about psychology, he has to deny it somehow... and there are not many ways to do that. 

The deny-the-hard-problem option closest to Nick's way of thinking about psychology is, I think, William James's solution. Radical Empiricism predates the modern label "hard problem", but James understood the looming challenge well. I think that, if Nick was pressed properly, he would fall back on something that looked a lot like what James was saying. 

James would assert that there is - for the purpose of the challenge posed - no fundamental difference between any types of qualities of the objects and events around us, and therefore the desired distinction between easy and hard questions is bogus. The questions are all easy, or all hard. If you think they are all "easy", i.e., all tractable scientific questions, then you are a Radical Empiricist. If you think they are all "hard", i.e., ultimately none will yield to scientific inquiry, then you should go straight to dualistic solipsism. And we should all stop pretending there is a middle ground, because the deeper issues won't allow for a middle ground. 

Faced with those options, James chooses Radical Empiricism, asserting that things feel the way they do because that is how they are: Why does X look square? Because, something about it is square, and that aspect of it is what is being responded to. Why does Y feel soft? Because something about it is soft, and that aspect of it is what is being responded to. Why does Z smell fresh? Because something about it is fresh, and that aspect of it is what is being responded to. And in all cases, we can, by various methods, investigate what aspects of the thing are being responded to. Sometimes such investigations will be incredibly difficult; they will be as time-consuming, laborious, and full of dead ends as any other serious scientific endeavor. Sometimes the challenge might be on par with going to the moon or finding serious evidence for the Higgs boson.... and that is hard, hard, hard.... but they we will never be "hard" in Chambers's sense of being inherently impossible to investigate. 

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 4:07 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Nick,

I am not sure I understand the wastebasket example, but I would like to encourage you to finish whatever you have started. About the question "why we act" the following book that I just stumbled upon might be interesting:

Why we act: turning bystanders into moral rebels

Catherine A. Sanderson

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674241831

-J.

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/29/20 00:55 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

Jochen and Eric

I am not writing a book about the hard problem of consciousness because I have never understood what the hard problem of consciousness IS.  Maybe I am not conscious in the way the rest of you are?   For instance, when I miss the wastebasket with a piece of paper I am genuinely unsure whether I am going to get up from my chair and go put it in, or … um …. leave it there for somebody else to pick up.   Once I start to get up from my chair, I am pretty sure, but, hey, if the phone rang at that moment, I might never get across the room, and the wad of paper might still be there the next morning for my wife to cite as further evidence of my male callousness.  The rest of you seem to think that you KNOW what you are going to do in advance of doing it.  If that has anything to do with the hard problem of consciousness, I don’t have that problem.

By the way, my wife KNOWS and will tell  you with alacrity, that whatever I might say, I was NEVER going to pick that piece of paper up.  As evidence, she points to the pile of wadded up pieces of  paper wadded around the wastebasket. 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2020 3:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Yeah Nick.... have you ever thought of writing a book?!? <cough, cough>

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

 

 

On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 6:12 PM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Nick,

 

have you thought about turning your ideas about the hard problem of consciousness into an article or book? 10 years ago you had this nice idea of a cross section of reality, a unique slice of the same world that is responsible for our subjective experience. Our discussion in 2010 inspired me to write these blog posts (which nobody except Glen read):

http://blog.cas-group.net/2010/11/the-solution-to-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2011/11/path-dependent-subjective-experience/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2013/06/solving_the_problem_of_subjectivity/

 

I believe this approach is a good explanation for the hard problem. It is what Hollywood has been doing for the last 100 years: showing us what it is like to be someone else. In this sense Hollywood has solved the biggest problem of philosophy. As I said the biggest secrets are often hidden in plain sight.

 

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/26/20 23:05 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Cc: [hidden email], [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Hi, everybody,

 

I am striving mightily to get my brain out of the corvid19 cesspit, and Stephen and Glen have been helping me, in part by talking about an old wrangle that Stephen and I have shared over the role of selection (if any) in evolution.   In these arguments, I have always felt that Stephen has strived to maneuver me into the sights of his largest gun, but, whenever he fires it, the shells seem to go whizzing by me as if fired at somebody else entirely.   So this letter is written primarily to Glen and Steve, but I post it here because I think some few of you (Dave?) may have something to say about what I say, here.  

 

I have often said that FRIAM saved my intellectual bacon.  I say this because when I came to Santa Fe in 2006, it was to help my wife help my son and his wife raise my infant grandchildren  -- clearly not a full time job.  I justified the venture to my provost with vague hope that I would attach myself either to the evolutionary psychology group at UNM or to the Santa Fe Institute or both.  In fact, neither panned out. 

 

And thus, cast loose in Santa Fe, I fell into the arms of Stephen, Carl, and Owen, and …   FRIAM.  The attached abstract of  piece I never wrote (because I never could dragoon Gillian Barker into writing for me) reveals the state of my mind at the time.  I was clearly already teetering between selectionist and systemist thinking.  It had dawned on me during my previous sabbatical down the corridor from Lyn Margulis that any theory of natural selection required as a precondition additivity of variance, and nothing that we had learned about epigenesis in the previous gave us much hope that additivity of variance was a likely condition of inheritance.  So, if additivity of variance was not an obvious consequence of epigenetic relations, it must somehow be an achievement of them.  Two possibilities occurred to me at the time: one is that genetic mechanisms were themselves selected for “fairness” – a selectionist explanation; or, that fairness somehow fell out of the underlying chemical and biological structures – a systemist explanation.

 

This is already enough biography to choke a horse, so I shall wrap up, here.  Suffice it to say that, when Stephen showed me Wolfram’s book I was stunned.  Here was a demonstration of how simple rules could generate complex structures without any nudges from any selection mechanism.  Could additivity of variance and, therefore, natural selection, itself “fall out” of chemical and energetic relations.  Could systems coddle natural selection the way rear flank downdrafts coddle a tornado.   Could we have natural selection for free.

 

Only in my late 60’s at the time, I harbored the illusion that I myself could be come a master of the art of computation.  Alas, that ship had sailed.  So, now you see me.  “I yam what I yam,” as Popeye used  to say.  But one thing I yam NOT is the ferocious adherent to genic selection theory that Stephen needs me to be if I am going to be felled by his biggest gun.

 

And now I have to cook dinner for my 13 and 17 year old grandchildren.  The oldest is learning rendering from Stephen.  Life will go on!

 

Ever grateful for your assistance,

 

Nick

 

 

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[gepr]

But how do we process this statement by Nick:

On 4/17/20 4:08 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> I think an obsessively metaphorical thinker is one who has the arrogance to suppose that s/he has */some/* familiar experience by which s/he can model any experience of another person.  I actually don't believe that that is true, but I think it is true enough that I feel it is my obligation to try.  

He's straight up *saying* that metaphor is used as a way to solve or gloss over the hard problem. Now, I don't particularly care if it's actually Nick we're talking about or some other "obssesively metaphorical thinker". But it strikes me that one cannot simultaneously believe that all thinking is metaphorical and *not* admit to some form of the hard problem.


On 4/29/20 10:11 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
> I think we should take the inadequacy of the wastebasket example as evidence that Nick is being honest about really, really not understanding what the hard problem is.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[thompnickson2]

Yeh! Right! Like what  Eric said.

 

I may confuse the “hard” problem with the “what is it like to be a bat” problem,  which I also find a bit baffling because to me it seems also not to be a problem, let alone a hard one.  Seems, as Peirce says, just to be a matter of “an arrangement of language.”  See "old new realist" of  which the most relevant passage to the present discussion goes as follows:

 

Devil’s advocate: But, Nick, while “paining” sounds nice in an academic paper, it is just silly otherwise. The other day I felt quite nauseous after a meal. I am interested in what it’s like to feel nauseous, and you cannot honestly claim that you don’t know what feeling nauseous is like. Behavioral correlates aren’t at issue; stop changing the subject.

What is “being nauseous” like? It’s like being on a small boat in a choppy sea, it’s like being in a world that is revolving when others see it as stable, it’s like being gray in the face and turning away from the sights and smells of food that others find attractive, it’s like having your head in the toilet when others have theirs in the refrigerator.

But you have brought us to the crux of the problem. Nobody has ever been satisfied with my answers to these “What is it like to be a          ?” questions. “What is it like to be in pain? What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to be Nick Thompson?” *Notice how the grammar is contorted. If you ask the question in its natural order, you begin to see a path to an answer. “What is being Nick Thompson like?” “It’s like running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” OK. I get that. I see me doing that. You see me doing that. But most people won’t be satisfied with that sort of answer, because it’s the same as the answer to the question, “What do people like Nick Thompson do?” and therefore appears to convey no information that is inherently private. To me, the question, “What is it like to be X?”, has been fully answered when you have said where X-like people can be found and what they will be doing there. However, I seem to be pretty alone in that view.

Devil’s advocate: Now I see why you annoy people. I ask you a perfectly straightforward question about the quality of an experience and you keep trying to saddle me with a description of a behavior. You just change the subject. You clearly understand me when I ask you about the quality of feeling nauseous, yet you answer like a person who doesn’t understand.

Well, here you just prove my point by refusing to believe me when I say that; for me, feeling is a kind of doing, an exploring of the world. Where does somebody who believes that mental states are private, and that each person has privileged access to their own mental states, stand to deny me my account of my own mental states? You can’t have it both ways….

The devil’s advocate, here, is, of course Eric Charles.

 

Glen, I realize I have not answered your probe yet.  You are poking at my consistency, and I really need to think hard before I answer, lest I say something inconsistent.  You are asking me, “Is there a here here?”

 

Thanks, as always,

 

Nick

 

*For that matter, what is it like to be a brick?  For those of you who accept such arrangements of language as cogent, on what grounds do you assert that “there is nothing that it is like to be a brick.” 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2020 11:12 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

I think we should take the inadequacy of the wastebasket example as evidence that Nick is being honest about really, really not understanding what the hard problem is. That leaves us to wonder what Nick SHOULD say about the hard problem. Obviously, to be consistent with his other thinking about psychology, he has to deny it somehow... and there are not many ways to do that. 

 

The deny-the-hard-problem option closest to Nick's way of thinking about psychology is, I think, William James's solution. Radical Empiricism predates the modern label "hard problem", but James understood the looming challenge well. I think that, if Nick was pressed properly, he would fall back on something that looked a lot like what James was saying. 

 

James would assert that there is - for the purpose of the challenge posed - no fundamental difference between any types of qualities of the objects and events around us, and therefore the desired distinction between easy and hard questions is bogus. The questions are all easy, or all hard. If you think they are all "easy", i.e., all tractable scientific questions, then you are a Radical Empiricist. If you think they are all "hard", i.e., ultimately none will yield to scientific inquiry, then you should go straight to dualistic solipsism. And we should all stop pretending there is a middle ground, because the deeper issues won't allow for a middle ground. 

 

Faced with those options, James chooses Radical Empiricism, asserting that things feel the way they do because that is how they are: Why does X look square? Because, something about it is square, and that aspect of it is what is being responded to. Why does Y feel soft? Because something about it is soft, and that aspect of it is what is being responded to. Why does Z smell fresh? Because something about it is fresh, and that aspect of it is what is being responded to. And in all cases, we can, by various methods, investigate what aspects of the thing are being responded to. Sometimes such investigations will be incredibly difficult; they will be as time-consuming, laborious, and full of dead ends as any other serious scientific endeavor. Sometimes the challenge might be on par with going to the moon or finding serious evidence for the Higgs boson.... and that is hard, hard, hard.... but they we will never be "hard" in Chambers's sense of being inherently impossible to investigate. 

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

 

 

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 4:07 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Nick,

 

I am not sure I understand the wastebasket example, but I would like to encourage you to finish whatever you have started. About the question "why we act" the following book that I just stumbled upon might be interesting:

 

Why we act: turning bystanders into moral rebels

Catherine A. Sanderson

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674241831

 

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/29/20 00:55 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

Jochen and Eric

I am not writing a book about the hard problem of consciousness because I have never understood what the hard problem of consciousness IS.  Maybe I am not conscious in the way the rest of you are?   For instance, when I miss the wastebasket with a piece of paper I am genuinely unsure whether I am going to get up from my chair and go put it in, or … um …. leave it there for somebody else to pick up.   Once I start to get up from my chair, I am pretty sure, but, hey, if the phone rang at that moment, I might never get across the room, and the wad of paper might still be there the next morning for my wife to cite as further evidence of my male callousness.  The rest of you seem to think that you KNOW what you are going to do in advance of doing it.  If that has anything to do with the hard problem of consciousness, I don’t have that problem.

By the way, my wife KNOWS and will tell  you with alacrity, that whatever I might say, I was NEVER going to pick that piece of paper up.  As evidence, she points to the pile of wadded up pieces of  paper wadded around the wastebasket. 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2020 3:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Yeah Nick.... have you ever thought of writing a book?!? <cough, cough>

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

 

 

On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 6:12 PM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Nick,

 

have you thought about turning your ideas about the hard problem of consciousness into an article or book? 10 years ago you had this nice idea of a cross section of reality, a unique slice of the same world that is responsible for our subjective experience. Our discussion in 2010 inspired me to write these blog posts (which nobody except Glen read):

http://blog.cas-group.net/2010/11/the-solution-to-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2011/11/path-dependent-subjective-experience/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2013/06/solving_the_problem_of_subjectivity/

 

I believe this approach is a good explanation for the hard problem. It is what Hollywood has been doing for the last 100 years: showing us what it is like to be someone else. In this sense Hollywood has solved the biggest problem of philosophy. As I said the biggest secrets are often hidden in plain sight.

 

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/26/20 23:05 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Cc: [hidden email], [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Hi, everybody,

 

I am striving mightily to get my brain out of the corvid19 cesspit, and Stephen and Glen have been helping me, in part by talking about an old wrangle that Stephen and I have shared over the role of selection (if any) in evolution.   In these arguments, I have always felt that Stephen has strived to maneuver me into the sights of his largest gun, but, whenever he fires it, the shells seem to go whizzing by me as if fired at somebody else entirely.   So this letter is written primarily to Glen and Steve, but I post it here because I think some few of you (Dave?) may have something to say about what I say, here.  

 

I have often said that FRIAM saved my intellectual bacon.  I say this because when I came to Santa Fe in 2006, it was to help my wife help my son and his wife raise my infant grandchildren  -- clearly not a full time job.  I justified the venture to my provost with vague hope that I would attach myself either to the evolutionary psychology group at UNM or to the Santa Fe Institute or both.  In fact, neither panned out. 

 

And thus, cast loose in Santa Fe, I fell into the arms of Stephen, Carl, and Owen, and …   FRIAM.  The attached abstract of  piece I never wrote (because I never could dragoon Gillian Barker into writing for me) reveals the state of my mind at the time.  I was clearly already teetering between selectionist and systemist thinking.  It had dawned on me during my previous sabbatical down the corridor from Lyn Margulis that any theory of natural selection required as a precondition additivity of variance, and nothing that we had learned about epigenesis in the previous gave us much hope that additivity of variance was a likely condition of inheritance.  So, if additivity of variance was not an obvious consequence of epigenetic relations, it must somehow be an achievement of them.  Two possibilities occurred to me at the time: one is that genetic mechanisms were themselves selected for “fairness” – a selectionist explanation; or, that fairness somehow fell out of the underlying chemical and biological structures – a systemist explanation.

 

This is already enough biography to choke a horse, so I shall wrap up, here.  Suffice it to say that, when Stephen showed me Wolfram’s book I was stunned.  Here was a demonstration of how simple rules could generate complex structures without any nudges from any selection mechanism.  Could additivity of variance and, therefore, natural selection, itself “fall out” of chemical and energetic relations.  Could systems coddle natural selection the way rear flank downdrafts coddle a tornado.   Could we have natural selection for free.

 

Only in my late 60’s at the time, I harbored the illusion that I myself could be come a master of the art of computation.  Alas, that ship had sailed.  So, now you see me.  “I yam what I yam,” as Popeye used  to say.  But one thing I yam NOT is the ferocious adherent to genic selection theory that Stephen needs me to be if I am going to be felled by his biggest gun.

 

And now I have to cook dinner for my 13 and 17 year old grandchildren.  The oldest is learning rendering from Stephen.  Life will go on!

 

Ever grateful for your assistance,

 

Nick

 

 

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Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
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Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2020 11:12 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

I think we should take the inadequacy of the wastebasket example as evidence that Nick is being honest about really, really not understanding what the hard problem is. That leaves us to wonder what Nick SHOULD say about the hard problem. Obviously, to be consistent with his other thinking about psychology, he has to deny it somehow... and there are not many ways to do that. 

 

The deny-the-hard-problem option closest to Nick's way of thinking about psychology is, I think, William James's solution. Radical Empiricism predates the modern label "hard problem", but James understood the looming challenge well. I think that, if Nick was pressed properly, he would fall back on something that looked a lot like what James was saying. 

 

James would assert that there is - for the purpose of the challenge posed - no fundamental difference between any types of qualities of the objects and events around us, and therefore the desired distinction between easy and hard questions is bogus. The questions are all easy, or all hard. If you think they are all "easy", i.e., all tractable scientific questions, then you are a Radical Empiricist. If you think they are all "hard", i.e., ultimately none will yield to scientific inquiry, then you should go straight to dualistic solipsism. And we should all stop pretending there is a middle ground, because the deeper issues won't allow for a middle ground. 

 

Faced with those options, James chooses Radical Empiricism, asserting that things feel the way they do because that is how they are: Why does X look square? Because, something about it is square, and that aspect of it is what is being responded to. Why does Y feel soft? Because something about it is soft, and that aspect of it is what is being responded to. Why does Z smell fresh? Because something about it is fresh, and that aspect of it is what is being responded to. And in all cases, we can, by various methods, investigate what aspects of the thing are being responded to. Sometimes such investigations will be incredibly difficult; they will be as time-consuming, laborious, and full of dead ends as any other serious scientific endeavor. Sometimes the challenge might be on par with going to the moon or finding serious evidence for the Higgs boson.... and that is hard, hard, hard.... but they we will never be "hard" in Chambers's sense of being inherently impossible to investigate. 

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

 

 

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 4:07 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Nick,

 

I am not sure I understand the wastebasket example, but I would like to encourage you to finish whatever you have started. About the question "why we act" the following book that I just stumbled upon might be interesting:

 

Why we act: turning bystanders into moral rebels

Catherine A. Sanderson

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674241831

 

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/29/20 00:55 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

Jochen and Eric

I am not writing a book about the hard problem of consciousness because I have never understood what the hard problem of consciousness IS.  Maybe I am not conscious in the way the rest of you are?   For instance, when I miss the wastebasket with a piece of paper I am genuinely unsure whether I am going to get up from my chair and go put it in, or … um …. leave it there for somebody else to pick up.   Once I start to get up from my chair, I am pretty sure, but, hey, if the phone rang at that moment, I might never get across the room, and the wad of paper might still be there the next morning for my wife to cite as further evidence of my male callousness.  The rest of you seem to think that you KNOW what you are going to do in advance of doing it.  If that has anything to do with the hard problem of consciousness, I don’t have that problem.

By the way, my wife KNOWS and will tell  you with alacrity, that whatever I might say, I was NEVER going to pick that piece of paper up.  As evidence, she points to the pile of wadded up pieces of  paper wadded around the wastebasket. 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2020 3:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Yeah Nick.... have you ever thought of writing a book?!? <cough, cough>

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

 

 

On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 6:12 PM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Nick,

 

have you thought about turning your ideas about the hard problem of consciousness into an article or book? 10 years ago you had this nice idea of a cross section of reality, a unique slice of the same world that is responsible for our subjective experience. Our discussion in 2010 inspired me to write these blog posts (which nobody except Glen read):

http://blog.cas-group.net/2010/11/the-solution-to-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2011/11/path-dependent-subjective-experience/

http://blog.cas-group.net/2013/06/solving_the_problem_of_subjectivity/

 

I believe this approach is a good explanation for the hard problem. It is what Hollywood has been doing for the last 100 years: showing us what it is like to be someone else. In this sense Hollywood has solved the biggest problem of philosophy. As I said the biggest secrets are often hidden in plain sight.

 

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: [hidden email]

Date: 4/26/20 23:05 (GMT+01:00)

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>

Cc: [hidden email], [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

Hi, everybody,

 

I am striving mightily to get my brain out of the corvid19 cesspit, and Stephen and Glen have been helping me, in part by talking about an old wrangle that Stephen and I have shared over the role of selection (if any) in evolution.   In these arguments, I have always felt that Stephen has strived to maneuver me into the sights of his largest gun, but, whenever he fires it, the shells seem to go whizzing by me as if fired at somebody else entirely.   So this letter is written primarily to Glen and Steve, but I post it here because I think some few of you (Dave?) may have something to say about what I say, here.  

 

I have often said that FRIAM saved my intellectual bacon.  I say this because when I came to Santa Fe in 2006, it was to help my wife help my son and his wife raise my infant grandchildren  -- clearly not a full time job.  I justified the venture to my provost with vague hope that I would attach myself either to the evolutionary psychology group at UNM or to the Santa Fe Institute or both.  In fact, neither panned out. 

 

And thus, cast loose in Santa Fe, I fell into the arms of Stephen, Carl, and Owen, and …   FRIAM.  The attached abstract of  piece I never wrote (because I never could dragoon Gillian Barker into writing for me) reveals the state of my mind at the time.  I was clearly already teetering between selectionist and systemist thinking.  It had dawned on me during my previous sabbatical down the corridor from Lyn Margulis that any theory of natural selection required as a precondition additivity of variance, and nothing that we had learned about epigenesis in the previous gave us much hope that additivity of variance was a likely condition of inheritance.  So, if additivity of variance was not an obvious consequence of epigenetic relations, it must somehow be an achievement of them.  Two possibilities occurred to me at the time: one is that genetic mechanisms were themselves selected for “fairness” – a selectionist explanation; or, that fairness somehow fell out of the underlying chemical and biological structures – a systemist explanation.

 

This is already enough biography to choke a horse, so I shall wrap up, here.  Suffice it to say that, when Stephen showed me Wolfram’s book I was stunned.  Here was a demonstration of how simple rules could generate complex structures without any nudges from any selection mechanism.  Could additivity of variance and, therefore, natural selection, itself “fall out” of chemical and energetic relations.  Could systems coddle natural selection the way rear flank downdrafts coddle a tornado.   Could we have natural selection for free.

 

Only in my late 60’s at the time, I harbored the illusion that I myself could be come a master of the art of computation.  Alas, that ship had sailed.  So, now you see me.  “I yam what I yam,” as Popeye used  to say.  But one thing I yam NOT is the ferocious adherent to genic selection theory that Stephen needs me to be if I am going to be felled by his biggest gun.

 

And now I have to cook dinner for my 13 and 17 year old grandchildren.  The oldest is learning rendering from Stephen.  Life will go on!

 

Ever grateful for your assistance,

 

Nick

 

 

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[Eric Charles-2]

"But it strikes me that one cannot simultaneously believe that all thinking is metaphorical and *not* admit to some form of the hard problem." 

Those issues do not seem inherently related to me. Can you elaborate? If so, I might be able to respond better. 

I'm pretty sure I disagree strongly with the claim that "all thinking is metaphorical", unless we mean "thinking" in some very narrow sense such that the claim somehow becomes true by definition. That disagreement probably isn't helping me in getting whatever you are getting at.

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 2:32 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

But how do we process this statement by Nick:

On 4/17/20 4:08 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> I think an obsessively metaphorical thinker is one who has the arrogance to suppose that s/he has */some/* familiar experience by which s/he can model any experience of another person.  I actually don't believe that that is true, but I think it is true enough that I feel it is my obligation to try.   

He's straight up *saying* that metaphor is used as a way to solve or gloss over the hard problem. Now, I don't particularly care if it's actually Nick we're talking about or some other "obssesively metaphorical thinker". But it strikes me that one cannot simultaneously believe that all thinking is metaphorical and *not* admit to some form of the hard problem.


On 4/29/20 10:11 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
> I think we should take the inadequacy of the wastebasket example as evidence that Nick is being honest about really, really not understanding what the hard problem is.

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[thompnickson2]

Hi, Eric,

 

I have lost track.  To whom is your comment addressed.

 

I think the first was Glen, and I agree, I don’t see how a belief in the centrality of metaphor to thought commits one to a belief in the hardness of, or even the existence of, the hard problem. 

 

It was me that floated the thought that “all thinking is metaphorical”. (I was trying to draw Dave West in on my side of the argument, at the time.)  I meant only to say that the application of any word (save perhaps grammatical operators or proper names) involves abduction, which I think we both believe, is a very close relative of metaphor.  You and I have struggled over this for years, decades, almost, but I think we believe that abduction is an inference from the properties of an object to the class to which it belongs whereas a metaphor carries the process further in some way I have trouble defining.  For instance, when Darwin said that evolution was caused by selection, it definitely was an abduction of sort.  But as selection was understood at the time, it involved the intentional intervention of a breeder.  So the metaphor not only abduces selection, it seems also rupture the original concept in some say. 

 

Nick

 

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2020 7:50 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

"But it strikes me that one cannot simultaneously believe that all thinking is metaphorical and *not* admit to some form of the hard problem." 

 

Those issues do not seem inherently related to me. Can you elaborate? If so, I might be able to respond better. 

 

I'm pretty sure I disagree strongly with the claim that "all thinking is metaphorical", unless we mean "thinking" in some very narrow sense such that the claim somehow becomes true by definition. That disagreement probably isn't helping me in getting whatever you are getting at.

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

 

 

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 2:32 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

But how do we process this statement by Nick:

On 4/17/20 4:08 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> I think an obsessively metaphorical thinker is one who has the arrogance to suppose that s/he has */some/* familiar experience by which s/he can model any experience of another person.  I actually don't believe that that is true, but I think it is true enough that I feel it is my obligation to try.   

He's straight up *saying* that metaphor is used as a way to solve or gloss over the hard problem. Now, I don't particularly care if it's actually Nick we're talking about or some other "obssesively metaphorical thinker". But it strikes me that one cannot simultaneously believe that all thinking is metaphorical and *not* admit to some form of the hard problem.


On 4/29/20 10:11 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
> I think we should take the inadequacy of the wastebasket example as evidence that Nick is being honest about really, really not understanding what the hard problem is.

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[gepr]

OK. Here's the setup:

Nick says 1: Metaphorical thinker maps their experience onto another's experience, modeling that other's experience with their own.

Nick says 2: I don't understand the hard problem of consciousness.

Glen says: Expressions 1 and 2 are contradictory.

I suppose it's on me to show that they're contradictory. The idea that abduction is an inference from the unique to a class might be helpful. But I think it's a jargonal distraction. So, here goes.

Let's propose that there exist unique situations/objects ... things or points in time or whatever that are not, cannot be, exactly the same anywhere else or at any other time. They are absolutely, completely unique in the entire universe. Because they are unique, there's absolutely no way any *other* thing/situation can perfectly model them. E.g. no 2 electrons are in exactly the same state at exactly the same time in exactly the same place. There will always be something different about any 2 unique things. So analogies/metaphors/maps from 1 unique thing to another unique thing will always be slightly off.

Now, a metaphor/model/analogy/mapping thinker will accept an imperfect mapping and go ahead and model a unique thing with another unique thing. That's what a metaphorical thinker does, inaccurately models one thing with another thing.

The hard problem of consciousness is that any given creature/object/thing/situation has a qualitative experience, a *comprehension* of the situation/state/condition that creature finds itself it at any given time, any given place, or any given trajectory through time and space. The hard problem is one of uniqueness. The uniqueness of that experience.

The AI/ALife component of the hard problem asks how can we build a machine that will have these experiences. But that's not important to this conversation. The modeling/mapping/metaphorical component is how can any one thing (machine, rock, golfball, human) *understand* the experience of any other thing (car, elephant, galaxy, bacterium).

The answer is that one thing *models* the other thing imperfectly. The only reason anyone would be a "metaphorical thinker" is because they recognize the hard problem. If they don't recognize the hard problem, then there's no need to use metaphor. Sure, it might be convenient to use metaphor, but there's no NEED because there is no hard problem.

Therefore, Nick *does* understand the hard problem, even if only tacitly, and even if he doesn't *believe* in it. He states it and restates it every time he insists that thinking is metaphorical.


On 4/29/20 8:19 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> I think the first was Glen, and I agree, I don’t see how a belief in the centrality of metaphor to thought commits one to a belief in the hardness of, or even the existence of, the hard problem. 
>
>  
>
> It was me that floated the thought that “all thinking is metaphorical”. (I was trying to draw Dave West in on my side of the argument, at the time.)  I meant only to say that the application of any word (save perhaps grammatical operators or proper names) involves abduction, which I think we both believe, is a very close relative of metaphor.  You and I have struggled over this for years, decades, almost, but I think we believe that abduction is an inference from the properties of an object to the class to which it belongs whereas a metaphor carries the process further in some way I have trouble defining.  For instance, when Darwin said that evolution was caused by selection, it definitely was an abduction of sort.  But as selection was understood at the time, it involved the intentional intervention of a breeder.  So the metaphor not only abduces selection, it seems also rupture the original concept in some say. 


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[Prof David West]

Two contributions, hopefully, to this conversation — first to something Nick said, then Glen.

Nick said: "It was me that floated the thought that “all thinking is metaphorical”. (I was trying to draw Dave West in on my side of the argument, at the time.)" I remember the conversation — at St. John's — quite a while back.  I also remember that the statement was quickly qualified. (And Nick, you should be ashamed of having uttered such a universal statement seeing as the speed with which you chastise others, especially me, for doing the same.)

Not all thinking is metaphorical. A major exception is thinking about things of which we know enough to speak in formalisms: mathematical expressions, logical statements, formulas ala any of the hard sciences, etc. No metaphor there. (Nick will object saying that even those things express models and all models are metaphors, but ignore him.)

Metaphors are an essential (so says Quine) device for extending our knowledge - for attempts to understand that which is not reducible to formal expressions. In science this is at the 'fringe,"with the fringe being a moving target.

A metaphor, in this case is just a working hypothesis: can we think about, come to understand, this unknown thing in terms of something we already understand, know about? The metaphor provides a framework that we can use to confirm or refute the hypothesis. If confirmed, we gain the ability to think formally about the new thing and the fringe of science moves outward.

Now we can pay attention to Nick again and accept the fact that some models are indeed metaphors, but other models are formalisms. It matters not, that a formal model is inaccurate because we are never going to measure the coast of Portugal in microns and therefore discover that it is near infinitely long instead of being 1793 Km.  We think in practicial terms and think formally, not metaphorically.

 Towards the hard problem of consciousness. On The Origin of Objects by Brian Cantwell Smith can provide some solid background ideas, especially with regard how we get to the general from the particular. Glen parallels Smith's insights in what he presented - including the Object ---> Class issue.

I would propose that the hard problem of consciousness is the lack of any known thing that might be used as a metaphor to understand the unknown thing, consciousness.

We might (Nick excepted) agree that consciousness is a thing. We might (including Nick) agree that we do not know / understand what that thing is.

But what other thing in our experience "feels" sufficiently like consciousness that we can say, "Oh, consciousness is like _____________.  If we could fill in the blank we would have a metaphor (perhaps a model) to think with.

We cannot use another (perhaps our internal awareness of being conscious) instance of consciousness because we do not know/understand it either.

If we had a computer that was incontrovertibly conscious, then maybe.

We certainly have no formalism we can use to think about and come to understand consciousness.

Steve likes to sign off with "mumble"  I'll stop with

babble
 



On Thu, Apr 30, 2020, at 9:44 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> OK. Here's the setup:
>
> Nick says 1: Metaphorical thinker maps their experience onto another's
> experience, modeling that other's experience with their own.
>
> Nick says 2: I don't understand the hard problem of consciousness.
>
> Glen says: Expressions 1 and 2 are contradictory.
>
> I suppose it's on me to show that they're contradictory. The idea that
> abduction is an inference from the unique to a class might be helpful.
> But I think it's a jargonal distraction. So, here goes.
>
> Let's propose that there exist unique situations/objects ... things or
> points in time or whatever that are not, cannot be, exactly the same
> anywhere else or at any other time. They are absolutely, completely
> unique in the entire universe. Because they are unique, there's
> absolutely no way any *other* thing/situation can perfectly model them.
> E.g. no 2 electrons are in exactly the same state at exactly the same
> time in exactly the same place. There will always be something
> different about any 2 unique things. So analogies/metaphors/maps from 1
> unique thing to another unique thing will always be slightly off.
>
> Now, a metaphor/model/analogy/mapping thinker will accept an imperfect
> mapping and go ahead and model a unique thing with another unique
> thing. That's what a metaphorical thinker does, inaccurately models one
> thing with another thing.
>
> The hard problem of consciousness is that any given
> creature/object/thing/situation has a qualitative experience, a
> *comprehension* of the situation/state/condition that creature finds
> itself it at any given time, any given place, or any given trajectory
> through time and space. The hard problem is one of uniqueness. The
> uniqueness of that experience.
>
> The AI/ALife component of the hard problem asks how can we build a
> machine that will have these experiences. But that's not important to
> this conversation. The modeling/mapping/metaphorical component is how
> can any one thing (machine, rock, golfball, human) *understand* the
> experience of any other thing (car, elephant, galaxy, bacterium).
>
> The answer is that one thing *models* the other thing imperfectly. The
> only reason anyone would be a "metaphorical thinker" is because they
> recognize the hard problem. If they don't recognize the hard problem,
> then there's no need to use metaphor. Sure, it might be convenient to
> use metaphor, but there's no NEED because there is no hard problem.
>
> Therefore, Nick *does* understand the hard problem, even if only
> tacitly, and even if he doesn't *believe* in it. He states it and
> restates it every time he insists that thinking is metaphorical.
>
>
> On 4/29/20 8:19 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> > I think the first was Glen, and I agree, I don’t see how a belief in the centrality of metaphor to thought commits one to a belief in the hardness of, or even the existence of, the hard problem. 
> >
> >  
> >
> > It was me that floated the thought that “all thinking is metaphorical”. (I was trying to draw Dave West in on my side of the argument, at the time.)  I meant only to say that the application of any word (save perhaps grammatical operators or proper names) involves abduction, which I think we both believe, is a very close relative of metaphor.  You and I have struggled over this for years, decades, almost, but I think we believe that abduction is an inference from the properties of an object to the class to which it belongs whereas a metaphor carries the process further in some way I have trouble defining.  For instance, when Darwin said that evolution was caused by selection, it definitely was an abduction of sort.  But as selection was understood at the time, it involved the intentional intervention of a breeder.  So the metaphor not only abduces selection, it seems also rupture the original concept in some say. 
>
>
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[Steve Smith]

On 4/30/20 1:41 PM, Prof David West wrote:
>
> Steve likes to sign off with "mumble"  I'll stop with
>
> babble

Touche'...

        bumble


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[thompnickson2]

Glen, and all,

 

This is very good, so good that I am in danger of getting lost in thought and never giving it any reply.

 

So let me attempt a short reply. 

 

Following Holt, I am going to take the metaphor (if you will) of point of view.  Let's say we are all blindfolded philosophers palpating an extremely patient elephant.  Even without introducing the qualia problem,  there is an odd sense in which we all feel the same thing and an equally odd sense in which we each feel a different thing.  And to know what you are feeling, I have to question you (and ask you to use metaphors) to convey what you are feeling to me.  Here there is no question of qualia.  If I were standing where you are and feeling the same part of the elephant that you feel, then I would feel the same thing (ex hypothesi). 

 

One of the challenges here, of course, is how we come to the conclusion that we are all palpating the SAME thing.  We could all behave as some of my "qualitative" colleagues at Clark wanted to behave, and simply "share our experiences"--.  "I am having a scaley experience; I am having a fuzzy experience."  "I am having a mucussy experience" "Ugh! Something just wacked me over the head." -- and then walk away.   There has to be the possibility of classes of objects for us to appeal to before we can begin to integrate the various information that each of us is gathering.  And there is philosophical difficulty enough here to concern us without introducing the problem of whether each of us experiences fuzziness, say, in the same way that each of the others do. 

 

Now if we were determined to study THAT problem, we could take a group of extremely standardized objects ... a perfect steel sphere, a perfect cylinder, etc., say, and ask each of us to report on what we feel as we feel them.  We might notice, from this research, that one of us focusses on weight, another on surface texture, another on warmth and coldness, etc.  And across objects we might find individual differences in how each of us describes the objects.  That might get at our individual uniqueness in how we approach the touching of objects.  And just as we could agree, after a time that we were surrounding an elephant, we could agree, after a time and a discussion, that you approach objects in one way and I approach them in an other.  We could, with the diligent application of metaphors, come to see the world approximately from one another's point of view 

 

To me, the mystery of consciousness is no greater than the fact that we never stand in exactly the same place when we look at something.  But as steve Guerin has pointed out, just as we can work out where the fire is by all of us pointing our differently located cameras at it, we can as easily work out the location of each of the cameras from the same information.  This is no accident because Steve is a student of Gibson and Gibson was a student of Holt, and Holt's metaphor of consciousness is a point of view metaphor.

 

I note with particular interest this paragraph in Glen's letter:

 

The hard problem of consciousness is that any given creature/object/thing/situation has a qualitative experience, a *comprehension* of the situation/state/condition that creature finds itself it at any given time, any given place, or any given trajectory through time and space. The hard problem is one of uniqueness. The uniqueness of that experience.

 

I just don’t think “experience” is that sort of thing.  Experience is always a step from one thing to another.  A “unique experience” is like acceleration an instant.  A fiction that is useful for some purposes.  We know how to study the elephant; and we know how to study the uniqueness of the observers of the elephant.  But those are distinct objects of study. 

 

Not short.  Ugh.  Glen, you are allowed to say I begged your question. 

 

Nick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2020 9:44 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

 

OK. Here's the setup:

 

Nick says 1: Metaphorical thinker maps their experience onto another's experience, modeling that other's experience with their own.

 

Nick says 2: I don't understand the hard problem of consciousness.

 

Glen says: Expressions 1 and 2 are contradictory.

 

I suppose it's on me to show that they're contradictory. The idea that abduction is an inference from the unique to a class might be helpful. But I think it's a jargonal distraction. So, here goes.

 

Let's propose that there exist unique situations/objects ... things or points in time or whatever that are not, cannot be, exactly the same anywhere else or at any other time. They are absolutely, completely unique in the entire universe. Because they are unique, there's absolutely no way any *other* thing/situation can perfectly model them. E.g. no 2 electrons are in exactly the same state at exactly the same time in exactly the same place. There will always be something different about any 2 unique things. So analogies/metaphors/maps from 1 unique thing to another unique thing will always be slightly off.

 

Now, a metaphor/model/analogy/mapping thinker will accept an imperfect mapping and go ahead and model a unique thing with another unique thing. That's what a metaphorical thinker does, inaccurately models one thing with another thing.

 

The hard problem of consciousness is that any given creature/object/thing/situation has a qualitative experience, a *comprehension* of the situation/state/condition that creature finds itself it at any given time, any given place, or any given trajectory through time and space. The hard problem is one of uniqueness. The uniqueness of that experience.

 

The AI/ALife component of the hard problem asks how can we build a machine that will have these experiences. But that's not important to this conversation. The modeling/mapping/metaphorical component is how can any one thing (machine, rock, golfball, human) *understand* the experience of any other thing (car, elephant, galaxy, bacterium).

 

The answer is that one thing *models* the other thing imperfectly. The only reason anyone would be a "metaphorical thinker" is because they recognize the hard problem. If they don't recognize the hard problem, then there's no need to use metaphor. Sure, it might be convenient to use metaphor, but there's no NEED because there is no hard problem.

 

Therefore, Nick *does* understand the hard problem, even if only tacitly, and even if he doesn't *believe* in it. He states it and restates it every time he insists that thinking is metaphorical.

 

 

On 4/29/20 8:19 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

> I think the first was Glen, and I agree, I don’t see how a belief in

> the centrality of metaphor to thought commits one to a belief in the hardness of, or even the existence of, the hard problem.

>

>  

>

> It was me that floated the thought that “all thinking is

> metaphorical”. (I was trying to draw Dave West in on my side of the argument, at the time.)  I meant only to say that the application of any word (save perhaps grammatical operators or proper names) involves abduction, which I think we both believe, is a very close relative of metaphor.  You and I have struggled over this for years, decades, almost, but I think we believe that abduction is an inference from the properties of an object to the class to which it belongs whereas a metaphor carries the process further in some way I have trouble defining.  For instance, when Darwin said that evolution was caused by selection, it definitely was an abduction of sort.  But as selection was understood at the time, it involved the intentional intervention of a breeder.  So the metaphor not only abduces selection, it seems also rupture the original concept in some say.

 

 

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