http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Re-Direct-conversation-tp3137870p3158273.html
Needing more time to think through Rikus's excellent challenge, I'll try
to see if I can address Steve's concerns.
First, Steve's comments seem
an perfectly good and coherent example of trying to collapse the dualism into
an I-biased monism. The collapse is embodied in the conceit that "I" might
merely be a model in my head, the same way "you" are a model in my head. Such a
conceit places one only a hair-line away from crazy
everything-that-exists-is-imagined idealism. That isn't necessarily bad, its
just not my preferred brand of crazy.
Second, I think any reasonable
observation of human behavior shows that most people "know themselves" poorly,
and that is a major rub. How often has someone told you something like "stop
tapping your fingers!" and you said, "oh, I didn't even realize I was doing
that". How often are you really aware, consciously, in that qualitative manner,
of every obstacle you avoid when navigating through a crowded room. How often
have you flinched away from an oncoming object before you really had any idea
what it was? How often have you done something, then wondered "now why did I
just do that"? If I prime you with pictures of Osama ben Laden on posters as
you enter a room full of job applicants, you ("you" being a typical research
participant) will rate the clearly Arab applicant lower than if not primed, and
you (typically) will not remember the having seen the poster if I ask.
Similarly, without priming, the typical participant can be shown to have quite
a few biases they are not aware of (some of the experiments are quite
ingenious). How often are you frustrated, but you don't really understand what
you are frustrated about until sometime later? Have you ever found that you
drove half-way to work while daydreaming and were surprised to find out where
you were. How often are you surprised to find out how much a piece of news
upset you? In those circumstances, has it ever been the case that the person
delivering the news guessed your reaction level better? Have you ever thought
you could handle more projects simultaneously than was really the case? Have
you ever demonstrated how to do something and then not quite been able to
explain what you did (cooking, sports, intuitive math)? ... ...
...
Third, only a small part of not-knowing-yourself can possibly be of
the highly intellectual intentional-self-delusion variety Steve is willing to
concede. As is hopefully obvious from the above examples, most of it has to be
of the non-intellectual varieties that includes not paying attention, not
remembering, not caring, or not knowing what to make of the things you are
doing . As we are currently being visited by elders, I have been sensitized to
the variety made obvious by the question "What was I doing again?" Though most
such events are initiated by the elders, I am increasingly sensitive to its
frequency both for myself and other medium aged people around me. In most such
cases, if a third party was watching, they can easy tell the confused person
what they were in the middle of intending. If the normal usage of this language
is to be taken seriously, the request in for someone else to tell me the state
that my mind is (or was just) in.
Fourth, no matter which bias you
prefer, the 1st person perspective is potentially privileged in at least the
following ways: You are around yourself more than I am. You can detect things
about yourself that, while not in principle undetectable by me, I cannot
typically detect in practice (internal temperature, a swelling bladder, etc.).
At any given moment in time you have at least a slightly unique perspective on
the happenings around you. -- Also, no matter which bias you prefer, there is
no guarantee that the person with the 1st person perspective is taking
advantage of said potential.
Fifth, perhaps as a surprise, I full agree
that the position I am advocating for is dreadfully confusing and frustrating.
You attribute that to its being incoherent, or obviously wrong. I attribute the
confusion and frustration to every one's having so much more practice and
familiarity with other options. Regardless, I assert that the New Realist
position is fully compatible with, and a fair representation of our natural use
of language. Where it most clearly differs is in regards to typical
explanations of our natural language.
Did any of that help... or at
least address the questions and concerns?
Eric
P.S. Alas, studies
of infant development are unhelpful in this regards. The majority of
researchers surely interpret their results along traditional lines, but in fact
their evidence is not be the type capable of distinguishing between the two
positions. Most infant liturature is very poorly conceived, and the really nice
stuff is typically dealing with other issues.
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009
12:12 PM,
Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
Rikus -
Nicely stirred.
This is a very well articulated example of why I am
confused/offended/confounded when people talk about someone else
knowing my intentions (or experience) better than I do. In most cases,
it would seem to be simply absurd.
There are some cases where I am self-deluded, allowing myself to
rationalize an explanation for my own feelings or behaviour which is
not real, but rather conveniently fits some agenda or self-image I am
trying to maintain. Once I have reached that level of sophistication
in my self-delusion, I acquiesce to Nick's ideas/references about
psychotherapy... I believe that trained professionals can be of help in
untangling these tangles of self-misdirection and self-delusion. But
for normal, everyday experience and perception... we can and do "know
ourselves" quite well.
Otherwise, I cannot imagine how anyone else would believe they
understand my experience or feelings or intentions better than I do.
And I mean this qualitatively... they simply cannot know any of it
except through their own "model" of who they think I am and what they
think my actions imply about that model.
I believe that Nick's original position about our 1st person experience
being qualitatively the same as our 3rd person experience excepting the
specific POV we have (seeing/hearing/feeling through our own sensory
apparatus) might reduce to saying that our own "self-knowledge" is
*also* based on evaluating a "model" of ourselves in an identical
fashion to the model we have of others, excepting that our
evidence/data for our own model has the unique qualities of being
situated from a specific point of view, being pervasive (we observe
ourselves continuously but others only now and then), and by being
informed directly by our own biochemical state (emotional) and only
minimally (pheremones?) by others'.
So... even if I accept Nick's hypothesis that our 1st person experience
is essentially the same as our 3rd person except for POV.... I say the
POV is high dimensional (6DOF geometry, direct access to our own
sensory apparatus, biochemical, etc.). In the abstract, the
differences might be considered to be "small" but in the
real/practical/physical, these are huge differences yielding a
qualitatively distinct difference between "self" and "other".
Perhaps studies of infant development lead us to other beliefs (the
observation of babies "discovering" their own hand belongs to their own
will after seeing it enter and leave their field of view, etc.).
Does
someone have more background on this stage of development and it's
presumed implications?
- Steve
Eric (and Nick),
I'm still pursuing clarity.
Kindly consider the following:
Person A, a high-school
student, is asked by a teacher (B) to solve a maths problem on
the
board in front of the class. Among the other students is person C, a
close friend of A. A is
taking an unusually long time to solve the problem, frequently erasing
partial calculations, now and then pausing to stare at the board with a
frown.
B is a new teacher and has
only interacted with A a few times. It appears to him that the problem
is simply too much for A, and starts forming an idea about A's math
skills.
C knows that A is good at
maths and that the problem on the board should really not be difficult
for him. He also knows A well enough to recognise that the frown A
exhibits means something is bothering him. Things between A and his
girlfriend are a bit shaky lately and he wonders if it took a turn for
the worse.
A has a really bad
headache. He very rarely gets headaches, but woke up this morning with
a monster. He hates giving up on math problems, though, and is sure he
should be able to solve this one. Also, he suspects the new teacher
thinks he isn't very good at maths and he wants to correct that
impression. And he just realised he forgot to do biology homework and
is trying to recall which period biology is.
Can you please
comment:
1. I understand you
to say that A is an observer of A in much the same way as B and C.
You're *not* saying A is not having an experience of A, only that A's
experience is not *privileged* compared to B and C. Does that mean you
consider A's experience to be qualitatively indistinguishable from that
of B and C, or only that the difference in the quality of A's
experience, compared to that of B and C, is not of
consequence?
2. Obvious A can think a
great many things that B and C can't know anything about. He can
access memory about himself that B and C cannot. He has access to
interoceptive sensory information that B and C does not. He has the
experience of directly influencing the mathematical symbols in his
working memory, outside the perception or direct influence of B and C.
On the other hand, B and C has access to some exteroceptive sensory
information about A that A lacks. Do you consider these various kinds
of information and experiences to be entirely interchangeable?
3. Do you distinguish between
"experience" and "have information about"?
4. When you say that A's
point of view is not privileged, do you consider anything beyond the
ability to identify motives and intent, gauge current emotional
state, and identify habitual patterns of behaviour?
5. We can extend the example and allow A to spontaneously start
hallucinating a swarm of hand-sized pterodactyls that are attacking
him. His body and mind responds to the perceived threat like it would
to a real one. In some sense he really is having the experience, yet,
B and C would deny that it is taking place. What exactly does it mean
to be "wrong" about one's own experience?
Regards,
Rikus
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 8:57 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Direct conversation - 1st vs 3rd
person
My understanding is that the terms 1st and 3rd person arose as
ways of talking about literary styles - and our use of them is
metaphorical. An essential part of the metaphor is that authors writing
in 1st person are typically granted privileged license to write about
the mind of "I". In contrast, people writing in (a non-omniscient) 3rd
person, are typically not granted as much license to write about the
minds. This is not entirely true, as people writing in 3rd person write
about minds all the time, but their writings are considered more
vulnerable to dispute. For example, if Obama wrote an account of his
inauguration and said "I was terrified", it would be considered less
vulnerable to dispute than if I wrote an account of his inauguration
and said "He was terrified". If these linguistic conventions become
reified then we can start taking the "I" not merely to denote the
speaker/viewer, but to denote an entity in possession of unique powers
that justify the privileges commonly granted to the linguistic device.
This is suggested as my understanding of the history, independent of
any value judgment regarding the reification.
There is a lurking problem, however, as these conventions do not always
seem to hold in the real world. The most glairing probelm is that, at
least sometimes, "I" can be wrong about my own mind and "He" can be
right. (The cause of my error can range from simply not paying
attention to what I am doing, to intentional self-delusion, to
forgetting - think Alzheimer's.) For some, these problems lead to an
urge to collapse categories, to see if the oddness cannot be gotten rid
of if we leave behind the notion of uniqueness that goes with having
distinct labels. I suppose that on some formal level, when a dichotomy
collapses into a monism, it might not be particularly important which
category label remains. However, one category may be preferred over
another because it originally contained properties that the author
wishes to retain as implicit or explicit in the monistic system that
remains. These properties are ported along with word into the monistic
system, because the term retains sway as a metaphor.
In this case, the historical bias has been to retain only the "I"
position. In this move, the "I" retains its unique insight about
ourselves, and any insight we think we have about others must be
treated purely as insight about ourselves, i.e. the mind that I know as
"their mind" is really just a sub-part of my mind. This leads to
extreme forms of idealism (where all the world exists merely as an
idea), the two mind problem (is it ever possible for two minds to know
the some object?), etc., etc. These were huge turn of the 20th century
challenges for philosophy, having grown out of a tradition of pushing
more and more extreme the distinguished lineage of ideas flowing from
Descartes, Kant, Berkeley, etc. The problems, for the most part,
remain. In the extreme form, at least, this lineage leads to a heavy
intellectual paralysis, as it is not possible for any "I" to know any
other "I", nor to know the "real world" (should such a thing even
exist).
The alternative (assuming we are to retain one of the original labels),
is to have a bias for the "He" position. This leads to extreme forms of
realism, and often (but not always) to behaviorism. In this move, the
"I" has to get its information about the mind in the same that "He" has
to get information. That is, if my brother knows my mind by observing
my behavior, then I can only know my mind by observing my behavior.
(Note, that the assertion about observing behavior is a secondary
postulate, supplimenting the fundamental assertion that the method of
knowing must be the same.)
There are, presumably, things that the I-biased position handles well
(I don't know what they are, but there must be some). I know there are
things the He-biased position handles well. Among other things it
allows us to better understand perfectly normal and mundane
conversations such as:
A) "You are angry"
B) "No I'm not"
A) "Yes you are dear. I've known you long enough to know when you're
angry."
B) "I think I'd know when I was angry"
A) "You usually don't dear"
... several hours later
B) "Wow, you were right, I was angry. I didn't realize it at the time.
I'm sorry"
The I-biased position understands these conversations as very elaborate
shell games, where the first statement means something like: "The you
that is in my head is currently being modeled by me as having a
first-person experience of anger which is itself modeled after my
unique first-person experience of anger". Worse, the last sentence
seems (to me) totally incoherent from the I-biased position. The
He-biased position much more simply believes that a person's anger is
visible to himself and others if the right things are attended to, and
hence the conversation requires no shell game. Person B simply comes to
attend aspects of the situation that A was attending from the start.
Now I will admit that the He-biased perspective has trouble in some
situations, but those can't really be discussed until the position is
at least understood in the situations it handles well.
Eric
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Eric Charles
Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College