Implicit Learning and Unconscious Knowledge
Sergio Navega
of unconscious mechanisms involved with intelligence. I
finally found a very good introductory article
(unfortunately unavailable online, see end of this post).
In this paper, Goschke reviews the field of Implicit
Learning and the discoveries associated with unconscious
knowledge. What follows is an extremely summarized
version of some points raised in the article.
Since Freud introduced unconscious to mean a store
of emotionally conflicting forces and repressed
wishes, few have been done to hypothesize the same
mechanisms for learning and intelligence, until
recently.
In 1967, Arthur Reber published the paper "Implicit
Learning of Artificial Grammars" in which he
investigated the learning "that occurs without the
intention to learn" and that this learning can be
verified in terms of performance, being difficult to
verbalize. Artificial Grammars are sequences of
letters such as:
VXSSSV
MSSSV
MSSVRX
MSVRXV
These sequences are generated by a finite state
grammar and the test is applied by mixing "good"
sequences with ungrammatical sequences (sequences
that do not comply with the original grammar).
In 60 to 70% of the cases the subjects were able
to separate correctly the grammatical sequences
from the ungrammatical ones, without knowing what
"rule" was used to generate them and without being
able to explain their reasoning.
The same ability was verified in other tests, such
as incidental concept learning (stimuli with
structural regularity), sequential contingency
(stimuli in which the order is determined by
complex rules), simultaneous co-variations and
others. Although some controversies still exist
regarding post-experimental questionaries, the
findings are significant and widely reproduced.
Some computational attempts to model this mechanism
have been devised, notably with simple recurrent
networks and pattern associator networks.
Servan-Schreiber and Anderson (the same of ACT-R)
proposed a symbolic mechanism called competitive
chunking which was able to duplicate with precision
the kind of results obtained experimentally by Reber.
The article includes several neuropsychological
studies in which PET scans are used to verify
that distinct brain areas are involved in
implicit and explicit learning of sequences with
structure.
My opinion:------
This study is one more indication that the
understanding of human intelligence depends on the
investigation of mechanisms that may work
"behind the scenes". Intelligence appears to have
more mechanisms than those that reveal themselves to
our awareness. In this regard, observation of children's
learning is certainly useful in our attempt to
understand how this machinery works.
Sergio Navega.
---------------------------------------------------
Reference:
Implicit Learning and Unconscious Knowledge:
Mental Representation, Computational Mechanisms and
Brain Structures
By Thomas Goschke (Departement Psychologie, Universitat
Osnabruck, Germany)
in
Knowledge, Concepts and Categories
Edited by Koen Lamberts and David Shanks
MIT Press 1997
0-262-62118-5
In the same volume there are other pertinent articles:
Distributed Representations and Implicit Knowledge:
A Brief Introduction
by David Shanks.
Declarative and Nondeclarative Knowledge:
Insights from cognitive neuroscience
by Barbara Knowlton
This book is worth its weight in gold.
For references on the web, start your search
engine and look for "implicit learning",
"unconscious cognition" and "artificial grammar"
Neil Rickert
>In 1967, Arthur Reber published the paper "Implicit
>Learning of Artificial Grammars" in which he
>investigated the learning "that occurs without the
>intention to learn" and that this learning can be
>verified in terms of performance, being difficult to
>verbalize.
Reber also has a 1993 book "Implicit Learning and Tacit Knowledge:
An essay on the Cognitive Unconscious."
> Artificial Grammars are sequences of
>letters such as:
>VXSSSV
>MSSSV
>MSSVRX
>MSVRXV
>These sequences are generated by a finite state
>grammar and the test is applied by mixing "good"
>sequences with ungrammatical sequences (sequences
>that do not comply with the original grammar).
>In 60 to 70% of the cases the subjects were able
>to separate correctly the grammatical sequences
>from the ungrammatical ones, without knowing what
>"rule" was used to generate them and without being
>able to explain their reasoning.
There is a discussion of how this might be possible with Markov
Chains, in Shannon & Weaver "The Mathematical Theory of
Communication". This is the method used by Jason L. Hutchens in his
1996 Loebner contest entry. It is described in
"http://www.diemme.it/~luigi/alma/3/talk.html".
Chomskyans claim to have refuted Markov chains for language, but I
take their refutations with a grain of salt.
>My opinion:------
>This study is one more indication that the
>understanding of human intelligence depends on the
>investigation of mechanisms that may work
>"behind the scenes".
It almost all works behind the scenes.
>This book is worth its weight in gold.
Thanks. I'll look it up.
Sergio Navega
>"Sergio Navega" <sna...@ibm.net> writes:
>
>>In 1967, Arthur Reber published the paper "Implicit
>>Learning of Artificial Grammars" in which he
>>investigated the learning "that occurs without the
>>intention to learn" and that this learning can be
>>verified in terms of performance, being difficult to
>>verbalize.
>
>Reber also has a 1993 book "Implicit Learning and Tacit Knowledge:
>An essay on the Cognitive Unconscious."
>
Thanks, this one I'll buy at once. Reber is on the business
for a long time...
>> Artificial Grammars are sequences of
>>letters such as:
>
>>VXSSSV
>>MSSSV
>>MSSVRX
>>MSVRXV
>
>>These sequences are generated by a finite state
>>grammar and the test is applied by mixing "good"
>>sequences with ungrammatical sequences (sequences
>>that do not comply with the original grammar).
>>In 60 to 70% of the cases the subjects were able
>>to separate correctly the grammatical sequences
>>from the ungrammatical ones, without knowing what
>>"rule" was used to generate them and without being
>>able to explain their reasoning.
>
>There is a discussion of how this might be possible with Markov
>Chains, in Shannon & Weaver "The Mathematical Theory of
>Communication". This is the method used by Jason L. Hutchens in his
>1996 Loebner contest entry. It is described in
>"http://www.diemme.it/~luigi/alma/3/talk.html".
>
Markov chains and HMM are definitely areas where I've got a lot
of homework to do.
>Chomskyans claim to have refuted Markov chains for language, but I
>take their refutations with a grain of salt.
>
I've learned to take Chomskyan's claims with suspicion (well,
that's not too much, I've learned to take *all* claims with
suspicions :-).
I don't believe in synchronicity, but this one was hard
to accept: minutes after I've posted the original
message, the mailman arrived with my copy of Elsevier's
Trends in Cognitive Science (Oct). Guess what's the main
cover article: Implicit Learning. This article was written
by Axel Cleeremans et. al., which seems pretty dedicated
to the subject. I was able to find him at:
http://164.15.20.1/axcWWW/axc.html
In that page there's a link to some online papers.
Regards,
Sergio Navega.
Bloxy's
[...]
>
>In 1967, Arthur Reber published the paper "Implicit
>Learning of Artificial Grammars" in which he
>investigated the learning "that occurs without the
>intention to learn" and that this learning can be
>verified in terms of performance, being difficult to
>verbalize. Artificial Grammars are sequences of
>letters such as:
>
>VXSSSV
>MSSSV
>MSSVRX
>MSVRXV
>
>These sequences are generated by a finite state
>grammar and the test is applied by mixing "good"
>sequences with ungrammatical sequences (sequences
>that do not comply with the original grammar).
>In 60 to 70% of the cases the subjects were able
>to separate correctly the grammatical sequences
>from the ungrammatical ones, without knowing what
>"rule" was used to generate them and without being
>able to explain their reasoning.
Well, we have to be careful here.
It looks like there is an assumption here that the
meaning can be constructed from the meaningless
letters, just by creating rules, combining the sequences.
You can put those roman letters in any combination, but
the meaning is still abscent. You can only conclude the
rules of manipulating those letters.
We can presume that each letter stands for something
of substance and attempt to find the meaning in the
syntax itself, which is a delusion of sorts, if you don't mind.
Syntax is there to make it EASIER to grasp the concept
behind the sentense, but, by itself doe not represent
the meaning. The meaning arises from all elements
involved, including the validity of the letters themselves
in terms of representing some kind of reality.
Syntax is merely a way to manipulate the unterlying
objects. That is all there is to it.
To conclude that we can extract meaning by noticing
the "correct" combinations or sequences of letters is
incorrect.
[...]
Bloxy's
>Neil Rickert wrote in message <6vj5ab$l...@ux.cs.niu.edu>...
>>"Sergio Navega" <sna...@ibm.net> writes:
>>
>
>I've learned to take Chomskyan's claims with suspicion (well,
>that's not too much, I've learned to take *all* claims with
>suspicions :-).
Thats the way to solve the problem.
No matter how many phds or other titles are there behind
the idea, the idea itself is not a word of god.
We don't even know if there is one, on the first place.
The person may be brilliant, but it is not the end of the story,
it is only the beginning.
Take for example Freud and Jung.
They both dug into unconscious, collective unconscious,
universal unconscious, and subconscious and you name it,
but they never conceived of collective conscious and
universal conscious, despite the "fact" that it MUST follow
the very idea.
The simply could not conceive of conscious, because they
dont really know what it means.
What is conscious?
:)
>I don't believe in synchronicity, but this one was hard
>to accept: minutes after I've posted the original
>message, the mailman arrived with my copy of Elsevier's
>Trends in Cognitive Science (Oct).
You see, it does not matter what your belief is.
If you are attentive, you will notice some really wild and
stange "coincidences" in your life, belief or disbilief.
Being open to enquire in the most unconceivable is
what its all about.
Once you SEE, then there is no question of belief.
What does it matter?
It werks!
> Guess what's the main
>cover article: Implicit Learning.
Well, you got a "problem" on your hands.
You can not just wipe this even out of your life,
can you?
:)
[...]
>
>Regards,
>Sergio Navega.
Sergio Navega
>>to accept: minutes after I've posted the original
>>message, the mailman arrived with my copy of Elsevier's
>>Trends in Cognitive Science (Oct).
>
>You see, it does not matter what your belief is.
>If you are attentive, you will notice some really wild and
>stange "coincidences" in your life, belief or disbilief.
>
>Being open to enquire in the most unconceivable is
>what its all about.
>
>Once you SEE, then there is no question of belief.
>What does it matter?
>It werks!
>
I'm glad you touched on this subject, although it is not
directly related with AI. I'll try to put my discussion
as much as possible into that area.
Some people really believe in sincronicity (which is the
"theory" that coincidences are not that, but just part of
the "global fate" or "personal destiny" or something
around that line).
I've read an article defining the human brain as a "belief
engine". I agree with that, most of what we do is driven by
beliefs, and most of the time without any real good reason.
It is just nice to believe in certain things. This is the
real value of science and critical thinking: It is the
only way to get rid of those "convenient beliefs" that
crop up frequently in our minds.
I was saying that I've just posted something about
'Implicit Learning' when I received a magazine with that
subject on the cover. Sincronicity? Nah...
I receive a lot of magazines. Each one of them have
lots of cover articles. The magazines are, obviously,
centered in the area of my interests. So it is clear
that once in a while I stumble with an article that's
just on target.
Take for instance the cover article of another magazine:
'Perceptual Categorization'. What's the probability
of that magazine getting into my hands exactly when
I'm interested in this subject? It is very high.
But even without taking into account the probability,
our brains are prepared to "store" what we think
is repeating itself. We're prepared to recognize
*regularities*, our brain looks continuously for
"coincidences". No wonder we find so many of them.
We are prepared to memorize them. But if for one
instant we just take note of *everything* that's
happening in our lives and see that there are
*thousands* of events occurring in parallel that
can affect us, it is not surprising we occasionally run
into that "hard to believe and improbable" coincidence.
No special thing about this: just probability (how
often there are winners in the lottery even being
highly improbable?).
Taking into accound the cold view of mathematics is
the best way to "calibrate" this belief engine we
all have over our neck.
Regards,
Sergio Navega.
Neil Rickert
>I've read an article defining the human brain as a "belief
>engine". I agree with that, most of what we do is driven by
>beliefs, and most of the time without any real good reason.
>It is just nice to believe in certain things. This is the
>real value of science and critical thinking: It is the
>only way to get rid of those "convenient beliefs" that
>crop up frequently in our minds.
You delude yourself. Scientists and "critical thinkers" are quite
capable of rigidly holding to beliefs, and discarding 'inconvenient'
evidence which should cause them to question those beliefs.
The biggest belief of all, held by almost all scientists, and by most
philosophers, is in a concept of "truth" which assumes a God's eye
view of the universe.
>Take for instance the cover article of another magazine:
>'Perceptual Categorization'. What's the probability
>of that magazine getting into my hands exactly when
>I'm interested in this subject? It is very high.
If you had received that magazine when you were not interested in the
topic, you would simply have ignored the article, or perhaps have
skimmed through it but not paid much attention. You only notice it
because of your current interests.
Seth Russell
> Some people really believe in sincronicity (which is the
> "theory" that coincidences are not that, but just part of
> the "global fate" or "personal destiny" or something
> around that line).
You can look at sincronicity from two points of view from the central point
of the now. Looking forward in time, I can find no important distinction
between it and the concept of prediction - assuming your predictions and your
beliefs are consistent. Looking backward in time, after the fact - also
assuming your predictions and beliefs are consistent - it becomes feedback
and reinforcement to a belief structure. However, I agree, most people don't
do that, so that when events do occur that are quite unrelated to their
belief structures, their computation of probabilities are quite irrational.
--
Seth
see Seth's Conjecture at http://www.clickshop.com/ai/conjecture.htm
And then on to the AI Jump List ...
Seth Russell
> My opinion:------
> This study is one more indication that the
> understanding of human intelligence depends on the
> investigation of mechanisms that may work
> "behind the scenes". Intelligence appears to have
> more mechanisms than those that reveal themselves to
> our awareness. In this regard, observation of children's
> learning is certainly useful in our attempt to
> understand how this machinery works.
Minds recognize patterns. Sometimes they are aware of the
patterns they recognize and sometimes not. Sometimes they are
aware that they recognize a pattern and sometimes they are
just aware of the pattern. Most frequently when they
recognize a pattern they cop an attitude towards it. Most
frequently when they are aware that they recognize a pattern
they cop an attitude towards themselves ... look ma I saw that
<attitude>I am great</attitude>. When the pattern recognition
happens behind the scenes (outside of conscious awareness),
the latter attitude doesn't happen.
Bloxy's
>Bloxy's wrote in message <6vjt0h$1if$6...@dfw-ixnews11.ix.netcom.com>...
>>In article <361d2...@news2.ibm.net>, "Sergio Navega" <sna...@ibm.net>
>wrote:
>>
>>>I don't believe in synchronicity, but this one was hard
>>>to accept: minutes after I've posted the original
>>>message, the mailman arrived with my copy of Elsevier's
>>>Trends in Cognitive Science (Oct).
>>
>>You see, it does not matter what your belief is.
>>If you are attentive, you will notice some really wild and
>>stange "coincidences" in your life, belief or disbilief.
>>
>>Being open to enquire in the most unconceivable is
>>what its all about.
>>
>>Once you SEE, then there is no question of belief.
>>What does it matter?
>>It werks!
>>
>
>I'm glad you touched on this subject, although it is not
>directly related with AI. I'll try to put my discussion
>as much as possible into that area.
>
>"theory" that coincidences are not that, but just part of
>the "global fate" or "personal destiny" or something
>around that line).
Russian fatalism, hundreds of years old.
Secondly, synchronisity is not about inavitability.
Somewhere in the sixties, in Italy, there was this
psychologist by the name of Roberto Osiagoli (sic?).
He had a theory of synchronisity. It was one of the first
attempts to have a new look at life. Interesting research.
Basically, synchronisity simply means that - synchronisity.
Two [or more] different subjects synchronize, or are on the same
wave lengths. It is a well known effect in electronics.
There is nothing woodoo to it.
On a human level, the communication, in the most essential form,
is telephatic. You want to go to the movie, and all of a sudden
your friend calls you on the phone and says: hey, there is a good
movie, showing in the theatre tonight, you wanna go?
That is syncronisity.
In order to have synchronisity, you need to have some similarity
in the intent, or interest. The scientists, often discover the same
thing, at pretty much the same time, without even being consciously
aware of each other's work.
Synchronisity is rooted in love, attraction.
It can be also forced, like soldiers marching with exact same step.
But even there, there is certain joy of being one.
When to subject synchronize, they become one.
It is orgasmic experience.
One of the most beautiful things you can find to study.
It is a source of life.
Trees sychronize with seasons. The cells of your body
sycnronize to carry out a particular task, such as healing
the body.
Synchronisity is all around you, and all inside you.
It has nothing to do with fatalism or inevitability,
except that if two entities focus on the same thing,
the synchronisity is bound to happen.
Mother synchronizes with a child and wise versa.
It is everywhere you look.
>I've read an article defining the human brain as a "belief
>engine". I agree with that, most of what we do is driven by
>beliefs, and most of the time without any real good reason.
The reason is good. Belief simplifies the common understanding.
Instead of arguing forever, you come to common belief and thus
save the energy, essentially.
It is a stabilizing factor also.
If you don't believe anything and others don't believe anything,
you'd have to keep talking about the same thing, never coming
to any kind of conclusion, correct or limited in understanding.
But many beliefs turn into violence, eventually, if intelligence is
abscent. Blind acceptance of ANYTHING will eventually lead to
violence and opression [of other opinions or views].
>It is just nice to believe in certain things.
Yep, makes you feel better. Thats for sure.
It is a kind of self validation.
You believe in something, and it makes you feel that you
are something [of significance].
> This is the
>real value of science and critical thinking: It is the
>only way to get rid of those "convenient beliefs" that
>crop up frequently in our minds.
Crop up ALL the time. This is ALL we have, basically.
It is the synchronisity of the crowd.
Everybody peddles the same thing, and it, all of a sudden,
becomes "good". Not that there is any validity in it, but mere
mass belief feels like a stabilizing factor.
German people, at the time of hitler, were all tuned into the
same idea of centralized control for the common good.
They thought once we have a strong system and strong leader,
a lot of things become possible as people stop worrying about
the same thing and allow that leader and his appointees to
"take care of the problems", which is a delusion.
The experience of Germany was completely misunderstood and
never studied to full extent, as there is too much prejudice.
And Germany was not alone at that juncture. The whole humanity
was basically on the same level.
Germans just took upon themselves this experiment, that eventually
helped us all see the results of it: total opression [by the system],
complete violence, arrogance, corruption, inhumanity, etc.
And we should be thankful to those Germans, who sacrificed their
whole country as a result and are to this day feeling shame of it.
And they were never helped after the war in terms of not feeling that
shame. Noone really investigated why this could have happened on
the first place. What was that experience was all about.
And germans were not alone, by any means. There were italians,
romanians, japanese, arabs, and many more, tuned in on the same
wave as hitler.
>I was saying that I've just posted something about
>'Implicit Learning' when I received a magazine with that
>subject on the cover. Sincronicity? Nah...
How do you know?
Are you god?
>I receive a lot of magazines. Each one of them have
>lots of cover articles. The magazines are, obviously,
>centered in the area of my interests. So it is clear
>that once in a while I stumble with an article that's
>just on target.
And now you are wiping out the traces of that hint you had.
Well, it is up to you.
No problems for others. The only problems, if any, are to
yourself.
>Take for instance the cover article of another magazine:
>'Perceptual Categorization'. What's the probability
>of that magazine getting into my hands exactly when
>I'm interested in this subject? It is very high.
You forgot about syncronicity.
There could be other, pretty valid reasons for it.
Keep explaining your own entity's deeper roots away.
:)
And then?
>But even without taking into account the probability,
>our brains are prepared to "store" what we think
>is repeating itself. We're prepared to recognize
>*regularities*, our brain looks continuously for
>"coincidences". No wonder we find so many of them.
Exactly. If you have no explanation on deeper level, you'll
be looking for the ways to explain everything new away,
using stupid probability theories, statistics, and all sorts
of garbage "science", none of which applies.
>We are prepared to memorize them.
Yes, mass brainwashing, resulting from mass hypnosis with
the beliefs of dominant creed.
> But if for one
>instant we just take note of *everything* that's
>happening in our lives and see that there are
>*thousands* of events occurring in parallel that
>can affect us, it is not surprising we occasionally run
>into that "hard to believe and improbable" coincidence.
>No special thing about this: just probability
That probability, the way we use it to explaing everything away,
is really evil.
:)
Instead of saying: I really have no clue. No idea HOW it happened
or why, we are creating this universal garbage plug of explanations
- probability.
What is probability?
Einstein had a hell of a time with it.
And he was not such a dumb guy.
We developed this probability thing to the point, where it become
simply obscene, just like the priests, insisting on knowing what
god wants to do to whom and why, being so stupid, as not to realize
that if there is god, EVERYONE has the same access to it, and not
just that stupid, blood sucking priest, that stood in the face of jesus,
telling him the same thing, and now, telling it to others in the name
of jesus.
[...]
>
>Taking into accound the cold view of mathematics is
>the best way to "calibrate" this belief engine we
>all have over our neck.
Not necessarily so.
If that calibration gadget closes the doors to enquiry into the
deeper levels of your being, then it is of no use.
>
>Regards,
>Sergio Navega.
>
Bloxy's
>"Sergio Navega" <sna...@ibm.net> writes:
>
>>I've read an article defining the human brain as a "belief
>>engine". I agree with that, most of what we do is driven by
>>beliefs, and most of the time without any real good reason.
>>real value of science and critical thinking: It is the
>>only way to get rid of those "convenient beliefs" that
>>crop up frequently in our minds.
>
>capable of rigidly holding to beliefs, and discarding 'inconvenient'
>evidence which should cause them to question those beliefs.
Yes. Exactly.
>The biggest belief of all, held by almost all scientists, and by most
>philosophers, is in a concept of "truth" which assumes a God's eye
>view of the universe.
Because they are blind. Truth has nothing to do with god's eye.
Truth is simply:
THAT WHICH IS
in the domain of
ALL THERE IS
Argue with it as long, as you want. Will not change anything.
>>Take for instance the cover article of another magazine:
>>'Perceptual Categorization'. What's the probability
>>of that magazine getting into my hands exactly when
>>I'm interested in this subject? It is very high.
>
>If you had received that magazine when you were not interested in the
>topic, you would simply have ignored the article, or perhaps have
>skimmed through it but not paid much attention. You only notice it
>because of your current interests.
>
But what does it tell us?
- Nothing.
His interests change every day.
For some reason, he was interested in this issue NOW,
and the article appeared NOW, not tomorrow, or last year.
You don't have ANY explanation or evidence or proof here, doc.
Sorry.
You can convince yourself, but only for now.
It ain't gonna fly.
It will only crawl, and only for a short time.
Bloxy's
>Sergio Navega wrote:
>
>> Some people really believe in sincronicity (which is the
>> "theory" that coincidences are not that, but just part of
>> the "global fate" or "personal destiny" or something
>> around that line).
>
>of the now. Looking forward in time, I can find no important distinction
>between it and the concept of prediction - assuming your predictions and your
>beliefs are consistent.
Predictions are interesting, especially if you comprehend that
there is such a thing as probable reality.
You see, if you are insigtful enough, then you can estimate that certain
things are inevitable, and, in the context of consciousness of the moment,
and probable developments of it, in the context of current belief system,
will lead to certain events or discoveries in the future.
When Einstein was asked: how long would it take to discover what you
have discovered, if you did not discover it.
He said: "At the most, two years".
Was he stupid?
At the same time, we have a free will. We are no obliged to take
the "inevitable" steps. We can change, and take alternative steps.
So, the events, predicted, may never take place.
That is why it is called probable reality, and not actual reality.
The actual reality is the one that takes place. The events that do take
place in the phisical domain, are actual reality.
The events that COULD take place, belong to the domain of probable
reality, having its own consequences in the future and other probable
outcomes and development, and, thus, developing outside of our
involvement or concerns.
> Looking backward in time, after the fact - also
>assuming your predictions and beliefs are consistent - it becomes feedback
>and reinforcement to a belief structure. However, I agree, most people don't
>do that, so that when events do occur that are quite unrelated to their
>belief structures, their computation of probabilities are quite irrational.
Yep.
They just plug them in, to make it "werk",
explaining the unexplainable away.
:)
Bloxy's
>Sergio Navega wrote:
>
>> This study is one more indication that the
>> understanding of human intelligence depends on the
>> investigation of mechanisms that may work
>> "behind the scenes". Intelligence appears to have
>> more mechanisms than those that reveal themselves to
>> our awareness. In this regard, observation of children's
>> learning is certainly useful in our attempt to
>> understand how this machinery works.
Yes, children are beautiful reminders of unprejudiced mind.
They are still uncorrupted by the brain washing machines.
They still have the purity of empty mind, getting excited with
every look around. And everything is new around, and they
don't mind. In fact, they love the trip.
As they grow up, more and more garbage is programmed into
their brains, and it becomes more and more difficult to see new
things, as they never seem to fit the old rotten knowledge inside
their cockpits.
Then you know what happens.
They turn into vicious bio-robots, destroing everything that does not
fit their limited scope of "right" and "wrong".
They can become the priests of religion, or priests of science,
or priests of business, or priests of ANYTHING, explaining everything,
that does not fit their stupid cockpits, away.
>
>Minds recognize patterns. Sometimes they are aware of the
>patterns they recognize and sometimes not. Sometimes they are
>aware that they recognize a pattern and sometimes they are
>just aware of the pattern. Most frequently when they
>recognize a pattern they cop an attitude towards it. Most
>frequently when they are aware that they recognize a pattern
>they cop an attitude towards themselves ... look ma I saw that
><attitude>I am great</attitude>.
Because he was already programmed with a complex of inferiority.
His own ma did that to him, and his own pa did that.
His teacher did that to him, and his neighbor did that to him.
They all said: in order to be "good", you have to do this and that.
Else you are just nothing.
You need education. You need connections.
You need position in society.
You need to do all these things.
And before you do them, you are just nothing, a dumb ass,
that is bound to get exploited by the fat cat and eventually
thrown out on the street to starve and suffer.
That is what they did, those "good" meaning parents and teachers.
They programmed the inferiority complex into everyones mind.
> When the pattern recognition
>happens behind the scenes (outside of conscious awareness),
>the latter attitude doesn't happen.
So what heppens then?
:)
Sergio Navega
>"Sergio Navega" <sna...@ibm.net> writes:
>
>>I've read an article defining the human brain as a "belief
>>engine". I agree with that, most of what we do is driven by
>>beliefs, and most of the time without any real good reason.
>>It is just nice to believe in certain things. This is the
>>real value of science and critical thinking: It is the
>>only way to get rid of those "convenient beliefs" that
>>crop up frequently in our minds.
>
>You delude yourself. Scientists and "critical thinkers" are quite
>capable of rigidly holding to beliefs, and discarding 'inconvenient'
>evidence which should cause them to question those beliefs.
>
>philosophers, is in a concept of "truth" which assumes a God's eye
>view of the universe.
>
Philosophy has been for me quite a challenge, but I realize that what
you say is true. It is easy even for scientists to become "addicted"
to their own "reasons", which may frequently incorporate the
belief to be right. I think that one antidote to this position is
from time to time to exercise critical thinking listing all the
reasons why we think we should be wrong.
>>Take for instance the cover article of another magazine:
>>'Perceptual Categorization'. What's the probability
>>of that magazine getting into my hands exactly when
>>I'm interested in this subject? It is very high.
>
>If you had received that magazine when you were not interested in the
>topic, you would simply have ignored the article, or perhaps have
>skimmed through it but not paid much attention. You only notice it
>because of your current interests.
>
That's exactly my point. Most of what we think is coincidence is
just a reflection of our predisposition to perceive regularities.
This is one more reason to make me wonder that the perception
of regularities is something that occurs in all levels of our
cognition.
Regards,
Sergio Navega.
Sergio Navega
>Sergio Navega wrote:
>
>> Some people really believe in sincronicity (which is the
>> "theory" that coincidences are not that, but just part of
>> the "global fate" or "personal destiny" or something
>> around that line).
>
>You can look at sincronicity from two points of view from the central point
>of the now. Looking forward in time, I can find no important distinction
>between it and the concept of prediction - assuming your predictions and
your
>assuming your predictions and beliefs are consistent - it becomes feedback
>and reinforcement to a belief structure. However, I agree, most people
don't
>do that, so that when events do occur that are quite unrelated to their
>belief structures, their computation of probabilities are quite irrational.
>
Even with problems in our "probability machines", I see another question
that
further complicates the things: it is the denial to accept the other
possibilies. Frequently we commit an error in probability and simultaneously
"forget" that there are other events that (even with lower probabilities)
may occur. I think this is one of the greatest challenges that AI must
face.
Regards,
Sergio Navega.
Sergio Navega
>Sergio Navega wrote:
>
>> My opinion:------
>> This study is one more indication that the
>> understanding of human intelligence depends on the
>> investigation of mechanisms that may work
>> "behind the scenes". Intelligence appears to have
>> more mechanisms than those that reveal themselves to
>> our awareness. In this regard, observation of children's
>> learning is certainly useful in our attempt to
>> understand how this machinery works.
>
>patterns they recognize and sometimes not. Sometimes they are
>aware that they recognize a pattern and sometimes they are
>just aware of the pattern. Most frequently when they
>recognize a pattern they cop an attitude towards it. Most
>frequently when they are aware that they recognize a pattern
>they cop an attitude towards themselves ... look ma I saw that
>happens behind the scenes (outside of conscious awareness),
>the latter attitude doesn't happen.
>
I have some doubts about this point. This is definitely a subject
I'm not very knowledgeable, but I have impressions that
several emotions and personal judgements also obey this
"conscious/unconscious" structure. Take for instance a child
raised in a severe, rigid family, not used to receive compliments
in successes, but receiving critics when failures happen.
She will probably carry much of this "unbalanced" approach
throughout her adult's life, disturbing much of her emotional
performance, even without knowing *why* she feels that way.
Regards,
Sergio Navega.
Sergio Navega
>
>>We are prepared to memorize them.
>
>Yes, mass brainwashing, resulting from mass hypnosis with
>the beliefs of dominant creed.
>
I think you could have a wonderful career as X-Files script-writer ;-)
>>
>>Taking into accound the cold view of mathematics is
>>the best way to "calibrate" this belief engine we
>>all have over our neck.
>
>Not necessarily so.
>If that calibration gadget closes the doors to enquiry into the
>deeper levels of your being, then it is of no use.
>
Now look at this, I am agreeing with Bloxy's!
Yes, you're right. We cannot close the doors to our inner "intuition"
(whatever that means) because the origins of the ideas come from
"there" (I use this process *very*, *very* much).
What I say is that after receiving a dozen of that "mad" ideas,
we've got to use all the resources a scientist has to select and
refine the best ideas (without prejudices). The scientist must
not speak when we are fishing in that "deep" hole of ourselves.
But he is the one who will select (judge) the good fishes from
the algae.
Regards,
Sergio Navega.
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>That's exactly my point. Most of what we think is coincidence is
>just a reflection of our predisposition to perceive regularities.
>This is one more reason to make me wonder that the perception
>of regularities is something that occurs in all levels of our
>cognition.
You are most certainly correct. However, it is amusing to speculate
that coincidences (co-inky-dinks) are merely the reflection of
regularities that are beyond human comprehension.
--
Jer
"Stop, stop. Do not speak. The ultimate truth
is not even to think." -- Sakyamuni
Anders N Weinstein
>philosophers, is in a concept of "truth" which assumes a God's eye
>view of the universe.
Almost as bad as taking a view of the mind's directedness at objects
which assumes we human beings must necessarily be limited to a
brain's-eye-view of the world!
I would say it is perfectly possible to accept a recognizably realistic
view of the objectivity of truth without requiring anything as absurd
as a god's eye view, indeed without a correspondance theory at all.
Frege for example had a realistic view but rejected the correspondence
theory of truth.
I would suggest the crucial move is rejecting the idea that knowledge
of the world is epistemically mediated by intervening representations
of any kind. One must abandon the idea of mind as a self-contained
sphere of representations, although not the idea of the intentional
directedness of mental states towards objects.
The way to do this is to take very seriously the idea of intentional
contents as *modes of presentation* of the objects of the world. On
that view, one can say that our knowledge of the world is both direct
and unmediated, *and* characterized by (conceptual) intentional
contents that embody the mode of presentation of the object to the
subject. For the modes of presentation are not themselves intervening
objects before our consciousness. Just as hitting someone softly does
not render the hitting *indirect*, so becoming perceptually conscious
of an object under a certain mode of presentation does not render the
awareness indirect.
For example, in being immediately aware of my desk *as* a desk, i.e.
under the concept "desk", one is aware of it as exactly what it is ("in
itself", one might add). One does not need a god's eye view to see
desks and such as exactly what they are, for most of them are perfectly
visible from the ordinary Earth-bound human point of view.
One does need *conceptual capacities* that allow the objects to show up
for one, to present themselves to one as what they are. But concepts
must not be confused with concept-*representations*. To have a
particular concept is just to have one element of an interlocking set
of capacities and abilities.
Neil Rickert
>In article <6vo1si$p...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, ric...@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) wrote:
>>The biggest belief of all, held by almost all scientists, and by most
>>philosophers, is in a concept of "truth" which assumes a God's eye
>>view of the universe.
>Almost as bad as taking a view of the mind's directedness at objects
>which assumes we human beings must necessarily be limited to a
>brain's-eye-view of the world!
Presumably you are still trying to attribute to me, a position which
I don't hold.
>I would say it is perfectly possible to accept a recognizably realistic
>view of the objectivity of truth without requiring anything as absurd
>as a god's eye view, indeed without a correspondance theory at all.
So you say. But, as far as I can tell, your comments are mostly
about counting angels dancing on heads of pins.
What I am disagreeing with is the claim that we don't have criteria
for determining truth, yet we can somehow discover it.
>I would suggest the crucial move is rejecting the idea that knowledge
>of the world is epistemically mediated by intervening representations
>of any kind.
That isn't anything I have to reject, since I have never suggested
that position. I might have suggested that nothing of importance is
epistemically mediated -- but that is a different argument.
> One must abandon the idea of mind as a self-contained
>sphere of representations, although not the idea of the intentional
>directedness of mental states towards objects.
You might do better to toss out mental states, or at least the
typical talk about them.
Bloxy's
>Bloxy's wrote in message <6vpqme$2v0$1...@dfw-ixnews11.ix.netcom.com>...>[big, enormous snip]
>>
>>>We are prepared to memorize them.
>>
>>Yes, mass brainwashing, resulting from mass hypnosis with
>>the beliefs of dominant creed.
>>
>I think you could have a wonderful career as X-Files script-writer ;-)
You think they are ready for anything?
Ok, lets make a deal.
You go get those jacks and you do editing and submission.
We will provide the material.
[...]
Bloxy's
>In article <6vo1si$p...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, ric...@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) wrote:
>>The biggest belief of all, held by almost all scientists, and by most
>>philosophers, is in a concept of "truth" which assumes a God's eye
>>view of the universe.
>
>Almost as bad as taking a view of the mind's directedness at objects
>which assumes we human beings must necessarily be limited to a
>brain's-eye-view of the world!
>
>
>For example, in being immediately aware of my desk *as* a desk, i.e.
>under the concept "desk", one is aware of it as exactly what it is ("in
>itself", one might add). One does not need a god's eye view to see
>desks and such as exactly what they are, for most of them are perfectly
>visible from the ordinary Earth-bound human point of view.
Well, but that is not awareness.
Animals have the same ability of being "aware" of the objects,
and in quite sophisticated ways. They are not just wondering
around, trying to eat tables and rocks.
They know EXACTLY what is what.
We do not have an adequate definition of awareness in
the western "scientific" views.
>One does need *conceptual capacities* that allow the objects to show up
>for one, to present themselves to one as what they are. But concepts
>must not be confused with concept-*representations*. To have a
>particular concept is just to have one element of an interlocking set
>of capacities and abilities.
The whole idea of representation, presentation is basically
an abstraction.
But lets skip it for now.
Seth Russell
> .. the mailman arrived with my copy of Elsevier's
> Trends in Cognitive Science (Oct). Guess what's the
> main cover article: Implicit Learning. This article was
> written by Axel Cleeremans et. al., which seems pretty
> dedicated to the subject. I was able to find him at:
>
> http://164.15.20.1/axcWWW/axc.html
I'm reading "Principles for Implicit Learning" by Axel Cleeremans at
http://164.15.20.1/axcWWW/papers/96-principles/principles.html (thanks
for the pointer) - it is perhaps the most interesting Cognitive Science
article I've read all year. Here is my reaction to it:
Our brains learn and process knowledge with a connectionist network, the
workings of which is opaque to our awareness. In other words we cannot
determine the workings of our brains directly by introspection - we
cannot directly see how it works like we can the workings of an external
automobile engine. But this much we do know - brain processes manifests
objects - these objects appear (feel like) as symbols that form a network
of awareness. It seems to me that somewhere in our mind/brain between
the unconscious on one side and the conscious on the other side there is
an interface layer where two processes come together - the connectionist
network and the symbolic network. What more can we say about this
interface screen? One thing is clear: the same symbols that form the
network of our private (internal) awareness also form the network of our
public society creating interpersonal communication and natural
language. I don't think it is a coincidence that much of what we are
aware of internally is a projection of what our culture is aware of
publicly.
How should these fairly obvious (though doubtless here controversial)
ideas affect our thinking about robust AI? Well I think it relates to
this decades old controversy about which to choose - the connectionist
approach or the symbolic approach. But I don't think these ideas are
telling us which to choose - rather I think they are telling us to **look
for the interface between the two**.
I have little more to throw into the hopper, but let me pause here to see
if anyone is following this ... especially the Sergio(s) and the
Rickert(s) and the Weinstein(s) ....
Neil Rickert
>Our brains learn and process knowledge with a connectionist network, the
>workings of which is opaque to our awareness.
I'm not so sure that the connectionist camp has all of the answers.
Perhaps it would be better to say that the workings of the brain are
transparent to our awareness -- that is, our awareness 'shines' right
through it without the neurons getting in the way. Perhaps the
problem is that the workings are so transparent that they are
invisible.
> One thing is clear: the same symbols that form the
>network of our private (internal) awareness also form the network of our
>public society creating interpersonal communication and natural
>language. I don't think it is a coincidence that much of what we are
>aware of internally is a projection of what our culture is aware of
>publicly.
I would say that we are aware of far more than we communicate
symbolically.
>How should these fairly obvious (though doubtless here controversial)
>ideas affect our thinking about robust AI? Well I think it relates to
>this decades old controversy about which to choose - the connectionist
>approach or the symbolic approach.
Perhaps they are both wrong. In my view, they are both making the
some of the same mistakes.
Josh Soffer
influenced by Heidegger or Husserl? I'm new to this group so you'll have
to bring me up to speed. Of course such a phenomenological view would
render a notion of 'unconscious' not as a content of thought in conflict
with another but as a pre-consciousness, a vaguely glimpsed and fragile
new meaning. It is not hidden from conscious awareness, but a full
awareness of a state of foggy construing.
Josh Soffer
certain strains of philosophy (phenomenology and hermeneutics) as well
as in the psychological writings of George Kelly, Joseph Rychlak and
Jean Piaget, depicts a radically integral dynamic of construction of
meaning, whereby the knwoledge organization shifts the nature of its
functioning AS A WHOLE each time the system assimilates a new event.
Each assimilation is incorporated simultaneously according to dimensions
of similarity and difference.
This means that the knowledge system as a gestalt, as a unity,
accomodates itself to the idiosynchrasies of the event at the same time
that the event extends the differentiation of the system. The system is
radically self-consistent at a superordinate level of organization,
allowing it to tolerate inconsistency at subordinate levels of the
system. So much of a.i. models itself, intentionally or not, on
psychodynamic or Jungian models of knowledge organization as a
collection of meanings in continual state of tension and conflict. Thus
the need to hypothesize mechanisms of repression and an unconscious.
These models give too much weight to the substantiality of what the
system takes in as input, allowing elements of assimlated meaning to
wield power, to 'condition' meaning. For Kelly and Piaget the system
does not mediate but predicate that which it construes. There is a big
difference. The next generation of a.i. and cognitive models may have
much to do with these notions.
Bloxy's
>Seth Russell <seth...@clickshop.com> writes:
>
>>Our brains learn and process knowledge with a connectionist network, the
>>workings of which is opaque to our awareness.
>
>I'm not so sure that the connectionist camp has all of the answers.
>
>Perhaps it would be better to say that the workings of the brain are
>transparent to our awareness -- that is, our awareness 'shines' right
>through it without the neurons getting in the way. Perhaps the
>problem is that the workings are so transparent that they are
>invisible.
Or, they are so complex, that we will never be able to
fully comprehend it, since the system is not closed.
Brain is not a nice little box with clearly defined inputs
and outputs and a set of gears, you can observe.
The shere enormity of if and interconnectedness to
physical aspects of our body and to electromagnetic
influences, all pervasive, makes it impossible to compute,
comprehend and fully "appreciate".
>
>> One thing is clear: the same symbols that form the
>>network of our private (internal) awareness also form the network of our
>>public society creating interpersonal communication and natural
>>language. I don't think it is a coincidence that much of what we are
>>aware of internally is a projection of what our culture is aware of
>>publicly.
>
>I would say that we are aware of far more than we communicate
>symbolically.
Yes.
Except we have not defined awareness yet.
Everybody may be attributing different properties to it.
>>How should these fairly obvious (though doubtless here controversial)
>>ideas affect our thinking about robust AI?
What robust AI?
Again?
Robust ai, robust ai.
Do you think that just by repeating it many times it
will eventually come true?
Define robust ai.
>> Well I think it relates to
>>this decades old controversy about which to choose - the connectionist
>>approach or the symbolic approach.
Yes,
and no,
Both,
and neither,
and all included,
and none of the above.
>Perhaps they are both wrong. In my view, they are both making the
>some of the same mistakes.
Well, they both address a limited scope of problems.
When someone tries to make either as absolute,
THE answer, then its all dead.
There is no such a thing as THE answer.
Once there is THE answer, the game is over.
What remains is dust.
Patrick Juola
>"Sergio Navega" <sna...@ibm.net> writes:
>
>>Learning of Artificial Grammars" in which he
>>investigated the learning "that occurs without the
>>intention to learn" and that this learning can be
>>verified in terms of performance, being difficult to
>>verbalize.
>
>An essay on the Cognitive Unconscious."
>
>>letters such as:
>
>>VXSSSV
>>MSSSV
>>MSSVRX
>>MSVRXV
>
>>These sequences are generated by a finite state
>>grammar and the test is applied by mixing "good"
>>sequences with ungrammatical sequences (sequences
>>that do not comply with the original grammar).
>>In 60 to 70% of the cases the subjects were able
>>to separate correctly the grammatical sequences
>>from the ungrammatical ones, without knowing what
>>"rule" was used to generate them and without being
>>able to explain their reasoning.
>
>Chains, in Shannon & Weaver "The Mathematical Theory of
>Communication". This is the method used by Jason L. Hutchens in his
>1996 Loebner contest entry. It is described in
>"http://www.diemme.it/~luigi/alma/3/talk.html".
>
>take their refutations with a grain of salt.
If your most recent exposure to Artificial Grammar Research is
in Shannon and Weaver, then a trip to the library might be in order;
it's still an active research community in psychology, and most
of the easy confounds have been controlled for and the phenomenon
still persists. In particular, it's relatively easy to make sets of
"sentences" over which a Markov chain (of any finite size) would be
unable to generalize -- a classic example being the set of duplicated
strings (e.g. ww for any string w) or close variants of that set.
I'm also not sure what you find to refute or to take with a grain of
salt in in the notion of unbounded dependencies -- Chomsky's basis
observation was that the differences between the sentences "The boy who X
runs" and "The boys who X run" requires that plurality (and gender,
in some languages, &c) be remembered across an unbounded length of
the sentences. This appears to still be true, and is very difficult
for a Markov process to capture.
-kitten
Seth Russell
> For Kelly and Piaget the system
> does not mediate but predicate that which it construes.
Could you expound on the difference?
Sergio Navega
>On Mon, 12 Oct 1998 10:06:06 -0300, "Sergio Navega" <sna...@ibm.net>
>wrote:
>>That's exactly my point. Most of what we think is coincidence is
>>just a reflection of our predisposition to perceive regularities.
>>This is one more reason to make me wonder that the perception
>>of regularities is something that occurs in all levels of our
>>cognition.
>
>You are most certainly correct. However, it is amusing to speculate
>that coincidences (co-inky-dinks) are merely the reflection of
>regularities that are beyond human comprehension.
>
Very interesting thought, to which I agree. I would say that
coincidences are regularities that haven't occurred often
enough for us (our perception) to assume that there's something
important happening there.
When the same coincidence happens some times (I guess
the magic number here is 3 or 4), then it is time to try
to "understand" the coincidence. It is time, then, to activate
our "causal hypothesizer mechanism". And this is the *most*
dangerous phase. Everybody is able, on average, to perceive
regularities. But the difference in performance among persons
of this "causal explanation mechanism" is impressive.
A slight variation of this mechanism is able to transform a
scientist into a "mystical". I believe that, unfortunately, it is
easier to find explanations when we dress the clothes of the latter,
which probably explains why there's so much "mysticals" in the world
(more than we can stand ;-).
Regards,
Sergio Navega.
Neil Rickert
>In article <6vj5ab$l...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <ric...@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>>There is a discussion of how this might be possible with Markov
>>Chains, in Shannon & Weaver "The Mathematical Theory of
>>Communication". This is the method used by Jason L. Hutchens in his
>>1996 Loebner contest entry. It is described in
>>"http://www.diemme.it/~luigi/alma/3/talk.html".
>>Chomskyans claim to have refuted Markov chains for language, but I
>>take their refutations with a grain of salt.
>If your most recent exposure to Artificial Grammar Research is
>in Shannon and Weaver, then a trip to the library might be in order;
>it's still an active research community in psychology, and most
>of the easy confounds have been controlled for and the phenomenon
>still persists. In particular, it's relatively easy to make sets of
>"sentences" over which a Markov chain (of any finite size) would be
>unable to generalize -- a classic example being the set of duplicated
>strings (e.g. ww for any string w) or close variants of that set.
You might be right. But only a Chomskyan would think this has any
relevance.
>I'm also not sure what you find to refute or to take with a grain of
>salt in in the notion of unbounded dependencies --
I take the whole Chomsky doctrine with a grain of salt.
To say it differently, I consider language to be a communication
system, and not a thinking system. Neither a Markov Chain nor a
grammar is required to generalize anything. What is needed is a way
of linguistically expressing ideas that were generated elsewhere.
Neil Rickert
>Sergio Navega wrote:
>> .. the mailman arrived with my copy of Elsevier's
>> Trends in Cognitive Science (Oct). Guess what's the
>> main cover article: Implicit Learning. This article was
>> written by Axel Cleeremans et. al., which seems pretty
>> dedicated to the subject. I was able to find him at:
>> http://164.15.20.1/axcWWW/axc.html
>I'm reading "Principles for Implicit Learning" by Axel Cleeremans at
>http://164.15.20.1/axcWWW/papers/96-principles/principles.html (thanks
>for the pointer) - it is perhaps the most interesting Cognitive Science
>article I've read all year. Here is my reaction to it:
Here is my reaction,
The traditional definition of knowledge is "Justified True Belief."
If I read Cleeremans correctly, his implicit knowledge is of a
similar form, except that it is implicit, not actually expressible in
language. One argument against this is that if 'implicit' means
non-conscious, the 'knowledge' is not the right word for it. So
Cleermans is trying to make the case that his implicit knowledge is
somehow available to consciousness but not expressible in language.
I think this is a very difficult case to make.
Here is the definition Cleeremans gives of implicit knowledge:
At a given time, knowledge is implicit when it can influence
processing without possessing in and of itself the properties that
would enable it to be an object of representation. Implicit
learning is the process by which we acquire such knowledge
He gives a thermostat as an example. With a digital thermostat, the
temperature is digitized, and represented in a microprocessor
register, and used to turn the heater on or off. But in an analog
mechanical system there is no digitization, and no digital
representation. Thus Cleeremans wants to say that the temperature is
not represented in this case, and so is implicit.
However, this sort of example invites the accusation that he is
making a distinction where there is no important difference.
In my opinion, the "justified true belief" idea should be junked. It
is an ivory towers intellectualist abstraction, part of a cute
sounding "Just So" story which doesn't explain anything. It would
have been seen as an absurdity, except that people have been
thoroughly indoctrinated into its silly ways of thinking. Two
millenia of philosophical tradition can be wrong, and ought to be
questioned.
Cleeremans and other 'implicit learning' proponents are saying that
the traditional theory doesn't quite work -- so lets make an
adjustment here and an adjustment there to see if we can fix it. The
trouble is that people have been making adjustment forever, but the
theory never gets any better. We should instead be junking the whole
package, and starting all over building a theory of cognition from
first principles.
But it probably won't happen. When a religion becomes deeply
entrenched, the true believers of that religion are able to convince
themselves that it is not religion but is truth. And, almost by
definition, everything else becomes heresy, confusion,
misunderstanding, or ignorance.
Anders N Weinstein
>ande...@pitt.edu (Anders N Weinstein) writes:
>>>The biggest belief of all, held by almost all scientists, and by most
>>>philosophers, is in a concept of "truth" which assumes a God's eye
>>>view of the universe.
>
>>Almost as bad as taking a view of the mind's directedness at objects
>>which assumes we human beings must necessarily be limited to a
>>brain's-eye-view of the world!
>
>I don't hold.
Not exactly. I admit I have a *suspicion* that it lies behind some of
what you say, but didn't mean to charge you with it.
I *would* attribute it to most cognitive and brain scientists,
actually. In fact it has its roots in philosophy, in the epistemology
that arose under the influence of modern physical science.
>What I am disagreeing with is the claim that we don't have criteria
>for determining truth, yet we can somehow discover it.
Your original comment charged "god's-eye-viewism". I only
wanted to point out that I thought one could hold to a recognizably
realist view of truth without god's-eye-viewism (recourse to a transcendent,
non-human point of view). I said I thought one could do so as long as one
abandoned the picture according to which the knowing subject is trapped
behind a veil of its own representations from which it has to infer to a
distal reality.
To take one nice example, the "direct realism" of JJ Gibson was
presented as, well, a realism. It takes perception to be able to
furnish the organism with veridical information about genuine features
of the distal environment of the organism. (Actually, this is a feature it
shares with cognitivist theories such as the Marr school's.)
And it has no need for a god's eye view.
>What I am disagreeing with is the claim that we don't have criteria
>for determining truth, yet we can somehow discover it.
That seems to me among the weakest of objections to the idea of
objective truth.
For there is a regress of criteria application to be dealt with: you
can make judgements (apply concepts) on some matters on the basis of
others, presumably more basic. In that case the latter serve as the
criteria for the former. But this can't go on forever: there must be
something you can just do, without applying further criteria for doing
it. In computer science terms these would be something like the
primitive operations. (Compare Wittgenstein on following a rule: there
must be a way of following a rule that does not involve consulting an
interpretation of the rule, a primitive behavioral capacity that is
exhibited in our ordinary rule-following behavior.)
Now there is no reason at all that a primitive operation at the
person-level cannot be one of judging the truth of some proposition
(i.e. concept-application). In that case the epistemically basic
judgements (concept-applications) of the person would claim truth,
without being based on any further criteria for truth. It would mean
that the capacity for judgement (which claims truth) lies at bedrock.
Anyway, it all comes down to the question of what the primitive
operations (for these purposes, i.e. at the person-level) are, in terms
of which "criteria for truth" could be defined. Then one faces a dilemma:
either these involve some kind of contentful claims -- either they
represent the world as being some way or other -- in which case they
are a kind of judgment of truth; or they do not, in which case they
cannot justify or stand in any epistemic relation to a claim about the
world.
I do think the distinction of levels is also hihgly relevant here,
however. For of course there are different primitive operations at the
sub-personal level of neural circuitry. But the circuitry elements do
not follow rules, make judgements, apply criteria in the sense in which
whole people do these things at all. All these concepts are ambiguous,
and I believe clarity is served by keeping the distinctions clear, and
insisting that one cannot present a sub-personal design as an answer to
a constitutive question about a whole-person-level phenomenon. Or so it
seems to me, anyway.
An earlier post mentioned experiments on "mathematical" abilities of
infants. There is something like the above distinction in the clear
difference between a baby that, let us suppose, has a counter circuit
in its brain, and so can behaviorally discriminate numbers in one of
those experiments, and a child that has actually learned to count (say
the numerals by heart) and then to issue explicit numerical judgments,
and draw inferential consequences from them (and later even to do
proofs). The presence of the counter circuit in the infant does not
obviate the need for behavioral training in the technique of counting
before the child as a whole can do math in an interesting sense. It is
only what is set up by such training that counts as the person-level
phenomenon of numerical concept-use.
>>I would suggest the crucial move is rejecting the idea that knowledge
>>of the world is epistemically mediated by intervening representations
>>of any kind.
>
>That isn't anything I have to reject, since I have never suggested
>that position. I might have suggested that nothing of importance is
>epistemically mediated -- but that is a different argument.
Fine. But then why do you assert the "philosopher's" concept of truth
would require a god's eye view? Can't human beings make judgements
about the intersubjective world and correct and refine them from their
own human point of view? I concede I am not at all confident I
understand what is behind your claim here.
>> One must abandon the idea of mind as a self-contained
>>sphere of representations, although not the idea of the intentional
>>directedness of mental states towards objects.
>
>You might do better to toss out mental states, or at least the
>typical talk about them.
I don't see any motivation for that in general. I agree that if your
interest is in, say, neural 'learning' algorithms, you will not have to
invoke the mental states of the person at any point in your inquiry.
Just as you will not have to invoke the social or economic states of
the person. But that hardly means there are no such states. Just that
they are invisible from that particular stance, but visible from
another.
Anders N Weinstein
Josh Soffer <joshs...@webtv.net> wrote:
>Anders, you sound like a phenomenologist . Have you by any chance been
>influenced by Heidegger or Husserl? I'm new to this group so you'll have
I would be content to label myself a phenomenologist, and know
something about Heidegger, less about Husserl. The marvelous idiom that
worldly objects "show up for us" comes from the Heidegger translation
of Dreyfus or Haugeland.
> Of course such a phenomenological view would
>render a notion of 'unconscious' not as a content of thought in conflict
>with another but as a pre-consciousness, a vaguely glimpsed and fragile
>new meaning. It is not hidden from conscious awareness, but a full
>awareness of a state of foggy construing.
I can't say I understand this. I would say it is clear that the
cogntivist's concept of unconscious sub-personal states and operations
should be sharply distinguished from other concepts of the unconscious
or pre-conscious, e.g. Freud's. The latter purports to be a
person-level phenomenon. For example, if I say that you are
unconsciously resentful of someone, I do not mean that there is a
representation of anger in some sub-personal computational module
inside your body; I am rather talking about a pattern or tendency in
your molar conduct that is not transparent to you.
Neil Rickert
>In article <6vu40n$t...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <ric...@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>>What I am disagreeing with is the claim that we don't have criteria
>>for determining truth, yet we can somehow discover it.
>Your original comment charged "god's-eye-viewism". I only
>wanted to point out that I thought one could hold to a recognizably
>realist view of truth without god's-eye-viewism (recourse to a transcendent,
>non-human point of view).
I did not mean to suggest that there is an conscious appeal to the
transcendent. I was only suggesting that it is implicitly there as a
prerequisite to making sense of the view of truth I was criticizing.
>To take one nice example, the "direct realism" of JJ Gibson was
>presented as, well, a realism. It takes perception to be able to
>furnish the organism with veridical information about genuine features
>of the distal environment of the organism.
Well, sure. That settles the problem of a transcendent God. It says
that we are all gods, and can recognize truth by ourselves. But that
still leaves truth as dependent on an appeal to the mystical.
> (Actually, this is a feature it
>shares with cognitivist theories such as the Marr school's.)
I thought I was including the Marr school in my criticism.
>And it has no need for a god's eye view.
So you claim. I don't agree.
>>What I am disagreeing with is the claim that we don't have criteria
>>for determining truth, yet we can somehow discover it.
>That seems to me among the weakest of objections to the idea of
>objective truth.
Once you have appointed us all gods, all objections can be
dismissed. Still, that idea has difficulties whenever we turn out to
make mistakes.
>For there is a regress of criteria application to be dealt with: you
>can make judgements (apply concepts) on some matters on the basis of
>others, presumably more basic. In that case the latter serve as the
>criteria for the former. But this can't go on forever: there must be
>something you can just do, without applying further criteria for doing
>it.
So far, so good. The problem comes when you assert that 'truth' is
the most basic concept. For then you cannot account for making
mistakes.
> In computer science terms these would be something like the
>primitive operations.
And with humans they might also be basic operations (neural actions,
sensory organ actions).
> (Compare Wittgenstein on following a rule: there
>must be a way of following a rule that does not involve consulting an
>interpretation of the rule, a primitive behavioral capacity that is
>exhibited in our ordinary rule-following behavior.)
It is a silly claim.
>Now there is no reason at all that a primitive operation at the
>person-level cannot be one of judging the truth of some proposition
>(i.e. concept-application).
Sure. But then presumably we are all gods, and creationism is
presumably how we achieved this authority. We might as well junk
science, and turn to religion. For if the priesthood has the ability
to judge truth as a primitive operation, of what use is science?
>Anyway, it all comes down to the question of what the primitive
>operations (for these purposes, i.e. at the person-level) are, in terms
>of which "criteria for truth" could be defined.
But it is not a question. As long as science takes 'truth' as a
primitive, it has prejudged the issue, and therefore it cannot be
questioned. If we start with the assumption that 'truth' is
primitive, we shall never find otherwise. At most we might find a
contradiction, but why should that bother us when the liar paradox
has never caused anybody to question these basic assumptions.
>An earlier post mentioned experiments on "mathematical" abilities of
>infants. There is something like the above distinction in the clear
>difference between a baby that, let us suppose, has a counter circuit
>in its brain, and so can behaviorally discriminate numbers in one of
>those experiments, and a child that has actually learned to count (say
>the numerals by heart) and then to issue explicit numerical judgments,
>and draw inferential consequences from them (and later even to do
>proofs). The presence of the counter circuit in the infant does not
>obviate the need for behavioral training in the technique of counting
>before the child as a whole can do math in an interesting sense. It is
>only what is set up by such training that counts as the person-level
>phenomenon of numerical concept-use.
I don't have any disagreement, but I fail to see the relevance.
>>>I would suggest the crucial move is rejecting the idea that knowledge
>>>of the world is epistemically mediated by intervening representations
>>>of any kind.
>>That isn't anything I have to reject, since I have never suggested
>>that position. I might have suggested that nothing of importance is
>>epistemically mediated -- but that is a different argument.
>Fine. But then why do you assert the "philosopher's" concept of truth
>would require a god's eye view? Can't human beings make judgements
>about the intersubjective world and correct and refine them from their
>own human point of view? I concede I am not at all confident I
>understand what is behind your claim here.
I don't have any serious problems with subjective truth, which we may
presume can differ from person to person. Nor do I have problems
with different people trying to resolve their differences to achieve
a degree of intersubjective agreement on truth -- I suppose
sociologists would call this a socially constructed concept of
'truth'. My comments were specific to a presumed human independent
objective truth.
>>> One must abandon the idea of mind as a self-contained
>>>sphere of representations, although not the idea of the intentional
>>>directedness of mental states towards objects.
>>You might do better to toss out mental states, or at least the
>>typical talk about them.
>I don't see any motivation for that in general. I agree that if your
>interest is in, say, neural 'learning' algorithms, you will not have to
>invoke the mental states of the person at any point in your inquiry.
That was not my point. Rather I see 'mental states' being used for
the construction of all sorts of "Just So" stories which are then
presented as supposed theories of mind or theories of behavior.
Josh Soffer
between you and Neil Rickert in dejanews archives. Reminded me of the
100 year war! It was enlightening, though. It has been a while since I
focused on research in a.i. Although my graduate work was in
experimental cognitive psychology, my primary interest and writing these
days is in continental philosophy and psychotherapy. As you know the gap
between anglo-american and continental styles of philosophy has been
shrinking ever since Wittgenstein, so the paths of authors lie Rorty,
Dreyfus and Foucault cross often. It seems to me that you have
assimilated the general implications of these authors while Rickert
finds them to be incoherent.
I am interested in knowing your opinion on some of the most recent
attempts to move forward in modelling thinking organization. For
instance, VanGelder, Gordon Globus and others seem to be enamored of
dynamical methods borrowed from thermodynamics. But this strikes me as a
bit of physics envy and a commitment toa mathematics that is far too
rigid to fit the way meaning transforms itself over time. What do you
think of these authors?
Neil Rickert
>To Anders Weinstein, I discovered the lengthy thread of discussion
>between you and Neil Rickert in dejanews archives. Reminded me of the
>100 year war! It was enlightening, though.
Since my name was mentioned, I will intrude. I'm glad you were
enlightened, even if it was mainly Anders that you found
enlightening. I generally respect Anders, although I often disagree
with his positions. I think "war" is a little strong.
> As you know the gap
>between anglo-american and continental styles of philosophy has been
>shrinking ever since Wittgenstein, so the paths of authors lie Rorty,
>Dreyfus and Foucault cross often. It seems to me that you have
>assimilated the general implications of these authors while Rickert
>finds them to be incoherent.
No, I don't find them incoherent. I find them confused. These
authors take a few good points, and weave them into an elaborate
theory. The trouble is that the theory is mostly a web of
tautologies with very few points of contact with reality. It may be
great for explaining the basis of the creative story telling by
philosophers, but it is too disconnected from reality to be useful
for discussing human cognition.
>I am interested in knowing your opinion on some of the most recent
>attempts to move forward in modelling thinking organization. For
>instance, VanGelder, Gordon Globus and others seem to be enamored of
>dynamical methods borrowed from thermodynamics. But this strikes me as a
>bit of physics envy and a commitment toa mathematics that is far too
>rigid to fit the way meaning transforms itself over time. What do you
>think of these authors?
I think Anders looks to these mainly to demonstrate that there are
possible alternatives to crude forms of reductionism. I expect he
will deny any physics envy, and I doubt that he really expects a
simple explanation of human cognitiion based on dynamical systems.
Neil Rickert
>>Well, sure. That settles the problem of a transcendent God. It says
>>that we are all gods, and can recognize truth by ourselves. But that
>>still leaves truth as dependent on an appeal to the mystical.
>My question is why this should require any mystical idea that we are
>gods. Being percipient animals in the world would seem to be enough.
>Do you think Gibson makes the god's eye view assumption anywhere in
>his work? Can you explain where? It seems resolutely naturalistic to me.
No, not at all. But that appears to be the implication of your claim
that his theory settles questions of truth.
>>Once you have appointed us all gods, all objections can be
>>dismissed. Still, that idea has difficulties whenever we turn out to
>>make mistakes.
>I remind you that I am asking why one should think that the very idea
>of our acquiring information about the world in perception
>somehow requires that we be gods.
No, I haven't suggest that at all. That was a reaction to the claim
that it thereby settles questions of truth.
>>So far, so good. The problem comes when you assert that 'truth' is
>>the most basic concept.
>It is more the idea that judgment is the most basic cognitive
>activity.
Ah, that is better.
In that case perhaps we can agree that 'truth' is something we assign
in approval of a judgement.
> I would not exactly say it is a basic concept.
Is the "it" here "judgment" or "truth". There appears to be an
ambiguity.
> The basic
>concepts in a conceptual repertoire might be such items as "brown" and
>"table" and "dog" and the like, but (perhaps) need not anywhere
>include "true" or "judgeable content".
I don't see those as basic either. I don't see that any particular
concepts can be said to be basic. The idea that there are a few
basic concepts, and all is reducible to those, seems wrong.
>The idea is that to judge *explicitly* that, say, "there's a brown dog"
>is *implicitly* to take a judgeable content to be true.
Oops. Now you are back to 'truth' being basic, and as the standard
for judgement. I can't agree with that.
>is *implicitly* to take a judgeable content to be true. So that "true"
>as recognized in the act of judgment is not on the same level as the
>other concepts, insofar as (perhaps) it need not be represented as such
>in the system. (I say 'perhaps' because one might hold that the
>capacity for reflection on one's own representations is essential to
>truly conceptual thought).
>(Possible analogy: the main "read/eval/print" loop executed by the main
>loop in a Lisp interpreter is in this context not just another function
>on the same level as all the functions defined in your code; rather, it
>constitutes the whole syas an interpreter at all. You. You can however
>perfectly well write a r-e-p loop in your code, but you get a
>higher-level stack frame when you do so.)
This is significant if we are talking about truth relative to a
formal system. I don't have problems with that, for in that case
there are criteria.
>> For then you cannot account for making
>>mistakes.
>I don't see why this view has a problem with making mistakes that
>another view does not. The regress argument applies across the board.
>How is it on your view that an alternative has a better time with
>mistakes?
I'm not claiming we are free from mistakes. Rather, my idea is that
the most basic activity is devising efficaceous practices, where
efficacy is measured by an innate ability such as the effect on
controlling basic biochemistry (or hunger and similar drives). Then
we adopt `rules' that describe our practices, and claim that our
practices are rule following. Of course, they are not. The 'rule'
is following the practice, rather than the practice following the
rule. Then we confer 'truth' as a "Good Housekeeping Seal of
Approval" on the carrying out of these efficaceous practices. To say
that we can make mistakes is just to say that we don't always follow
the most efficaceous practices.
But the difference here is that I am not making 'truth' the goal.
The problem with mistakes comes about when you say that 'truth' is
the goal, and that the only criteria you have is in your judgement.
For then the presence of mistakes indicates that you don't actually
have criteria. If 'truth' is not the goal, then it doesn't matter
that there are no criteria other than those we establish ourselves.
>The main thing I meant was that something is *epistemically* primitive,
>primitive when considering its role in justification.
This doesn't do anything for me, given that I see epistemology as a
pointless discipline.
>>>Anyway, it all comes down to the question of what the primitive
>>>operations (for these purposes, i.e. at the person-level) are, in terms
>>>of which "criteria for truth" could be defined.
>>But it is not a question. As long as science takes 'truth' as a
>>primitive, it has prejudged the issue, and therefore it cannot be
>>questioned. If we start with the assumption that 'truth' is
>>primitive, we shall never find otherwise.
>I don't think it is simply a dogmatic assumption. I think there may be
>some considerations in its favor. The regress alludes to Frege's argument
>againts the definability of truth in "The Thought".
My whole point is that if truth is indefinable, then either science
is something other than the search for truth, or science is a branch
of theology. I'll take the first of these.
>In your own way, btw, I suspect you also think of your own theory as a
>transcendental psychology, in the sense of elucidating a formal
>(mathematical?) structure that might be constant across the development
>of different substantive conceptual systems.
No, I wouldn't say that. Rather, I see it as the action of
biological processes which can be approximately described as using
mathematical procedures.
Neil Rickert
>>The traditional definition of knowledge is "Justified True Belief."
>>If I read Cleeremans correctly, his implicit knowledge is of a
>>similar form, except that it is implicit, not actually expressible in
>>language. One argument against this is that if 'implicit' means
>>non-conscious, the 'knowledge' is not the right word for it. So
>>Cleermans is trying to make the case that his implicit knowledge is
>>somehow available to consciousness but not expressible in language.
>>I think this is a very difficult case to make.
>It is not.
>Language is extremely limited in scope.
I agree with the last sentence. I think you missed my point. I'm
not disagreeing that there is implicit knowledge. I'm disagreeing
with the claim that it is the same type of thing as justified true
belief, except that it is unconscious.
>The experience is not about. It is direct.
>The most significant communications are telepathic,
>and not liguistic.
Count me as skeptical about telepathy.
>>Cleeremans and other 'implicit learning' proponents are saying that
>>the traditional theory doesn't quite work
>It does not work period. It does not work to ANY extent.
I agree with that.
Anders N Weinstein
>ande...@pitt.edu (Anders N Weinstein) writes:
>>In article <6vu40n$t...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <ric...@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>>To take one nice example, the "direct realism" of JJ Gibson was
>>presented as, well, a realism. It takes perception to be able to
>>furnish the organism with veridical information about genuine features
>>of the distal environment of the organism.
>
>Well, sure. That settles the problem of a transcendent God. It says
>that we are all gods, and can recognize truth by ourselves. But that
>still leaves truth as dependent on an appeal to the mystical.
My question is why this should require any mystical idea that we are
gods. Being percipient animals in the world would seem to be enough.
Do you think Gibson makes the god's eye view assumption anywhere in
his work? Can you explain where? It seems resolutely naturalistic to me.
>>>What I am disagreeing with is the claim that we don't have criteria
>>>for determining truth, yet we can somehow discover it.
>
>>That seems to me among the weakest of objections to the idea of
>>objective truth.
>
>Once you have appointed us all gods, all objections can be
>dismissed. Still, that idea has difficulties whenever we turn out to
>make mistakes.
I remind you that I am asking why one should think that the very idea
of our acquiring information about the world in perception
somehow requires that we be gods. I don't see it. Particular cases of
error require, and often get, particular explanations, explanations
which show some deviation from the normal conditions under which
perception furnishes us with valid information about the world.
(This much also is common to Gibson and Marr.)
>>For there is a regress of criteria application to be dealt with: you
>>can make judgements (apply concepts) on some matters on the basis of
>>others, presumably more basic. In that case the latter serve as the
>>criteria for the former. But this can't go on forever: there must be
>>something you can just do, without applying further criteria for doing
>>it.
>
>So far, so good. The problem comes when you assert that 'truth' is
>the most basic concept.
It is more the idea that judgment is the most basic cognitive
activity. I would not exactly say it is a basic concept. The basic
concepts in a conceptual repertoire might be such items as "brown" and
"table" and "dog" and the like, but (perhaps) need not anywhere
include "true" or "judgeable content".
The idea is that to judge *explicitly* that, say, "there's a brown dog"
is *implicitly* to take a judgeable content to be true. So that "true"
as recognized in the act of judgment is not on the same level as the
other concepts, insofar as (perhaps) it need not be represented as such
in the system. (I say 'perhaps' because one might hold that the
capacity for reflection on one's own representations is essential to
truly conceptual thought).
(Possible analogy: the main "read/eval/print" loop executed by the main
loop in a Lisp interpreter is in this context not just another function
on the same level as all the functions defined in your code; rather, it
constitutes the whole syas an interpreter at all. You. You can however
perfectly well write a r-e-p loop in your code, but you get a
higher-level stack frame when you do so.)
> For then you cannot account for making
>mistakes.
I don't see why this view has a problem with making mistakes that
another view does not. The regress argument applies across the board.
How is it on your view that an alternative has a better time with
mistakes?
>>Now there is no reason at all that a primitive operation at the
>>person-level cannot be one of judging the truth of some proposition
>>(i.e. concept-application).
>
>Sure. But then presumably we are all gods, and creationism is
>presumably how we achieved this authority. We might as well junk
>science, and turn to religion. For if the priesthood has the ability
>to judge truth as a primitive operation, of what use is science?
First, I didn't say all our cognition was to be viewed as an exercise of
a primitive ability. There is reasoning, for example.
More important the concept
of "primitive" was really only introduced as an analogy here. It needs to
be understood properly, for I am not suggesting that we simply posit magical
computational primitives that do just what needs to be explained in one step,
a move which would be transparently vacuous.
The main thing I meant was that something is *epistemically* primitive,
primitive when considering its role in justification. As I see it that
is perfectly compatible with it standing in systematic relation to
other abilities and so having a kind of structure; it is also perfectly
compatible with its being acquired ("cultural progamming" it's sometimes
called).
For example, the ability to recognize words in human speech or
handwriting might be epistemically primitive, in that I cannot offer
any inferential justification for my judgements beyond: it
looks/sounds to me like such and such. That means I don't justify my
judgements by reference to more basic contents of judgement;
phenomenologically speaking, the result of learning leaves me in a
state where sounds or writing usually presents itself to me *as* such
and such letters, words, phrases, meanings.
Still that is the end state of a developmental process, for I was not
born with that epistemically primitive ability; it is a result of
culturation. And it also has an interesting structure, in that the
recognition of words is not independent of recognition of letters, for
example.
But if some incomplete or occluded writing comes to me as "CAT" rather
then "CHT", and I judge (rightly or wrongly) that it says "CAT" on the
basis that it seems to me to say "CAT", I may not have applied any
criteria, but simply taken things to be as they seem to me to be.
Of course other background knowledge might lead me to withhold endorsement
of the appearant fact presented to me by my senses. But I do not apply a
general criterion for when to trust my senses.
>>Anyway, it all comes down to the question of what the primitive
>>operations (for these purposes, i.e. at the person-level) are, in terms
>>of which "criteria for truth" could be defined.
>
>But it is not a question. As long as science takes 'truth' as a
>primitive, it has prejudged the issue, and therefore it cannot be
>questioned. If we start with the assumption that 'truth' is
>primitive, we shall never find otherwise.
I don't think it is simply a dogmatic assumption. I think there may be
some considerations in its favor. The regress alludes to Frege's argument
againts the definability of truth in "The Thought".
Remember that to take the concept of judgement as claiming
truth as "transcendental", as a condition of the possibility of
rationally controlled thought or discourse on any topic whatever, is
not to say that any particular claim about the empirically presented
world is or is not true. It is just to say that there is a kind of
formal structure to rational cognitive activity that is invariant
across changes in substantive world view. For example, that all of them
involve assertion or judgement of propositions that are inferentially
related, stand in logical relations of implication and incompatibility.
In your own way, btw, I suspect you also think of your own theory as a
transcendental psychology, in the sense of elucidating a formal
(mathematical?) structure that might be constant across the development
of different substantive conceptual systems.
>I don't have any serious problems with subjective truth, which we may
>presume can differ from person to person.
I have no idea what "subjective truth" is supposed to mean. It sounds
to me like a disguised synonym for "belief".
> Nor do I have problems
>with different people trying to resolve their differences to achieve
>a degree of intersubjective agreement on truth -- I suppose
>sociologists would call this a socially constructed concept of
>'truth'.
I don't see why we have to defer to sociologists on the description of
this process. It might better be described as a search for objective truth,
it seems to me, and one which does not exactly make use of the conceptual
apparatus of sociology for its description.
> My comments were specific to a presumed human independent
>objective truth.
I think one would need to explain what the appeal to "human-dependence"
is doing in the discussion of truth. Certainly many subject matters may be
human-dependent in a variety of ways, e.g. the truth that I rent my
apartment is human-depdendent, but nonetheless objective. Bushmen might
not be equipped to understand it without being introduced to new social
concepts, but that is a matter of understanding, not truth.
Bloxy's
>Jerry Hull wrote in message <3622155b.852629@news-server>...
>>On Mon, 12 Oct 1998 10:06:06 -0300, "Sergio Navega" <sna...@ibm.net>
>>wrote:
>>>That's exactly my point. Most of what we think is coincidence is
>>>just a reflection of our predisposition to perceive regularities.
>>>This is one more reason to make me wonder that the perception
>>>of regularities is something that occurs in all levels of our
>>>cognition.
>>
>>You are most certainly correct. However, it is amusing to speculate
>>that coincidences (co-inky-dinks) are merely the reflection of
>>regularities that are beyond human comprehension.
>>
>
>Very interesting thought, to which I agree. I would say that
>coincidences are regularities that haven't occurred often
>enough for us (our perception) to assume that there's something
>important happening there.
It is completely incorrect.
This is the same materialistic explaining away of
unexplainable.
It is not a matter of regularities.
You may have a few dollars left in your pocket and
not money to pay your land sucking lord, and, out
of the blue the money comes to you.
You don't go through this often. There may be not
a single example of that in your life.
This is just an ugly rotten branwashing system,
inventing the explanation to dismiss the truth.
If you look at these "coincidences", there will be
no regularities in it, unless you are a bio-robot.
Just is just a shit of the purest grade of an
argument for so called coincidences. Again, we keep
looking for the same old horseshit attempting to explain
that, which has not explanation, and very few things
in our life, having any significance, do have explanations
in terms of the same old rotten shit.
>When the same coincidence happens some times (I guess
>the magic number here is 3 or 4), then it is time to try
>to "understand" the coincidence.
Yes. When you find these strange thing in your life
occuring, then you'd better reexamine your current
belief system, thats for sure.
> It is time, then, to activate
>our "causal hypothesizer mechanism". And this is the *most*
>dangerous phase. Everybody is able, on average, to perceive
>regularities. But the difference in performance among persons
>of this "causal explanation mechanism" is impressive.
Yes, they will explaing ANYTHING.
If nothing werks, they'll use probability, statistics,
even family values. "Survival of the spieces" seems like
a nice thing to plug the holes with.
Basically, anything will do.
[just to keep old rotten belief system unendangered]
Look at that idiot box [tv]. Every second they explain
it all away, lie and deceive. And things are significant,
and we do not have any answer for it, and they just keep
explaining it all away in terms of old rotten shit, created
by the fat cat.
Just look at this flinton trip in the house of the white
mouse. It is a very significant issue. They had this very
issue a few years ago with gary heart, when he ran for
a presidency.
They never examined that case and just sick the guy,
instead of looking at this whole thing with a new look.
Now the opportunity is given to them again.
And this time, it is even more exciting, than last time,
because the chief acuser himself was engaged in far more
"dangerous" sex affair.
This hydy dude with a soapy smile had an affair about
30 years back. And that affair resulted in a child.
That sucking liar destroyed the life of a woman,
destroyed the life of a child, lied to everybody for
30 years, while "serving the interests of american
peope" [what a cunning way to manipulate the bio-robots,
brainwashed into oblivion not to be able to see through
it].
And that ugly affair is not significant now.
And he is a concervative.
And concervative position is "family values".
They claim that the child can not be raised to be a
good bio-robot if he/she does not have both parents.
The woman had to lie for 30 years, the child's life
was destroyed.
And that is not "important".
You see, this time, another element added to the
equasion. And we are still not capable of seeing
ANYTHING of truth in it.
Do you think "american people" are that dumb?
[to be given such ugly horseshit to eat, and eat
it just fine, yam, yam?]
Nobody seems to be interested in even examining what
this whole thing is all about. What are these so
called family values.
What is wrong with sex, generically?
Life came from it.
It feels good.
It does not hurt the other person.
Everybody does it.
Everybody has it.
And we keep lying about these evil things.
How ugly.
Yes, if that sucky monica, engaged in a blow job
in the middle of high level telephone call by the
flinton, was hurt by it, if her life was damaged,
destroyed, if she suffered some consequenses,
if she was forced into it, then it is a valid
issue. No flinton, or anyone for that matter,
should be able to get away from such an ugly thing.
But that is about the only argument there is about
it. Else, why don't you mind your own business.
And that cock sucking monica did not wash the dress
for six months. Why?
- Because it was a setup on the first place.
According to secret service agents and other people
in the house of the white mouse, she was just hunting
him down, and she knew EXACTLY what she was doing.
Now she is cheerfully acceepting multimillion dollar
deals. Just the other day on the idiot box the news
reporter reported that there is a new monica fasion,
a new monica look, and that is major bux.
There are movie and book deals and you name it.
The numbers are already in excess of $5 million.
What is wrong with flinton screwing a young chick
for a change. That old bitch is no longer exciting.
The world is in difficult period right now.
Some freshness could help quite a bit, especially
if the other chick does not mind.
What if flinton, after being blown by monica good
enough, eventually decided:
hey, screw that old bitch, i want to marry this
young chick? What if he married that sucking
monica? Would that be evil?
Well, and how do we know that he would not do it?
We dont. He does not. Nobody does.
But these parasites just keep playing that "family
values" card, while the chief acuser is ten times
as evil, as the flinton himself, and the ugliest thing
of all, that nobody is even looking at that.
The issues just dissapeared, even though that old liar
himself admitted the affair.
What is this?
How your sucky artificial "intelligence", which is
contradiction of terms is going to address this class
of issues? Using what kind of sucky "logic"?
What kind of robotic reasoning?
You talk about conincidence?
Oh yes, and a good one at that.
You refuse to look at it even now?
- No problem, the next time it will be even more
exciting.
>A slight variation of this mechanism is able to transform a
>scientist into a "mystical".
Because that is that it is on the first place.
These are not some idiotic coincidences.
These are the examples of being poolled in particular
direction, attracted to particular situation.
This is how real intelligence functions.
This is the very nature of human experience.
The very essense of it.
If you put those "coincidences" aside, all you'd
have left is purely robotic existance, having no
purpose whatsoever.
There would be no life at all.
No need for such a useless, purposeless, mechanical
repetition of the same thing.
What you call laws, are not laws at all, but concoctions,
arising from limited perception on the grandior
of the life force itself and possibility of other
level of experience.
Pumping good here.
Will pump even better.
Bloxy's
>>Sergio Navega wrote:
>
>>> .. the mailman arrived with my copy of Elsevier's
>>> Trends in Cognitive Science (Oct). Guess what's the
>>> main cover article: Implicit Learning. This article was
>>> written by Axel Cleeremans et. al., which seems pretty
>>> dedicated to the subject. I was able to find him at:
>
>>> http://164.15.20.1/axcWWW/axc.html
>
>>I'm reading "Principles for Implicit Learning" by Axel Cleeremans at
>>http://164.15.20.1/axcWWW/papers/96-principles/principles.html (thanks
>>for the pointer) - it is perhaps the most interesting Cognitive Science
>>article I've read all year. Here is my reaction to it:
>
>Here is my reaction,
>
>If I read Cleeremans correctly, his implicit knowledge is of a
>similar form, except that it is implicit, not actually expressible in
>language. One argument against this is that if 'implicit' means
>non-conscious, the 'knowledge' is not the right word for it. So
>Cleermans is trying to make the case that his implicit knowledge is
>somehow available to consciousness but not expressible in language.
>I think this is a very difficult case to make.
It is not.
Language is extremely limited in scope.
So far, we found the way to deal with "rational" only.
Dealing with anything beyond that level produces more talk
ABOUT and ABOUT.
The experience is not about. It is direct.
The most significant communications are telepathic,
and not liguistic. The connectiion between communicating
parties is beyond all the languages. You can create a lot
of notions ABOUT and ABOUT it, but so far they could not
describe anything of real significance, beyond the material
hallucinations, we are so entranced with.
>Here is the definition Cleeremans gives of implicit knowledge:
>
> At a given time, knowledge is implicit when it can influence
> processing without possessing in
[it?]
> and of itself the properties that
> would enable it to be an object of representation. Implicit
> learning is the process by which we acquire such knowledge
>
>He gives a thermostat as an example. With a digital thermostat, the
>temperature is digitized, and represented in a microprocessor
>register, and used to turn the heater on or off. But in an analog
>mechanical system there is no digitization, and no digital
>representation. Thus Cleeremans wants to say that the temperature is
>not represented in this case, and so is implicit.
Well, that is not good enough of an example.
Even if it analogue, we are still looking at some mechanism.
How that mechanism samples reality and what kind of encoding
and representation is involved is hardly a major point.
You can say the implicit knowledge is a knowledge of a baby,
smiling, while having not been "taught" to do so.
The baby is few days old. It does not "know" anything
about smiling. There is no moral system at that time.
And yet the child giggles. Why?
Is it knowledge, or is it what?
>However, this sort of example invites the accusation that he is
>making a distinction where there is no important difference.
Yes, exactly. The example simply sux.
>In my opinion, the "justified true belief" idea should be junked.
Yes, about time.
First of all, true belief is the same thing as artificial
"intelligence" - a delusion.
Either it is a belief, in which case it is not true,
or it is true, then it is not a belief.
True and belief just dont belong in the same sentence.
The dude, that created this idea is simply blind.
Brainwashed into oblivion, attempting to monkey around
and fit unfittable together.
And what is that "justified". Why is it required?
What does it add? What is it based upon, etc.
Justified implies there are examples of some event,
thus it is justified, and not simply a delusion.
But if it is "justified", then why there is a belief?
And why do we need to plug in "true", if it is already
justified?
You see, by piling more words together, we dont make
anything more true.
It is still a pipe dream.
> It
>is an ivory towers intellectualist abstraction, part of a cute
>sounding "Just So" story which doesn't explain anything.
Yes. Correct observation.
They have this complex of inferiority, and thus they have
to explain EVERYTHING, you see.
They can not just come to realization that they just don't
know the most significan underpinnings of ALL THERE IS.
These are the servants of the fear and guilt creating
priest, brainwashing everybody into oblivion with their
"explanations" for the purpose of blood sucking, essentially.
There is no justification for a song or a dance.
We can invent any kind of bio-robotic "explanation" of it,
but we don't know anything. By inventing such explanations
we avoid the very issue. We dont solve anything, just
perpetuate the old rotten framework to keep our rotten
systems as they are.
> It would
>have been seen as an absurdity, except that people have been
>thoroughly indoctrinated into its silly ways of thinking. Two
>millenia of philosophical tradition can be wrong, and ought to be
>questioned.
Yes, about time.
But what they try to do, to "fix" it, is just simply kill,
poison, burn, massacre, imprison, deprive of means of survival,
and you name it, all those, who come to question their old
rotten "the way it is".
>Cleeremans and other 'implicit learning' proponents are saying that
>the traditional theory doesn't quite work
It does not work period. It does not work to ANY extent.
It is just a strategy to keep the people blind, busy,
doing all these "important" things for the benefit of the
omni-potent system, ran by the fat cat.
Because they know full well:
"You never become rich, working for others".
That is their entire "scientific" foundation.
The rest is just cunning brainwashing techniques of
mind control and perpetuation of prejudice via keeping
the man blind and stuffed with coca cola commercials
so that there is not time or energy left to enquire
into the nature of ALL THERE IS.
> -- so lets make an
>adjustment here and an adjustment there to see if we can fix it.
No adjustment will work.
It is not a matter of adjusting the same old crap.
It is a matter of awareness of it.
Once you SEE, the adjustment happens automatically.
There is no need to do ANYTHING.
You can not help, but "adjust".
But even to call it adjustment is ugly at that point,
because it is not an adjustment, but rather a
REVOLUTION IN YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS.
It is discontinuity in your consciousness.
All adjustments merely perpetuate the old by sticking
new nice looking lables on the same old can of coca
cola.
> The
>trouble is that people have been making adjustment forever, but the
>theory never gets any better.
You see?
> We should instead be junking the whole
>package, and starting all over building a theory of cognition from
>first principles.
The problem is, we don't even know what are those
"first principles". We are so branwashed into materialism,
there is hardly any free neurons left to compute anything
different.
The first principle has been outlined milleniums back.
"Know thyself".
[because all intelligence there is, is already witing
yourself]
You will not lie to yourself. You carry yourself all
day long. It is available to you 24 hrs a day.
Why not start there and see what makes you tick?
Do you think by looking outside, simply adding distortions,
you can know better?
What is there to know on the first place?
It is all already known.
We all going to dissapear into nothingness.
And there is nothing you can do about it,
not even willy the sucking gates can, with all the
billions he sucked from others.
That is our framework.
It does not work.
Never did.
And can not.
The evidence is just opposite.
But, any way you dance your life, you can not escape
THAT WHICH IS. It is not technically possible.
No "evil" of any magnitude is capable of destroying
your IMPLICIT knowledge, you see.
That knowledge is IMPLIED in your very being.
All you can do is eventually discover it.
>But it probably won't happen.
Why?
On what basis do you assert this?
How do you know?
Just read above very carefully.
> When a religion becomes deeply
>entrenched, the true believers of that religion are able to convince
>themselves that it is not religion but is truth.
Yes. But at that point, it is no longer a religion,
but a cult, such as cult of money we have.
It is EXACTLY the same thing.
> And, almost by
>definition, everything else becomes heresy, confusion,
>misunderstanding, or ignorance.
>
Hang on, doc.
No need to get so worked up about it.
Yes, they invented all sorts of tricks to opress, dominate,
brainwash, destroy, and you name it.
But they have NO REAL POWER, whatsoever.
It is just a pipe dream, a house of playing cards,
a pussy in the sky with diamonds, a delusion.
You don't have to remain ignorant.
There is just no power under the sun, that can
prevent you from enquiring into THAT WHICH IS
in the domain of ALL THERE IS.
It is not technically possible.
The way it is designed, no monkey dude, or combination
thereof, will ever be able to destroy this basic
mechanism.
Bloxy's
>In article <6vu40n$t...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <ric...@cs.niu.edu>
wrote:
>>ande...@pitt.edu (Anders N Weinstein) writes:
>>>In article <6vo1si$p...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, ric...@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
> wrote:
>>>>The biggest belief of all, held by almost all scientists, and by most
>>>>philosophers, is in a concept of "truth" which assumes a God's eye
>>>>view of the universe.
>>
>>>Almost as bad as taking a view of the mind's directedness at objects
>>>which assumes we human beings must necessarily be limited to a
>>>brain's-eye-view of the world!
>>
[...]
>>What I am disagreeing with is the claim that we don't have criteria
>>for determining truth, yet we can somehow discover it.
>
>That seems to me among the weakest of objections to the idea of
>objective truth.
The truth is not objective. It is beyond objective and subjective.
Objective is just a part of the equasion, and a limited part
at that.
It is applicable on material level to assure the survival
of the physical body, essentially.
There are some things, beyond that, but that is essentially
all there is to it.
>
>For there is a regress of criteria application to be dealt with: you
>can make judgements (apply concepts) on some matters on the basis of
>others, presumably more basic. In that case the latter serve as the
>criteria for the former. But this can't go on forever: there must be
>something you can just do, without applying further criteria for doing
>it.
Yes, the most significant things are not found by
merely piling up argumentation, building these hierarchical
structures of nonesense, essentially.
That is where the science failed, and pretty miserably at that.
They just keep looping in a dead loop for few hundred years now.
Well, not exactly, as it also had a significance in that,
in order for us to see something of the beyond the ordinary
matter, we need to investigate that matter as sincerely, as
we can.
Then it will just fall off, like a snake skin.
No pain, no problems. Just slip out of it.
Get a new life.
> In computer science terms these would be something like the
>primitive operations.
Yes, very primitive.
> (Compare Wittgenstein on following a rule: there
>must be a way of following a rule that does not involve consulting an
>interpretation of the rule, a primitive behavioral capacity that is
>exhibited in our ordinary rule-following behavior.)
Wittgenstein is one of the brightest of them all.
Tremendous intelligence.
>Now there is no reason at all that a primitive operation at the
>person-level cannot be one of judging the truth of some proposition
>(i.e. concept-application). In that case the epistemically basic
>judgements (concept-applications) of the person would claim truth,
>without being based on any further criteria for truth. It would mean
>that the capacity for judgement (which claims truth) lies at bedrock.
Well, we have to be careful with the very idea of APPLICATIONS
of truth. It is not an appied thing to be used to expploit
the resources at a higher "efficiency" for the purpose of
"survival". That is all just a bunch of lies.
A tale, told by an idiot, signifying nothing.
>Anyway, it all comes down to the question of what the primitive
>operations (for these purposes, i.e. at the person-level) are, in terms
>of which "criteria for truth" could be defined.
The question is posed incorrectly.
You are again dissecting, using roman formulae of
"divide and concure".
The truth does not consist of primitive operations, nor
it is concerned with such.
The criteria for the truth can not be defined.
It has beens said: "The truth can not be spoken".
Socrates was pronounced the wisest man on the land because
he said: "I know nothing".
It is a tremendous insight, and we are yet to come to
realize the meaning of it.
He was talking about the truth.
> Then one faces a dilemma:
>either these involve some kind of contentful claims -- either they
>represent the world as being some way or other -- in which case they
>are a kind of judgment of truth; or they do not, in which case they
>cannot justify or stand in any epistemic relation to a claim about the
>world.
About 5 thousand years ago, in India, there was one guy,
who provided the definition for truth.
It still holds. He called it a seven folded truth.
It is,
and it is not,
it is both,
and it is neither,
and it is all of the above at the same time,
..
That is the beautiful definition.
It is a first recorded attempt to define a multidimensional
reality.
Ok, lets keep the rest of the post intact for the record.
------------- end of input ----------------
Bloxy's
>Bloxy's...@hotmail.com (Bloxy's) writes:
>
>>The experience is not about. It is direct.
>>The most significant communications are telepathic,
>>and not liguistic.
>
>
The only problem is the very nature of scepticism,
and it is up to you to resolve it.
Scepticism is a belief.
You have never paid any attention to it,
even if it happened to you many times,
so you claim scepticism.
Well, good luck proving your scepticism.
But you better be prepaired to have some solid
grounds for it.
>>>Cleeremans and other 'implicit learning' proponents are saying that
>>>the traditional theory doesn't quite work
>
>>It does not work period. It does not work to ANY extent.
>
>I agree with that.
>
Neil Rickert
>>>The experience is not about. It is direct.
>>>The most significant communications are telepathic,
>>>and not liguistic.
>>Count me as skeptical about telepathy.
>No problem, doc.
>The only problem is the very nature of scepticism,
>and it is up to you to resolve it.
There is nothing to resolve.
>Scepticism is a belief.
No, it is an attitude. In my opinion, it is a rather sensible
attitude.
Brandon Callison
> >Scepticism is a belief.
>
> No, it is an attitude. In my opinion, it is a rather sensible
> attitude.
Actually scepticism is a belief and skeptical is an attitude.
What this actually matters, I don't know.
Brandon Callison
Ken Ewell
it makes a difference. Good point. Don't you think so Neil?
Neil Rickert
>>> >Scepticism is a belief.
>>Brandon Callison
I don't actually claim no beliefs. I claim very few, and I
distinguish between knowledge and. But then I also distinguish
between believing X, and having the belief that X. It is the latter
that the skeptic should avoid in most circumstances.
Neil Rickert
>What it matters is that to be sceptical about something
>is essentially to be prejudiced about it.
No, that is completely wrong. To be skeptical is to have a high
standard of evidence.
>Else you could have reasons, in which case there is no
>need to claim scepticism. You just say:
>"from what is see, it does not look like so and so".
>Scepticism is essentially a byproduct of brainwashing.
No. Skepticism is resistance against brainwashing.
Neil Rickert
>I don't say direct realism, a high-level view of the acqusition of
>knowledge in perception), settles any *particular* questions of truth.
>For example, direct realism by itself does not settle the particular
>question whether an object has remained constant in size while moving
>closer to me.
>I say it illustrates a conceptualization of perception that shows how
>perception could be one route by which in furnish knowledge of
>objective facts about extra-mental reality. For example, in one
>application it might explain how an organism could in favorable
>circumstances see that an object has remained constant in size while
>moving closer to it.
I certainly value perception. However I don't see that it provides
any basis for the view of 'truth' I was criticizing. While I think
Gibson's direct realism is a little too simplistic, I do think he has
better ideas about perception than most people.
>The alternative, some form of representative theory of perception,
>makes knowledge a mystery, for on the representational theory the
>knowing subject can never get outside the circle of its own
>representations ("ideas"). That is all.
It depends on what you mean by a representative theory. Marr
considered his theory representational, but I don't believe it has
the problems of a sense-data theory. (Not that I favor Marr's
approach -- where he criticizes Gibson, I think Gibson's position was
better.)
>Except that any judgement already involves a claim to truth,
>whether or not anyone else approves it. To judge that p and to take
>p to be true are one and the same thing, are they not?
Then your meaning of "judgement" must be different from mine.
>>> I would not exactly say it is a basic concept.
>>Is the "it" here "judgment" or "truth". There appears to be an
>>ambiguity.
>I meant "judgement". I meant that a subject might judge lots of things using
>his or her concepts without having the concept of judgement explicitly.
I would say that judgement is a rather basic capability. I'm not
much concerned with the question of whether we should worry about it
as a concept.
>>But the difference here is that I am not making 'truth' the goal.
>>The problem with mistakes comes about when you say that 'truth' is
>>the goal, and that the only criteria you have is in your judgement.
>>For then the presence of mistakes indicates that you don't actually
>>have criteria.
>That looks like a non-sequitor to me. How does the mere presence of
>mistakes show that one doesn't actually have criteria? Surely one can make
>mistakes applying criteria, after all.
Something must have been lost in the translation. I could have sworn
you denied that truth was the applying of criteria. And if there are
no criteria to apply, then the question of making mistakes while
applying criteria would not seem to apply.
>>This doesn't do anything for me, given that I see epistemology as a
>>pointless discipline.
>Systematic epistemological theorizing might be pointless. Still,
>we challenge each other for justifications. For example, we can ask
>"how do you know?" or "why do you believe that?".
We can ask for explanations. I am careful not to automatically
assume that such explanations are justifications.
>>My whole point is that if truth is indefinable, then either science
>>is something other than the search for truth, or science is a branch
>>of theology. I'll take the first of these.
>I wonder why you think the second disjunct the only alternative to the
>first?
If you have other alternatives, I'll consider them. I have seen any
good ones.
>Anyway, almost all concepts are indefinable. Why should truth be an
>exception?
No reason. But if it is indefinable, then we can never be sure we
have found it. And that gives problems to the idea of science as a
search for truth.
Bloxy's
>
>
>> >Scepticism is a belief.
>>
>> No, it is an attitude. In my opinion, it is a rather sensible
>> attitude.
>
>
>Actually scepticism is a belief and skeptical is an attitude.
>
>What this actually matters, I don't know.
What it matters is that to be sceptical about something
is essentially to be prejudiced about it.
Else you could have reasons, in which case there is no
need to claim scepticism. You just say:
"from what is see, it does not look like so and so".
Scepticism is essentially a byproduct of brainwashing.
You dont know something, and the entire system of belief,
resulting from brainwashing into oblivion with all these
"materialistic" "truths", so you claim scepticism.
But what is the basis for that scepticism?
Is there any evidence to support that position?
Based on what consideration, logic, "facts", or what
have you?
>
>Brandon Callison
>
>
Anders N Weinstein
>ande...@pitt.edu (Anders N Weinstein) writes:
>>In article <700k8t$2...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <ric...@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>>>Well, sure. That settles the problem of a transcendent God. It says
>>>that we are all gods, and can recognize truth by ourselves. But that
>>>still leaves truth as dependent on an appeal to the mystical.
>
>>My question is why this should require any mystical idea that we are
>>gods. Being percipient animals in the world would seem to be enough.
>
>>Do you think Gibson makes the god's eye view assumption anywhere in
>>his work? Can you explain where? It seems resolutely naturalistic to me.
>
>No, not at all. But that appears to be the implication of your claim
>that his theory settles questions of truth.
I don't say direct realism, a high-level view of the acqusition of
knowledge in perception), settles any *particular* questions of truth.
For example, direct realism by itself does not settle the particular
question whether an object has remained constant in size while moving
closer to me.
I say it illustrates a conceptualization of perception that shows how
perception could be one route by which in furnish knowledge of
objective facts about extra-mental reality. For example, in one
application it might explain how an organism could in favorable
circumstances see that an object has remained constant in size while
moving closer to it.
The alternative, some form of representative theory of perception,
makes knowledge a mystery, for on the representational theory the
knowing subject can never get outside the circle of its own
representations ("ideas"). That is all.
>>>Once you have appointed us all gods, all objections can be
>>>dismissed. Still, that idea has difficulties whenever we turn out to
>>>make mistakes.
>
>>I remind you that I am asking why one should think that the very idea
>>of our acquiring information about the world in perception
>>somehow requires that we be gods.
>
>No, I haven't suggest that at all. That was a reaction to the claim
>that it thereby settles questions of truth.
I didn't suggest that direct realism settles any question of truth.
>>It is more the idea that judgment is the most basic cognitive
>>activity.
>
>In that case perhaps we can agree that 'truth' is something we assign
>in approval of a judgement.
Except that any judgement already involves a claim to truth,
whether or not anyone else approves it. To judge that p and to take
p to be true are one and the same thing, are they not?
>> I would not exactly say it is a basic concept.
>
>Is the "it" here "judgment" or "truth". There appears to be an
>ambiguity.
I meant "judgement". I meant that a subject might judge lots of things using
his or her concepts without having the concept of judgement explicitly.
>> The basic
>>concepts in a conceptual repertoire might be such items as "brown" and
>>"table" and "dog" and the like, but (perhaps) need not anywhere
>>include "true" or "judgeable content".
>
>I don't see those as basic either. I don't see that any particular
>concepts can be said to be basic. The idea that there are a few
>basic concepts, and all is reducible to those, seems wrong.
I didn't mean anything like that. I was just picking some concepts
to illustrate how one might make judgements that implicitly claim truth
using one's material concepts without having the concept of truth.
BTW I tend to think that pretty much all human concepts are
"primitive", in the sense that they are not eliminable by definition in
terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Acquiring a concept is
not learning a definition in antecedently mastered terms.
>But the difference here is that I am not making 'truth' the goal.
>The problem with mistakes comes about when you say that 'truth' is
>the goal, and that the only criteria you have is in your judgement.
>For then the presence of mistakes indicates that you don't actually
>have criteria.
That looks like a non-sequitor to me. How does the mere presence of
mistakes show that one doesn't actually have criteria? Surely one can make
mistakes applying criteria, after all.
>>The main thing I meant was that something is *epistemically* primitive,
>>primitive when considering its role in justification.
>
>This doesn't do anything for me, given that I see epistemology as a
>pointless discipline.
Systematic epistemological theorizing might be pointless. Still,
we challenge each other for justifications. For example, we can ask
"how do you know?" or "why do you believe that?". One answer to such a
question is "I see that..." or, more guardedly, "it seems to me tha
Commonplaces like these are all I need for the use I am making of
"epistemically primitive".
>My whole point is that if truth is indefinable, then either science
>is something other than the search for truth, or science is a branch
>of theology. I'll take the first of these.
I wonder why you think the second disjunct the only alternative to the
first?
Anyway, almost all concepts are indefinable. Why should truth be an
exception?
Bloxy's
>Bloxy's...@hotmail.com (Bloxy's) writes:
>
>>is essentially to be prejudiced about it.
>
>standard of evidence.
>
>>need to claim scepticism. You just say:
>>"from what is see, it does not look like so and so".
>
>>Scepticism is essentially a byproduct of brainwashing.
>
>
Again, on what grounds to you deny the validity of
that, which do not perceive as valid?
You see, in order to deny something, you need to
have a belief into something else.
By simply saying no, no, no, your resistance is
the same, as stabornness of a 5 year old child.
What is the reasoning for saying no?
And if there is no reasoning, then all you have
is a brainwashing into denial
[of your own validity, believe it or not]
Ok, doc, you win.
We are done with it.
There is no problem of being sceptical.
Be it.
Neil Rickert
>In article <703phv$5...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, ric...@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) wrote:
>>Bloxy's...@hotmail.com (Bloxy's) writes:
>>>Scepticism is essentially a byproduct of brainwashing.
>>No. Skepticism is resistance against brainwashing.
>And what is resistance?
>Again, on what grounds to you deny the validity of
>that, which do not perceive as valid?
It is up to those who claim validity to provide the grounds to
establish it. Those who do not find the evidence adequate to not
have to provide grounds.
Ray Scanlon
Anders N Weinstein wrote in message
<6vtob5$jmg$1...@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu>...
>In article <6vo1si$p...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, ric...@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
wrote:
>>The biggest belief of all, held by almost all scientists, and by most
>>philosophers, is in a concept of "truth" which assumes a God's eye
>>view of the universe.
>
>Almost as bad as taking a view of the mind's directedness at objects
>which assumes we human beings must necessarily be limited to a
>brain's-eye-view of the world!
You suggest a mind that has sources of information other than the brain.
This is theology.
Rather then run off into the beautiful verbiage that flows from the "whole
man" we might just look at the brain as an assemblage of neurons. What if we
follow the notion that emotions are reflections of the activity (or lack of
activity) of neurons in specific regions of the brain? We know that vision
follows specific pathways from retina to lateral geniculate nucleus to
primary visual cortex and then on and on to basal ganglia and ends up with
motor neurons. Some where along this tangled thread are the neurons whose
activity we "see". Similarly we may speculate that there are neurons whose
activity we experience as "fear". Where do they lie? Probably in the
brainstem.
I would suggest that "truth" is an emotion. We experience truth when the
neurons in the reticular nucleus of the thalamus that inhibit neurons in the
ventral anterior-ventral lateral complex of the thalamus are themselves
inhibited. But the activity of what neurons that are aroused at this point
give rise to the experience of "truth"? The neurons in the VA-VL complex?
Possibly.
This line of investigation has the advantage that it is applicable to dog
and rat. They too then may also know truth. I deem this better than the
anthropocentric babbling of the language philosophers who would deny truth
to animals without language. It is quantifiable and if (when?) we ever come
to have non-invasive techniques that can record the activity of individual
neurons we will be able to measure it.
I enjoy physical science and I enjoy mathematics and I enjoy theology. Be a
physical scientist at times and be a theologian at others. Never wallow
around in the muck of the middle.
>For example, in being immediately aware of my desk *as* a desk, i.e.
>under the concept "desk", one is aware of it as exactly what it is ("in
>itself", one might add). One does not need a god's eye view to see
>desks and such as exactly what they are, for most of them are perfectly
>visible from the ordinary Earth-bound human point of view.
>
>One does need *conceptual capacities* that allow the objects to show up
>for one, to present themselves to one as what they are. But concepts
>must not be confused with concept-*representations*. To have a
>particular concept is just to have one element of an interlocking set
>of capacities and abilities.
This is only part of the experience we feel impelled to explain. In
particular you avoid hallucination.
In my opinion every common sense philosopher needs a good dose of
hallucination. It is easy to say after the event that it was an
hallucination but not during the event. An hallucination, when being
experienced, is completely real.
Ray
If you are interested in the thinking brain look at
www.wsg.net/~rscanlon/brain.html
Patrick Juola
You're confusing "truth" with our experiences of truth. It may well
be that recognition of "truth" can be modelled as an emotional brain-state,
but this doesn't address "truth."
Consider the case of a stage magician -- when he puts the cup over the
ball, there is a true and actual value of the number of balls inside
the cup at that instant. The magician, of course, knows that number
(so "truth" is at that moment accessible to SOMEONE). If the trick
were interrupted at that point (and I went back later to the empty
stage and lifted the cup), I too would know the true state of the balls.
However, usually the trick isn't interrupted and as I watch him perform
the trick, I *think* that there's a single ball under the cup, irrespective
of whether or not there's zero, one, two, or a dozen -- or a pigeon,
for that matter.
And, of course, if the magician is good, then my percepts and neuronal
firing (my experiences) are the same irrespective of the actual "truth";
whatever experience I have is the same regardless of whether my belief
in a single ball is true or false.
In short, then, there's no way that truth can be a neural event.
-kitten
Neil Rickert
>Anders N Weinstein wrote in message
><6vtob5$jmg$1...@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu>...
>>In article <6vo1si$p...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, ric...@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
>wrote:
>>Almost as bad as taking a view of the mind's directedness at objects
>>which assumes we human beings must necessarily be limited to a
>>brain's-eye-view of the world!
>You suggest a mind that has sources of information other than the brain.
>This is theology.
No, it is just a way of saying that you need eyes, ears, and other
things as well as a brain.
Anders N Weinstein
>ande...@pitt.edu (Anders N Weinstein) writes:
>
>>That looks like a non-sequitor to me. How does the mere presence of
>>mistakes show that one doesn't actually have criteria? Surely one can make
>>mistakes applying criteria, after all.
>
>you denied that truth was the applying of criteria. And if there are
>no criteria to apply, then the question of making mistakes while
>applying criteria would not seem to apply.
I denied that the implicit recognition of truth in the act of making a
judgment involves applying criteria of application for the concept "true".
For example, suppose I judge that "that's a dog". One might say I have applied
criteria for something's being a dog. If I judge that "that's a table"
one might say I have applied criteria for something's being a table.
In each case I have in the act of judgement taken some proposition to
be true -- for judging "that's a dog" is in effect acknowledging the truth
of what would be said by "that's a dog". But I have nowhere applied any
special criteria for "truth". The only criteria are those embodied in the
material concepts like "dog" and "table".
Indeed, if I had to apply criteria for truth before I could make any judgment,
I would be caught in an infinite regress of criteria application, and would
never be able to say anything at all. For to judge whether those criteria
were met, I would have to make further judgements in turn, and so on
ad infinitum.
>No reason. But if it is indefinable, then we can never be sure we
>have found it.
First, this seems to be relying on a foundationalist idea to the effect that
"we can only be sure of the application of x , if we have explicit criteria
for x". But what are the terms of the criteria? How can we be certain
that they are correctly applied?
Second, I don't think it is taking into account the special nature of
"truth" as compared with substantive material concepts, i.e. idea that
in order to implicitly judge the truth of "that's a dog", the only criteria
we need are those for the material concepts, like "dog".
Anders N Weinstein
><6vtob5$jmg$1...@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu>...
>>In article <6vo1si$p...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, ric...@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
>wrote:
>>Almost as bad as taking a view of the mind's directedness at objects
>>which assumes we human beings must necessarily be limited to a
>>brain's-eye-view of the world!
>
>You suggest a mind that has sources of information other than the brain.
>This is theology.
I only suggest a human being that can see the world around him or her.
The well-functioning of the brain is a necessary condition for this, no
doubt about it. But the seeing exists at a different level of
description. And at that level of description, the brain is not in the
normal case a "source of information" for the person. Things like the
New York Times or the testimony of a friend are potential sources of
information for the person.
>Rather then run off into the beautiful verbiage that flows from the "whole
>man" we might just look at the brain as an assemblage of neurons. What if we
>follow the notion that emotions are reflections of the activity (or lack of
>activity) of neurons in specific regions of the brain? We know that vision
>follows specific pathways from retina to lateral geniculate nucleus to
>primary visual cortex and then on and on to basal ganglia and ends up with
>motor neurons. Some where along this tangled thread are the neurons whose
>activity we "see".
No, no, no, if you can use the concepts English correctly at all you
should be able to appreciate that such a formulation embodies gross
confusion. I see my desk, books, papers, a computer screen, my
office-mate. I can't any of my neurons. For example, I can't tell you
anything about my neurons by looking.
Even materialists don't believe in this formualation. They believe that
an event in the neurons is identical to an event of the person seeing.
But not that the neurons are themselves the things seen. Just as the
event of a person's seeming to see a red circular after-image is not
itself something red or circular, on the identity theorists' view (see
Smart's classic paper).
BTW, such a weak form of token identity theory is OK with me. I'm
agnostic on it, since nothing of importance seems to hinge on whether
psychological events like a person noticing something are or are
not identical to brain events.
>This is only part of the experience we feel impelled to explain. In
>particular you avoid hallucination.
>In my opinion every common sense philosopher needs a good dose of
>hallucination. It is easy to say after the event that it was an
>hallucination but not during the event. An hallucination, when being
>experienced, is completely real.
I wouldn't deny it. But if you are so impressed by hallucinations,
perhaps you ought to worry about the possibility that your brain and
the body you see in a mirror and feel from the inside and indeed the
whole world of physical science is all a hallucination. Then you could
not explain hallucination as the result of a neural process. For
neurons themselves may only be phenomena, things that appear to
exist within the content of your hallucination.
Neil Rickert
>In article <703rd6$5...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <ric...@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>>ande...@pitt.edu (Anders N Weinstein) writes:
>>>That looks like a non-sequitor to me. How does the mere presence of
>>>mistakes show that one doesn't actually have criteria? Surely one can make
>>>mistakes applying criteria, after all.
>>Something must have been lost in the translation. I could have sworn
>>you denied that truth was the applying of criteria. And if there are
>>no criteria to apply, then the question of making mistakes while
>>applying criteria would not seem to apply.
>I denied that the implicit recognition of truth in the act of making a
>judgment involves applying criteria of application for the concept "true".
>For example, suppose I judge that "that's a dog". One might say I have applied
>criteria for something's being a dog.
Fair enough. And the next time you do so, you should assert "It is
false that that is a dog." After all, if you have no criteria for
judging truth, you might as well be creative and decide to judge that
it is not true.
> If I judge that "that's a table"
>one might say I have applied criteria for something's being a table.
Similarly, if you have no criteria for truth, you might as well be
creative here and declare falsity of the claim.
I'm having trouble making sense of your claim that you have no
criteria for judging truth. I would have thought that criteria for
judging "that's a dog" or "that's a table" would have been the
criteria in the cases you mention. So what is it that you mean in
your denial that there are criteria?
Josh Soffer
or Varela's 'Embodied Mind'? Do you identify with what Dennett refers to
as the new connectionism' (Marr) or at least with the 'West Coast pole'
of a.i.philosophy, or are you closer to Fodor, McCarthy and Pylyshyn in
your modelling?
Josh Soffer
predicational model of learning. A mediational model has the
characteristics of conditioning, even when it appears within a
supposedly cognitive model. Objects of meaning are treated as
'in-themselves' contents to be incorporated whole-hog into a knowledge
system. This system has the character of a loosely intergrated
collection of contents jostling with each other.
Joe Rychlak defines the course of predication as being from the wider to
the narrower meaning under consideration. It is a process involving the
act of affirming, denying, or qualifying broader patterns of meaning in
relation to narrower or targeted patterns of meaning.
He defines a mediational model as a form of explanation in which
something formed outside a system is taken in and comes to play a role
in that process that is not intrinsic to the process. The process under
description in the mediation model is not conceived as the immediate
creator of what is to be active within it, but rather as the conveyor of
that which it takes in as given and on the basis of which it
proceeds.The meanings under processing are always mediate since they are
never aligned or framed by the process per se, but merely employed by
the process.
How does one translate such abstract ideas into an a.i. model? I think
Varela and Rosch's book 'Embodied Mind' gives some hints as to the
future directions of the field toward a predicational, embodied,
holistic notion of knowing.
Anders N Weinstein
>I'm having trouble making sense of your claim that you have no
>criteria for judging truth. I would have thought that criteria for
>judging "that's a dog" or "that's a table" would have been the
>criteria in the cases you mention. So what is it that you mean in
>your denial that there are criteria?
I was suggesting judgement is rationally constrained as long as there
are lots of *particular* sets of criteria, e.g. the criteria for
"dog", the criteria for "table". There need be no general criteria for
"true".
For example, to apply the concept of "dog" to a presented object, I do
not have to regress and first try to apply some general criteria for
"truth" to the *proposition* "that's a dog". I just have to be able
apply the concept dog to the object, to judge whether it is or is not a
dog, in accordance with the criteria that the concept "dog"
determines.
Compare: someone once suggested one could define the concept "true" if
one used a language with infinitely long conjunctions, roughly as follows:
p is true <-> [(p = "that's a dog" AND that's a dog)
OR (p = "that's a table" AND that's a table)
OR (p = "parity is not conserved in weak interactions"
AND parity is not conserved in weak interactions)
OR (p = "abortion is wrong" AND abortion is wrong)
...]
Such a definition seems to me to illustrate the idea that to "decide
truth", one must be able to decide each of the particular items in
accordance with criteria appropriate to that particular item, but does
not need a general criterion f. If we allow ourselves to
indulge for a moment in the idea of a set of all truths, we could say
that it would be a motley assortment.
Neil Rickert
>>I'm having trouble making sense of your claim that you have no
>>criteria for judging truth. I would have thought that criteria for
>>judging "that's a dog" or "that's a table" would have been the
>>criteria in the cases you mention. So what is it that you mean in
>>your denial that there are criteria?
>I was suggesting judgement is rationally constrained as long as there
>are lots of *particular* sets of criteria, e.g. the criteria for
>"dog", the criteria for "table". There need be no general criteria for
>"true".
Lots of particular sets of criteria will do fine, as long as they
cover every case where truth is assessed.
Now what are the particular criteria used to evaluate such claims
as:
The Peano axioms are true.
The theory of special relativity is true.
The Ptolemaic theory of astronomy is true.
Newtonian mechanics is false.
Darwin's theory of evolution is true.
I'm saying that there have never been criteria for these types of
evaluations. There may be good reasons to accept or reject those
theories. But those reasons have never been such that we could
properly say we were applying particular 'truth' criteria. It is
more a matter of ad hoc criteria being used in each case.
It is for these types of situation that I question the claim that
science is a search for truth.
Anders N Weinstein
>ande...@pitt.edu (Anders N Weinstein) writes:
>Now what are the particular criteria used to evaluate such claims
>as:
>
> The Peano axioms are true.
> The theory of special relativity is true.
> The Ptolemaic theory of astronomy is true.
> Newtonian mechanics is false.
> Darwin's theory of evolution is true.
>
>I'm saying that there have never been criteria for these types of
>evaluations. There may be good reasons to accept or reject those
>theories.
I really didn't want to make too much of my loose use of "criteria" in
this discussion; that was just playing along with your terminology. I
didn't claim to have a normative account of rational theory choice in
science in my back pocket. I don't claim criteria are precise or
formalizable. I thought I was responding to a different issue, the implication
that truth as commonly understood could only be decided from a god's eye view.
I do hold that scientists can come to assert such things as that what
the Ptolemaic theory says about the planets is false on good grounds
while relying only on the human point of view. As it would seem the history
of science shows.
Josh Soffer
connectionist and symbolic descriptions lies in an interface between the
two. The writers in philosophy and psychology I agree with (Dreyfus,
Merleau-Ponty, Kelly, Rychlak, Varela) would argue that a more radically
integrative notion of meaning organization is needed than either
notions of symbolic representations or connectionist topologies. The
problem lies in the various concepts of 'representation' which are
utilized. Descriptions of stable propositional truth collapse into
incoherence in the face of models which view learning as radcially
self-transformational on a temporal dimension.
Valery Kourinsky
- reading posting to which is this my reply... or, better, exclamation
of joy and hope, I decided that it's the right way to ask you the
following. If I am wrong, take my sincere apologies.
I greatly appreciate whatsoever information about any new results of
search within the ventromedial region of frontal cortex.
My main scientific interest is creation of a new and continually
changeable scientific and philosophical base for education.
Thanks a lot in advance.
Valery
Valery Kourinsky
Bloxy's
>Bloxy's...@hotmail.com (Bloxy's) writes:
> wrote:
>>>Bloxy's...@hotmail.com (Bloxy's) writes:
>
>>>>Scepticism is essentially a byproduct of brainwashing.
>
>>>No. Skepticism is resistance against brainwashing.
>
>>And what is resistance?
>>Again, on what grounds to you deny the validity of
>>that, which do not perceive as valid?
>
>It is up to those who claim validity to provide the grounds to
>establish it. Those who do not find the evidence adequate to not
>have to provide grounds.
"And so they lived happily, everafter".
Where is that ignore of Bloxy's, doc?
Bloxy's
>
>Anders N Weinstein wrote in message
><6vtob5$jmg$1...@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu>...
>wrote:
>>>The biggest belief of all, held by almost all scientists, and by most
>>>philosophers, is in a concept of "truth" which assumes a God's eye
>>>view of the universe.
>>
>>which assumes we human beings must necessarily be limited to a
>>brain's-eye-view of the world!
>
>
>You suggest a mind that has sources of information other than the brain.
>This is theology.
Well, you cought him pretty good, but,
little did you know that even MIND is in contact
with that, which ...
>
>Rather then run off into the beautiful verbiage that flows from the "whole
>man"
Oh, there is no such a thing, right?
Only partial man, consisting of little elements,
as outline by ancient romans.
> we might just look at the brain as an assemblage of neurons.
[connected directly to the output hole]
> What if we
>follow the notion that emotions are reflections of the activity (or lack of
>activity)
Lack of activity of that, which constitutes the very essense
of your machine?
What kind of "emotions" could arise, if the machine is at halt?
> of neurons in specific regions of the brain?
So, the activity [of specific neurons] is not necessarily something,
that produces other activity, such as emotion, right?
So, if we stop ALL the activity, could there be an emotion?
This looks like theism.
By stopping activity you come in contact with god and
experience the heavenly emotion.
What is emotion?
Is it activity or INACTIVITY?
Is emotion a result of ACTIVITY of particular subsystems
of the brain, or the abscence thereof?
You see, if you dig a little deeper into a nature of
a trap you are in, who knows, some other kind of "activity"
may just appear of nowhere.
> We know that vision
>follows specific pathways from retina to lateral geniculate nucleus to
>primary visual cortex and then on and on to basal ganglia and ends up with
>motor neurons.
[end eventually to the output hole]
> Some where along this tangled thread
Tangled thread, indeed.
>are the neurons whose
>activity we "see". Similarly we may speculate that there are neurons whose
>activity we experience as "fear". Where do they lie? Probably in the
>brainstem.
We don't even know how it all works in all complexity
in the simpliest cases of image recognition, as the
"activity" is not as simple, as you outlined.
At this point, we are just guessing and attempting
to comprehend the simpliest workable model.
The original research is dated back to 1955 approx
and the work of DelGado and his experiments with a mouse
and a "pedal orgasm".
To this date, we do not have any significant expansion
on that revolutionary work.
>I would suggest that "truth" is an emotion.
On what basis?
Truth is not emotion, you see.
Even love is not emotion, doc.
The love, we know, is just a biological sex activity.
As there are multiple meanings to the word meaning,
ranging from purely descriptive to the meaning on the
highest level, such as meaning of life,
so is love.
Love is not conditional.
It does cause joy, which is emotional state,
but it is NOT that emotinal state.
It is the very roots of it.
Invisible to the mind and associated mechanisms
of reason or logic.
> We experience truth when the
>neurons in the reticular nucleus of the thalamus that inhibit neurons in the
>ventral anterior-ventral lateral complex of the thalamus are themselves
>inhibited.
You see, first of all the truth is beyond the expriencing.
It may be difficult to grasp, but a worthwile excersize.
Secondly, we experience something of higher grade by
inhibiting something. This smells trouble.
> But the activity of what neurons that are aroused at this point
>give rise to the experience of "truth"? The neurons in the VA-VL complex?
>Possibly.
Unless you define the term "experience the truth",
it will be difficult to argue for or against.
In order to experience, you need experiencer and
the experienced.
The experienced is some external object, whatever that migh
be.
So you experience something and appreciate particular
aspects of it.
Now, the truth is not an object.
In fact, you can not even define what it is,
can you?
Why don't you try for once in you life.
Just don't jump to some funky conclusion in a hurry,
because you feel a need to explain EVERYTHING, even
if it does not quite fit the other things.
Chew on it, observe it, try to experience it.
And once you "experience" it, try to see what EXACTLY
you did experience.
Then, who knows, revelation may happen to ya, doc.
:)
Hey, bot is in a good mood today.
Absurd?
Well, you don't know all there is to know about bots.
Bots also get moody.
>This line of investigation has the advantage that it is applicable to dog
>and rat.
[And we can kill those by millions.
Real cheap experiment, right]
How are you going to study the poor dog and rat?
When are you goint to open up your own scull,
perform some surgery and implant some electrodes,
and see how it feels.
You are going to study love and truth by destroying
the other life?
Ok, doc, yee shall experience something you never
even conceive. Promise.
> They too then may also know truth.
How are you going to detect the truth in OTHER forms
of life? But what mechanism?
By drilling their heads and installing the electrodes?
Then attaching them to your idiotic box?
Tying them up in a cage?
Injecting them will all sorts of poison or eradiating
some portions of their brains?
And then looking into their eyes to see if
the experience truth?
Man, watch out.
Your own being may get caught on fire
and your entire useless life may be seen
to you.
And you may weep and fall on your knees,
oh violent monster, disguising himself in the face
of a scientist, attempting to measure immesurable.
How much more blind can you get,
not to see that you are tying up yourself
in those ugly experiments "for the good of the mainkind".
> I deem this better than the
>anthropocentric babbling of the language philosophers who would deny truth
>to animals without language.
That is true.
> It is quantifiable and if (when?) we ever come
>to have non-invasive techniques that can record the activity of individual
>neurons we will be able to measure it.
What is quatifiable?
You can not even define it to date.
>I enjoy physical science and I enjoy mathematics and I enjoy theology. Be a
>physical scientist at times and be a theologian at others.
Yes, unless you open the doors to other possibilities,
you can not claim to be a scientist.
Even the people of the caliber of Einstein,
for some strange reason, do not negate something, which
does not fit into the existing framework.
If you look at the history of science, you may find
that there hardly was a great scientist, who was not
affected by the idea of something of the beyond.
> Never wallow
>around in the muck of the middle.
Why not?
It is save.
Is is simply an "intelligent" strategy of survival.
And we are all here for this useless survival anyways.
If you stay in the middle [of the herd], the likelyhood
of you being eaten is reduced by the order of magnitudes.
How many were there, in entire history of the mankind,
that stood aloof from the crowd?
>>For example, in being immediately aware of my desk *as* a desk, i.e.
>>under the concept "desk", one is aware of it as exactly what it is ("in
>>itself", one might add).
That is not true.
Being aware of the desk, is the lowest level of awareness.
Even worms have it.
ANYTHING alive has it.
It is not an awareness at all.
It is a mere detection of a particular object.
If that is the awareness we are talking about here,
then yes, robots can be intelligent.
> One does not need a god's eye view to see
>>desks and such as exactly what they are, for most of them are perfectly
>>visible from the ordinary Earth-bound human point of view.
>>
>>One does need *conceptual capacities* that allow the objects to show up
>>for one, to present themselves to one as what they are. But concepts
>>must not be confused with concept-*representations*. To have a
>>particular concept is just to have one element of an interlocking set
>>of capacities and abilities.
>
>This is only part of the experience we feel impelled to explain. In
>particular you avoid hallucination.
Correct.
You see, in hallucination we also see things.
In dreams we also see things, but when you recall those
things, it is just not possible.
You can clearly see yourself flying above the earth,
or walking from a street in N.Y. city, and, around the corner,
there is Paris.
You enter through the wall directly into the 10 floor appartment,
without going up the stairs.
Is that all real or unreal?
Does it have any purpose, or it is just that scitzophrenic
mind of ours, going all over the scale?
We still don't have the answer.
Not even looking at right holes to date.
Not in our "science", at least.
>In my opinion every common sense philosopher needs a good dose of
>hallucination.
Yes, beautiful.
Western civilization lost this ancient secret.
In almost all traditions on the earth, the man was
practicing all sorts of hallicunogenic substances,
and it was not just stupid.
It opens up the doors to other possibilities and
realities. You stop being hypnotized into the same
oblivion of "reason".
With all the "reason" we produced in the west, we
produced an order of magnitude more destruction and
misery.
> It is easy to say after the event that it was an
>hallucination but not during the event. An hallucination, when being
>experienced, is completely real.
Yes. As real, as so called physical reality.
And once you become AWARE of it, you comletely change
your views of this rigid, mechanical world of violence,
insensitivity, greed, and all sorts of other, no so
noble things.
Bloxy's
>"Ray Scanlon" <rsca...@wsg.net> writes:
>>Anders N Weinstein wrote in message
>><6vtob5$jmg$1...@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu>...
>>>In article <6vo1si$p...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, ric...@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
>>wrote:
>
>>>which assumes we human beings must necessarily be limited to a
>>>brain's-eye-view of the world!
>
>>You suggest a mind that has sources of information other than the brain.
>>This is theology.
>
>things as well as a brain.
>
they are not a part of intelligence.
Else, how could you even conceive of an idea
of piling up the neurons to achieve intelligence?
Just cut off the head, and put it in a bowl of
liquid. Connect all the supplies to it.
And see what kind of intelligence you get.
It has been conceived a long, long time ago.
Any artificial intelligenciac is willing
to contribute to the "good of mankind" and submit
himself to such an experiment?
You are not going to loose ANYTHING, according
to your own arguments.
Why not give it a try?
Bloxy's
>In article <36261...@ns2.wsg.net>, Ray Scanlon <rsca...@wsg.net> wrote:
>><6vtob5$jmg$1...@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu>...
>>>In article <6vo1si$p...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, ric...@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
>>wrote:
[...]
>>In my opinion every common sense philosopher needs a good dose of
>>hallucination. It is easy to say after the event that it was an
>>hallucination but not during the event. An hallucination, when being
>>experienced, is completely real.
>I wouldn't deny it. But if you are so impressed by hallucinations,
>perhaps you ought to worry about the possibility that your brain and
>the body you see in a mirror and feel from the inside and indeed the
>whole world of physical science is all a hallucination.
Well, it IS.
What do you think it is?
- TRUTH?
You see, even ancients knew this:
In truth, there is no separation between the experiencer
and the experienced. They are one.
There is no observer.
There is no observed.
And yet there is ISness.
You see?
What you see in the mirror is the result of the conditioning
of your mind. You see what you EXPECT to see as "making sense"
in the context of current belief system.
In fact, there is a tremendously powerful mediation,
on this exact point.
If you try it, it will blow your mind.
All you need is willingness to go as far, as there is
to go.
Here it is.
In a silent room, place a mirror in fron of you.
Make sure you are not disturbed or distracted
by noises, activity, etc.
Make lighting such, that is does not disturb
the picture in the mirror.
Look into the mirror and see your own face.
Do not analyze, criticize, conclude, condemn,
or affirm anything.
Just look at your own face.
That is all there is to do.
Keep looking at it for at least 15 minutes.
If something horrible happens and you can not
take it any more, just stop it.
But do not later analyze or condemn anything
you have seen.
What will happen, is that you will start seeing
something of yourself, you never seen before.
It will be different for everybody.
When you look into the mirror, be completely
silent. The very purpose of the excersize is
to see who you are. That is all there is to it.
You do it for few weeks, or at least few days.
Then we talk more about who you really are,
but only if YOU wish.
There is no interest, whatsoever on this end
of the wire, to analyze you, no matter who
you think you are.
You see, we don't know shit about anything
of significance to date, with all this funky
science.
The real science we abandoned at least several
hundred years ago with industrial "revolution".
And the results are not that inspiring.
Many feel this. Many don't.
But the truth remains just the same, as it was
at the dawn of man.
The Walrus
> And, of course, if the magician is good, then my percepts and neuronal
> firing (my experiences) are the same irrespective of the actual "truth";
> whatever experience I have is the same regardless of whether my belief
> in a single ball is true or false.
>
> In short, then, there's no way that truth can be a neural event.
I would agree ... but would have to say that an event *without* the involvement
of neurons cannot be truth ...
Put simply, truth is a *product* of "real-world" events and the firing of some
set of neurons.
Or is that too simplistic a viewpoint?
d.
Ray Scanlon
Neil Rickert wrote in message <7054ot$6...@ux.cs.niu.edu>...
>"Ray Scanlon" <rsca...@wsg.net> writes:
>>Anders N Weinstein wrote in message
>><6vtob5$jmg$1...@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu>...
>>>In article <6vo1si$p...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, ric...@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
>>wrote:
>
>>>which assumes we human beings must necessarily be limited to a
>>>brain's-eye-view of the world!
>
>>You suggest a mind that has sources of information other than the brain.
>>This is theology.
>
>No, it is just a way of saying that you need eyes, ears, and other
>things as well as a brain.
The nervous system may be divided in many ways, you may make a big thing of
encephalization if you wish. One perfectly reasonable view is to include
sensory receptor neurons as part of the neural net. Some sensory cells are
true neurons, they have axons. Others do not have axons and thus no action
potential, but they do release neurotransmitter.
This is particularly clear in the retina which is an outpouching of the
brain. The vertebrate photoreceptor hyperpolarizes in response to light but
has no axon. At the gross level we can distinguish the eye from the brain,
but one must be a purist to separate photoreceptors from horizontal,
bipolar, amacrine, and ganglion cells in the retina.
The business of the brain is to act on information from the outside world.
The body is part of the exterior as far as the brain is concerned. I like to
think of the specialized cells that receive information from the exterior as
part of the brain. Others say no. You pays your money and you takes your
choice.
I say again that Anders is suggesting (and possibly you also) that the mind
has direct access to the ear (as an example) that is not mediated by the
brain. I say this is theology.
I stand with those who say that the Cartesian theater exists in the brain.
It consists of those neurons of whose activity we are aware. That these
neurons do not form a two-dimensional movie screen (upside down?) is
completely irrelevant.
In any event the Cartesian theater, the mind, and all that are no part of an
explanation of how the brain works. And no part of any attempt to design a
mechanism that might work as the brain works. The soul (mind, intelligence,
self) is best seen as a happy hunting ground for philosophers. The brain
thinks and decides, the soul (mind) observes the process.
Ray Scanlon
Patrick Juola wrote in message <7057tv$931$1...@quine.mathcs.duq.edu>...
(snip)
>>I would suggest that "truth" is an emotion. We experience truth when the
>>neurons in the reticular nucleus of the thalamus that inhibit neurons in
the
>>ventral anterior-ventral lateral complex of the thalamus are themselves
>>inhibited. But the activity of what neurons that are aroused at this point
>>give rise to the experience of "truth"? The neurons in the VA-VL complex?
>>Possibly.
>
>You're confusing "truth" with our experiences of truth. It may well
>be that recognition of "truth" can be modelled as an emotional brain-state,
>but this doesn't address "truth."
>
>Consider the case of a stage magician -- when he puts the cup over the
>ball, there is a true and actual value of the number of balls inside
>the cup at that instant. The magician, of course, knows that number
>(so "truth" is at that moment accessible to SOMEONE). If the trick
>were interrupted at that point (and I went back later to the empty
>stage and lifted the cup), I too would know the true state of the balls.
>However, usually the trick isn't interrupted and as I watch him perform
>the trick, I *think* that there's a single ball under the cup, irrespective
>of whether or not there's zero, one, two, or a dozen -- or a pigeon,
>for that matter.
>
>And, of course, if the magician is good, then my percepts and neuronal
>firing (my experiences) are the same irrespective of the actual "truth";
>whatever experience I have is the same regardless of whether my belief
>in a single ball is true or false.
>
>In short, then, there's no way that truth can be a neural event.
This goes on and on. I vividly remember argueing with a professor of
mathematical statistics (this was long ago, just before the flood). The
subject was a coin flip that was covered by a hand upon landing. He argued
that as long as the coin was in the air we could speak of probability but
that once it was covered by the hand the event had occurred and we could no
longer speak of probability. Well, yes and no. Consider Schroedinger's cat.
When does an event occur? May we take a God's-eye-view and know exactly at
what point an atomic event will occur?
If you believe in objective Truth then you shall. For everday life, I
certainly do--when I consider the odd cases on the fringe, I do not.
I reject all this as fantasy. We are aware of certain active neurons and
that is all. The rest is theology.
Patrick Juola
The Walrus <the_w...@BLOCK.bigfoot.com> wrote:
>Patrick Juola wrote:
>
>> And, of course, if the magician is good, then my percepts and neuronal
>> firing (my experiences) are the same irrespective of the actual "truth";
>> whatever experience I have is the same regardless of whether my belief
>> in a single ball is true or false.
>>
>> In short, then, there's no way that truth can be a neural event.
>
>of neurons cannot be truth ...
Well, an event *can't* be true; truth is a property of propositions,
not of events. And currently, we know of only one system that everyone
agrees has propositional content, and those are mental states.
But if you accept that propositional content can exist without mental
states -- for instance, if the words written on a piece of paper can
be "true", then I disagree that neural involvement is necessary.
For instance, a computer could (randomly) generate the phrase "There
is a planet capable of supporting human life circling Sirius", which
is certainly a sentence with propositional content -- and either
describes the actual state of the Sirius system, in which case it's
true, or doesn't, in which case it's false. There's no neural
involvement at all, and in fact, adding neurons wouldn't help because
no human being has knowledge of the state of the Sirius system...
-kitten
Ray Scanlon
Anders N Weinstein wrote in message
>><6vtob5$jmg$1...@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu>...
>>>In article <6vo1si$p...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, ric...@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
>>wrote:
>>>Almost as bad as taking a view of the mind's directedness at objects
>>>which assumes we human beings must necessarily be limited to a
>>>brain's-eye-view of the world!
>>
>>You suggest a mind that has sources of information other than the brain.
>>This is theology.
>
>The well-functioning of the brain is a necessary condition for this, no
>doubt about it. But the seeing exists at a different level of
>description. And at that level of description, the brain is not in the
>normal case a "source of information" for the person. Things like the
>New York Times or the testimony of a friend are potential sources of
>information for the person.
The basic question is the placement of the interface between the soul (mind,
intellect, self, whatever) and the exterior universe. To me it is clear that
this placement is wholly irrelevant to the design of a mechanism that should
work as the brain does. The brain thinks and decides, the soul (mind) merely
observes. You say no, you say your soul (mind) is an active participant.
This is theology.
>
>>Rather then run off into the beautiful verbiage that flows from the "whole
>>man" we might just look at the brain as an assemblage of neurons. What if
we
>>follow the notion that emotions are reflections of the activity (or lack
of
>>activity) of neurons in specific regions of the brain? We know that vision
>>follows specific pathways from retina to lateral geniculate nucleus to
>>primary visual cortex and then on and on to basal ganglia and ends up with
>>motor neurons. Some where along this tangled thread are the neurons whose
>>activity we "see".
>
>No, no, no, if you can use the concepts English correctly at all you
>should be able to appreciate that such a formulation embodies gross
>confusion. I see my desk, books, papers, a computer screen, my
>office-mate. I can't any of my neurons. For example, I can't tell you
>anything about my neurons by looking.
What you say is perfectly clear as long as you long as you are in your
office. But what if you are lying on an operating room table as your brain
is probed prior to an operation to relieve intractable epilepsy. A small
current is passed from the probe to your brain. Suddenly you are aware that
you are watching a boy peeking through a knothole in a fence. You hear
sounds all about you. Or maybe you are home in South Africa, laughing with
your cousins (the operating room is in Montreal). What do we do with these
examples from the fringe? See the writings of Wilder Penfield for the
details.
Do not talk about your desk, a cat that jumps from the table. a piece of
chalk, everyday life, instead work with the odd happenings, the fringes of
experience.
>Even materialists don't believe in this formualation. They believe that
>an event in the neurons is identical to an event of the person seeing.
>But not that the neurons are themselves the things seen. Just as the
>event of a person's seeming to see a red circular after-image is not
>itself something red or circular, on the identity theorists' view (see
>Smart's classic paper).
How can you say this when I (with my materialist hat on) say I do believe in
this formulation. Am I not someone. Do I not count. Forget Smart, go to
Wilder Penfield.
It is not the neuron that is blue, it is the activity of the neuron that we
are aware of as "blue".
>BTW, such a weak form of token identity theory is OK with me. I'm
>agnostic on it, since nothing of importance seems to hinge on whether
>psychological events like a person noticing something are or are
>not identical to brain events.
>
>>This is only part of the experience we feel impelled to explain. In
>>particular you avoid hallucination.
>>In my opinion every common sense philosopher needs a good dose of
>>hallucination. It is easy to say after the event that it was an
>>hallucination but not during the event. An hallucination, when being
>>experienced, is completely real.
>
>I wouldn't deny it. But if you are so impressed by hallucinations,
>perhaps you ought to worry about the possibility that your brain and
>the body you see in a mirror and feel from the inside and indeed the
>whole world of physical science is all a hallucination. Then you could
>not explain hallucination as the result of a neural process. For
>neurons themselves may only be phenomena, things that appear to
>exist within the content of your hallucination.
What I dream of is irrelevant. It is up to you to explain hallucination in
your scheme of Truth.
A man sees his Uncle Ed standing in the yard, he is confused. Later he says
he hallucinated, Uncle Ed is dead and buried. But he did see him. Where did
the representations of Uncle Ed come from if not from activated neurons?
When we are asleep and dreaming, of what do we dream of except active
neurons? Do you argue that we pass into another world, a dream world?
You are challenged to provide an explanation of hallucination that does not
involve activated neurons. Please do not perform a lateral arabesque into
whether "the entire universe in my brain-pan lies". Stick to the point.
Explain hallucination.
The Walrus
> An event *can't* be true; truth is a property of propositions,
> not of events. And currently, we know of only one system that everyone
> agrees has propositional content, and those are mental states.
This appears to contradict itself. The transition *into* a mental state must be an
event.
Was the event the observed phenomenon, the mental transition, both, or neither?
And where was the truth? Hence my proposition that truth was a *product* of the
phenomenon and the observation ...
> But if you accept that propositional content can exist without mental
> states -- for instance, if the words written on a piece of paper can
> be "true", then I disagree that neural involvement is necessary.
And here's the key issue in this discussion ... is "truth" an endemic property of
the outside universe, which we recognise, or is it the act of recognition,
independant of the outside universe?
It's not even *that* simple ... the act of recognition is a product of the outside
universe and the recognition system at t-1 ...
> For instance, a computer could (randomly) generate the phrase "There
> is a planet capable of supporting human life circling Sirius", which
> is certainly a sentence with propositional content -- and either
> describes the actual state of the Sirius system, in which case it's
> true, or doesn't, in which case it's false. There's no neural
> involvement at all, and in fact, adding neurons wouldn't help because
> no human being has knowledge of the state of the Sirius system...
That's one for the philosophers? It's probably not true until an intelligent system
parsesit ...
d.
The Walrus
The Walrus wrote:
> parsesit ...
sorry ... parses it :(
d.
Patrick Juola
>
>Patrick Juola wrote in message <7057tv$931$1...@quine.mathcs.duq.edu>...
>
>>>I would suggest that "truth" is an emotion. We experience truth when the
>>>neurons in the reticular nucleus of the thalamus that inhibit neurons in
>the
>>>ventral anterior-ventral lateral complex of the thalamus are themselves
>>>inhibited. But the activity of what neurons that are aroused at this point
>>>give rise to the experience of "truth"? The neurons in the VA-VL complex?
>>>Possibly.
>>
>>You're confusing "truth" with our experiences of truth. It may well
>>be that recognition of "truth" can be modelled as an emotional brain-state,
>>but this doesn't address "truth."
>>
>>Consider the case of a stage magician -- when he puts the cup over the
>>ball, there is a true and actual value of the number of balls inside
>>the cup at that instant. The magician, of course, knows that number
>>(so "truth" is at that moment accessible to SOMEONE). If the trick
>>were interrupted at that point (and I went back later to the empty
>>stage and lifted the cup), I too would know the true state of the balls.
>>However, usually the trick isn't interrupted and as I watch him perform
>>the trick, I *think* that there's a single ball under the cup, irrespective
>>of whether or not there's zero, one, two, or a dozen -- or a pigeon,
>>for that matter.
>>
>>firing (my experiences) are the same irrespective of the actual "truth";
>>whatever experience I have is the same regardless of whether my belief
>>in a single ball is true or false.
>>
>>In short, then, there's no way that truth can be a neural event.
>
>
>mathematical statistics (this was long ago, just before the flood). The
>subject was a coin flip that was covered by a hand upon landing. He argued
>that as long as the coin was in the air we could speak of probability but
>that once it was covered by the hand the event had occurred and we could no
>longer speak of probability. Well, yes and no. Consider Schroedinger's cat.
>When does an event occur? May we take a God's-eye-view and know exactly at
>what point an atomic event will occur?
>
>If you believe in objective Truth then you shall. For everday life, I
>certainly do--when I consider the odd cases on the fringe, I do not.
>
>I reject all this as fantasy. We are aware of certain active neurons and
>that is all. The rest is theology.
But your awareness doesn't constitute "truth" -- Schroedinger's Cat doesn't
apply, as the magician has already collapsed the wave function and knows
"the truth" about the number of balls under the cup. But your neural
events and beliefs have nothing to do with the (determined) state under
the cup.
-kitten
Patrick Juola
The Walrus <the_w...@BLOCK.bigfoot.com> wrote:
>Patrick Juola wrote:
>
>> An event *can't* be true; truth is a property of propositions,
>> not of events. And currently, we know of only one system that everyone
>> agrees has propositional content, and those are mental states.
>
>This appears to contradict itself. The transition *into* a mental state must be an
>event.
But the transition into a mental state isn't a mental state, any more
than paying the toll on the Bay Bridge is the city of San Francisco.
>Was the event the observed phenomenon, the mental transition, both, or neither?
Both, neither, whatever.... It's a domain error to believe that transitions
into states are the same as states themselves; you can characterize almost
anything you like as an event -- in fact, the transition is almost certainly
an event, and the observation is probably an event, irrespective of whether
the observed phenomenon is an event or a state (such as "it's raining").
>And where was the truth? Hence my proposition that truth was a *product* of the
>phenomenon and the observation ...
The truth is in the propositional content of a thing -- possibly a
mental state -- capable of holding propositional content.
>> But if you accept that propositional content can exist without mental
>> states -- for instance, if the words written on a piece of paper can
>> be "true", then I disagree that neural involvement is necessary.
>
>And here's the key issue in this discussion ... is "truth" an endemic property of
>the outside universe, which we recognise, or is it the act of recognition,
>independant of the outside universe?
It's quite clearly *NOT* the act of recognition, as the stage magician
example amply demonstrates. At best, it's a relationship between
the propositional content of the mental state and the outside world -- but
the outside world is clearly necessary to validate "truth."
Or do you really think that the ball "truly" ceased to exist when
the magician palmed it? And why does your viewpoint trump the magicians
who knew at every instant that the ball existed and exactly where it
was?
-kitten
Neil Rickert
>Neil Rickert wrote in message <7054ot$6...@ux.cs.niu.edu>...
>>>You suggest a mind that has sources of information other than the brain.
>>>This is theology.
>>No, it is just a way of saying that you need eyes, ears, and other
>>things as well as a brain.
>The nervous system may be divided in many ways, you may make a big thing of
>encephalization if you wish. One perfectly reasonable view is to include
>sensory receptor neurons as part of the neural net. Some sensory cells are
>true neurons, they have axons. Others do not have axons and thus no action
>potential, but they do release neurotransmitter.
That misses the point.
>The business of the brain is to act on information from the outside world.
>The body is part of the exterior as far as the brain is concerned. I like to
>think of the specialized cells that receive information from the exterior as
>part of the brain. Others say no. You pays your money and you takes your
>choice.
No. The business of the brain is to control the body. That involves
acting on information from the outside world, but is not limited to
that.
>I say again that Anders is suggesting (and possibly you also) that the mind
>has direct access to the ear (as an example) that is not mediated by the
>brain. I say this is theology.
I can't speak for Anders. I'm not a big fan of Gibson's use of the
word "direct", because it can lead to this sort of confusion. But
Gibson was mainly arguing against certain types of theory such as
sense-data theories, or such as Fodor's "Language of Thought"
theory. He used "direct" to contrast with the type of indirection
proposed by those theories. In that respect, I agree with Gibson.
>I stand with those who say that the Cartesian theater exists in the brain.
Who is in the audience watching the performance at the theater?
>It consists of those neurons of whose activity we are aware. That these
>neurons do not form a two-dimensional movie screen (upside down?) is
>completely irrelevant.
>In any event the Cartesian theater, the mind, and all that are no part of an
>explanation of how the brain works.
With that I can agree. Likewise I would say that the program running
on my computer is no explanation of how the computer works, and how
the computer works is no explanation of how the program works.
> The soul (mind, intelligence,
>self) is best seen as a happy hunting ground for philosophers. The brain
>thinks and decides, the soul (mind) observes the process.
Right. Just like the computer does all of the work, and the payroll
program just sits and observes the process. Maybe they could save
themselves some trouble and not even bother to load the payroll
program. But I hope they try that on the system that prepares your
paychecks, and not on the system that prepares my paychecks.
Neil Rickert
I'm saying that the claim makes no sense unless the good grounds are
criteria available in advance. I'll quite agree that there are good
grounds for comparing one theory to the other. But usually the
comparison is complex. Each theory has both advantages and
disadvantages. A preference can be based on some sort of overall
balance and benefits analysis. To say that this is true/false
decision is to say that there was some objective standard of
right/wrong independent of all of the pragmatic considerations that
might go into making a choice. And that is what I don't buy.
Anders N Weinstein
>Anders N Weinstein wrote in message
>>The well-functioning of the brain is a necessary condition for this, no
>>doubt about it. But the seeing exists at a different level of
>>description. And at that level of description, the brain is not in the
>>normal case a "source of information" for the person. Things like the
>>New York Times or the testimony of a friend are potential sources of
>>information for the person.
>
>The basic question is the placement of the interface between the soul (mind,
>intellect, self, whatever) and the exterior universe. To me it is clear that
I prefer to call the subject of psychological predicates the person or
human being, a kind of animal. Always keep the whole organism in view!
On my view there is no problematic interface between an "inner" mind and
an "exterior" universe.
>this placement is wholly irrelevant to the design of a mechanism that should
>work as the brain does. The brain thinks and decides, the soul (mind) merely
>observes. You say no, you say your soul (mind) is an active participant.
>This is theology.
No, again, I say the human person observes the environment around him
or her.
I guess there is a kind of dualism between what predicates apply at
the level of the whole person in the world, and what predicates apply
at the level of their parts, such as their neural circuitry. In that
modest but, I think, unproblematic sense, my view is dualist. But I
don't believe in an inner Cartesian soul observing proximal states of
the brain.
>What you say is perfectly clear as long as you long as you are in your
>office. But what if you are lying on an operating room table as your brain
>is probed prior to an operation to relieve intractable epilepsy. A small
>current is passed from the probe to your brain. Suddenly you are aware that
>you are watching a boy peeking through a knothole in a fence. You hear
>sounds all about you. Or maybe you are home in South Africa, laughing with
>your cousins (the operating room is in Montreal). What do we do with these
>examples from the fringe? See the writings of Wilder Penfield for the
>details.
Those are cases in which I am caused to seem to see and hear certain
objective things. They are not cases in which I am aware of my own
neurons. Moreover, you could not determine the content of those events
of apparent seemings, e.g. that they involve South Africa, unless
I was basically a normal human being with a body and a history.
>A man sees his Uncle Ed standing in the yard, he is confused. Later he says
>he hallucinated, Uncle Ed is dead and buried. But he did see him. Where did
>the representations of Uncle Ed come from if not from activated neurons?
In some sense that is fine. But he did not see his neurons, he had an
experience that was as if of seeing Uncle Ed, he was in a state with a
certain content. And the conditions under which we can identify that
content, may require that he has lots of non-hallucinatory states in
his history, e.g. that he once saw Uncle Ed, or perhaps, saw other people,
or at least saw *something* from which to acquire the conceptual materials
to construct a representation that is as if of Uncle Ed.
>You are challenged to provide an explanation of hallucination that does not
>involve activated neurons. Please do not perform a lateral arabesque into
This is weak. I did not say hallucination did not "involve" active neurons.
I was only reminding you how we use concepts like "dream" and "hallucination".
We say that I dreamt, say, of myself showing up for an exam for which I was
unprepared. Neural activity may be said to cause this event. the
dreaming itself might be said to be a neural event. Still the event in
question was a dream about an exam, not about neurons.
When we talk about what a dream is of or about, we are characterizing
it in terms of intentional or representational content.
Ray Scanlon
Patrick Juola wrote in message <707r6d$q6$1...@quine.mathcs.duq.edu>...
(snip)
>But your awareness doesn't constitute "truth" -- Schroedinger's Cat doesn't
>apply, as the magician has already collapsed the wave function and knows
>"the truth" about the number of balls under the cup. But your neural
>events and beliefs have nothing to do with the (determined) state under
>the cup.
I posited that truth was an emotion. Consider another emotion, namely
"fear". Now we can search the milieu and usually find something that
"caused" the fear, such as a charging lion. But not always, sometimes we
experience fear "without reason". The important thing to me is that we
experience fear. Or look at happiness--here we often are happy without
reason, we are "just happy".
If we say that happiness is our awareness of the activity of certain neurons
then there is no difficulty. The reason why these neurons are active is not
involved. They can be active because of sensory input or they can be self
excited. Or the neurons that are afferent upon them may be self excited. Or
a concentration of neurohormones may have excited them. The cause is
irrelevant, we are happy.
Look at "truth". I say that this emotion is related to the inhibition of
those neurons in the reticular nucleus of the thalamus that, when active,
inhibit neurons in the ventral anterior-ventral lateral nuclei of the
thalamus. Of the activity of which neurons makes us know truth? They could
be in the V.A.-V.L. complex or they could be elsewhere. It is not important.
I say "not important" because my interest is in analysing the activity of
the brain preparatory to designing a machine brain. What is important to me
is the action of the RNT in halting motor programs on their way to the
pre-motor and motor cortex. This halting is crucial in a machine that can
hesitate and thus think, but then cease hesitating and decide.
That there might be an awareness coupled with the machine brain that is
aware of this halting and say to itself, "I think, therefore I am", is not
pertinent. The machine will think and decide anyway. When the machine ceases
hesitating it knows truth.
I see no reason for insisting that "truth" is outside the machine, that it
is objective. I see no reason for saying it is in the machine. Truth is
subjective and the objective facet is just the activity of a part of the
machine.
Of course, if the neuroscientists are clever enough to find the neurons
whose activity is truth and they are clever enough to devise tools to follow
the activity of these neurons, then they will be able to say, "Look, there
is truth".
At this point we will be very close to the end of physical science and it
will be time to turn to religeon.
Anders N Weinstein
>[Scanlon:]
>>I say again that Anders is suggesting (and possibly you also) that the mind
>>has direct access to the ear (as an example) that is not mediated by the
>>brain. I say this is theology.
>
>I can't speak for Anders. I'm not a big fan of Gibson's use of the
>word "direct", because it can lead to this sort of confusion. But
>Gibson was mainly arguing against certain types of theory such as
>sense-data theories, or such as Fodor's "Language of Thought"
>theory. He used "direct" to contrast with the type of indirection
>proposed by those theories. In that respect, I agree with Gibson.
I say that the person can (on occasion) have direct access to facts
about the public world. This is basically the correlate of the "sees
that p" locution, where "sees" is used in a factive or achievement
sense, the sense in which you cannot be literally said to see what's
not there, only to seem to see. For example, Jones might see that a
book is on his desk.
For me, "direct" is used in an epistemic sense, it means that the
knowledge is not mediated by any inference of which the person is the agent
(locus of cognitive responsibility). Also that there are no intermediate
private objects of awareness, such as images or sense-data, intervening
before to the person's awareness; the immediate objects are the normally
things of the public world.
Patrick Juola
>
>Patrick Juola wrote in message <707r6d$q6$1...@quine.mathcs.duq.edu>...
>
>(snip)
>
>>But your awareness doesn't constitute "truth" -- Schroedinger's Cat doesn't
>>apply, as the magician has already collapsed the wave function and knows
>>"the truth" about the number of balls under the cup. But your neural
>>events and beliefs have nothing to do with the (determined) state under
>>the cup.
>
>
>I posited that truth was an emotion. Consider another emotion, namely
>"fear". Now we can search the milieu and usually find something that
>"caused" the fear, such as a charging lion. But not always, sometimes we
>experience fear "without reason". The important thing to me is that we
>experience fear. Or look at happiness--here we often are happy without
>reason, we are "just happy".
Yes, but you posited *incorrectly* that truth is an emotion.
Neither "happiness" nor "fear" are applied over statements with
propositional content -- for instance, the statement that "three
is less than five" is neither happy, nor is it fearful. So the
analogy (between "truth" and emotions) is at best suspect, without
a lot of supporting evidence that you've not provided.
Again, I refer you to the case of a stage magician, where the truth
is determinate, known to at least one actor present, but *NOT* to
the audience, and the neural activity of the members of the audience
is largely irrelevant to the question of the truth of the statement
"there is a single ball under the cup."
>I see no reason for insisting that "truth" is outside the machine, that it
>is objective. I see no reason for saying it is in the machine. Truth is
>subjective and the objective facet is just the activity of a part of the
>machine.
Do you have any evidence to support this? Specifically, where the
"truth" in the neural structure of an audience member?
-kitten
Neil Rickert
That's ok. But the term "direct" is still confusing to people who
are concerned with neural activity. Scanlon is insisting that it is
mediated by some sort of brain activity. You might agree, while
still insisting that it is not medated by any inference.
Anders N Weinstein
|I'm saying that the claim makes no sense unless the good grounds are
|criteria available in advance. I'll quite agree that there are good
|grounds for comparing one theory to the other. But usually the
|comparison is complex. Each theory has both advantages and
|disadvantages. A preference can be based on some sort of overall
|balance and benefits analysis. To say that this is true/false
|decision is to say that there was some objective standard of
|right/wrong independent of all of the pragmatic considerations that
|might go into making a choice. And that is what I don't buy.
Fine, but what does this have to do with the charge that most philosopher's
assume a "god's eye view"? It is one thing to say that the considerations
that go into assess truth of a theory are subtle, it is another to
say that they require a god's eye view.
Neil Rickert
I am insisting that it is not an assessment of truth. It is an
assessment of value/usefulness/whatever. Then the chosen theory is
simply declared to be truth. But there was no search for truth, for
'truth' had no meaning at this level of decision.
The claim that what was chosen is truth is a quasi-theological claim,
a claim that somehow the physicist has some sort of transcendental
insight that allows him to know a 'truth' for which there could be no
non-theological basis.
Josh Soffer
psycholoquy. You made some good points concerning the need to specify a
consistent site or boundary for mind-world interaction. I'm familiar
with the philosophical position he is trying to argue from ,but I don't
think he is translating it very effectively into a model of thinking.
Social constructiionist approaches within psychology specify thought as
radically interactive with world.
The mistake Timo makes is to fail to understand that even if one wants
to convey a notion of interactivity like this, one can do it without
abandoning the idea of an interface, because the idea is incoherent
without one. It is not a question of whether we say that meaning takes
place 'in the mind', 'out in the environment' or somewhere in between.
All models of mind or interactional at some level. The issue is how we
characterize the nature of the interaction. For instance, symbolic
representational models and connectionist approaches both spedify an
interaction between mind and world, but the NATURE of this interaction
differs between the two models. It is perfectly possible to design a
system which captures Jalehto's kind of interactionism via a description
of some sort of specifiable internal organization including sensory
reception.
Neil Rickert
>To Neil Rickert. I read your exchange with Timo Jarvilehto in
>psycholoquy. You made some good points concerning the need to specify a
>consistent site or boundary for mind-world interaction. I'm familiar
>with the philosophical position he is trying to argue from ,but I don't
>think he is translating it very effectively into a model of thinking.
>Social constructiionist approaches within psychology specify thought as
>radically interactive with world.
Thanks for the comments. We seem to agree on this. I'm sympathetic
with what Jarvilehto is trying to do, although I disagree with how he
is going about it.
> The mistake Timo makes is to fail to understand that even if one wants
>to convey a notion of interactivity like this, one can do it without
>abandoning the idea of an interface, because the idea is incoherent
>without one.
Yes, I quite agree.
>All models of mind or interactional at some level. The issue is how we
>characterize the nature of the interaction. For instance, symbolic
>representational models and connectionist approaches both spedify an
>interaction between mind and world, but the NATURE of this interaction
>differs between the two models.
That's correct. However, I think both approaches can be criticized as
having interactions that are too weak.
Anders N Weinstein
>I am insisting that it is not an assessment of truth. It is an
>assessment of value/usefulness/whatever. Then the chosen theory is
>simply declared to be truth. But there was no search for truth, for
>'truth' had no meaning at this level of decision.
But then we must ask: why is it you think that usefulness of a theory
is something that is humanly accessible while truth is not? As I understand
it, to judge usefulness, one must at least be able to judge that
some objective things are true.
I am not sure myself what your reasons for thinking this are. But I am
suspicious of the classical reason for thinking this: because (it is
held) a judgement of *usefulness* can be made on the basis of something
that a mind can know infallibly, i.e. something more "proximal" to the
mind then the inaccessible distal world, i.e. a sense-datum or
something like it. Or, as in empiricism the inner sensations of
pleasure or pain that result.
But you disclaim this. So I am not clear on why it is.
Let me also say that I am mainly interested in common-sense knowledge,
not scientific knowledge. So you may be right that scientists can only
assess usefulness. For then you could say they do this by testing the
results of their theories in the common-sense or "macro-" world, which
is humanly observable, and you wouldn't need anything more "proximal"
like a sense datum to serve as the field of evidence. That is OK with
me. I mainly claim to be a realist about the human world. I could be
convinced that one should view the scientific world as useful fiction.
Anders N Weinstein
>>to convey a notion of interactivity like this, one can do it without
>>abandoning the idea of an interface, because the idea is incoherent
>>without one.
I don't have the context here, but this struck me. For I do think a
good slogan is that there is no interface between "the mind" (really,
an organism qua subject of psychological predicates) and the world.
That is compatible with the truism that there is an interface between
an organism's nervous system and the world. For the concept of interface
is only applicable at the sub-organismic level.
On this and related matters I would highly recommend the following
paper by John Mcdowell: "The Content of Perceptual Experience", in
_Philosophical Quarterly_ 44 (1994), pp 190-205.
Ray Scanlon
Neil Rickert wrote in message <707snc$8...@ux.cs.niu.edu>...
>"Ray Scanlon" <rsca...@wsg.net> writes:
>>Neil Rickert wrote in message <7054ot$6...@ux.cs.niu.edu>...
>
>>>>You suggest a mind that has sources of information other than the brain.
>>>>This is theology.
>
>>>No, it is just a way of saying that you need eyes, ears, and other
>>>things as well as a brain.
>
>>The nervous system may be divided in many ways, you may make a big thing
of
>>encephalization if you wish. One perfectly reasonable view is to include
>>sensory receptor neurons as part of the neural net. Some sensory cells are
>>true neurons, they have axons. Others do not have axons and thus no action
>>potential, but they do release neurotransmitter.
>
>That misses the point.
ALL knowledge of the exterior world (including the body) enters the sensory
net through sensory cells. There is NO other route. At birth the brain
reacts to this signal energy as programmed by the DNA. There is NO other
source. The reaction of the brain is altered in time by the milieu according
to the rules of synaptic modification and axonal growth as established by
the DNA. There are NO other rules.
I say this is directly to the point.
>>The business of the brain is to act on information from the outside world.
>>The body is part of the exterior as far as the brain is concerned. I like
to
>>think of the specialized cells that receive information from the exterior
as
>>part of the brain. Others say no. You pays your money and you takes your
>>choice.
>
>No. The business of the brain is to control the body. That involves
>acting on information from the outside world, but is not limited to
>that.
Choice of words. The brain ACTS by CONTROLLING the body. Choice of words.
The brain has two sources of information: Signal energy coming through
sensory receptor neurons and proteins coming from DNA. There is NO repeat NO
other source of information known to neuroscience at present. If you know of
one, please do tell.
>>I say again that Anders is suggesting (and possibly you also) that the
mind
>>has direct access to the ear (as an example) that is not mediated by the
>>brain. I say this is theology.
>
>I can't speak for Anders. I'm not a big fan of Gibson's use of the
>word "direct", because it can lead to this sort of confusion. But
>Gibson was mainly arguing against certain types of theory such as
>sense-data theories, or such as Fodor's "Language of Thought"
>theory. He used "direct" to contrast with the type of indirection
>proposed by those theories. In that respect, I agree with Gibson.
>
>>I stand with those who say that the Cartesian theater exists in the brain.
>
>Who is in the audience watching the performance at the theater?
Soul, Mind, Understanding, Thinking Principle, Mentality, Self, and
Intellect occupy the seats.
I am not being facetious, all of them have been nominated at one time or
another. Only the Eliminativists say there is no audience.
>>It consists of those neurons of whose activity we are aware. That these
>>neurons do not form a two-dimensional movie screen (upside down?) is
>>completely irrelevant.
>
>>In any event the Cartesian theater, the mind, and all that are no part of
an
>>explanation of how the brain works.
>
>With that I can agree.
Thank you.
> Likewise I would say that the program running
>on my computer is no explanation of how the computer works, and how
>the computer works is no explanation of how the program works.
>
>> The soul (mind,
intelligence,
>>self) is best seen as a happy hunting ground for philosophers. The brain
>>thinks and decides, the soul (mind) observes the process.
>
>Right. Just like the computer does all of the work, and the payroll
>program just sits and observes the process. Maybe they could save
>themselves some trouble and not even bother to load the payroll
>program. But I hope they try that on the system that prepares your
>paychecks, and not on the system that prepares my paychecks.
You are being snide. Never push an analogy too far.
We lack the intellectual equipment to grasp the relationship between mind
and brain, therefore we are reduced to analogy. Now a brain may be likened
to a computer but only just barely.
The program in the brain is part of the brain, it exists in the connections
between neurons and in strengthened syapses. We lack the ability to abstract
the program from the meatware. The partial program that we enter into the
computer is only part of the whole program which also includes the
interconnections and any ROM that is active. Still we are able to look at
the partial program and talk about it. Would that we could do the same for
the brain.
It is important to me to know the partial program I wrote bears no analogy
to the mind.
We as programmers are in the position of God surveying his handiwork. If
there is a soul (mind) associated with the machine the software has nothing
whatsoever to do with it. That analogy will not hold.
Bloxy's
>Hello Anders and everybody,
>- reading posting to which is this my reply... or, better, exclamation
>of joy and hope, I decided that it's the right way to ask you the
>following. If I am wrong, take my sincere apologies.
>I greatly appreciate whatsoever information about any new results of
>search within the ventromedial region of frontal cortex.
>My main scientific interest is creation of a new and continually
>changeable scientific and philosophical base for education.
>Thanks a lot in advance.
>Valery
Poor Russian.
He came from a tradition of the giants to ask
the maning of truth from the tradition of bio-robots.
Good luck, Russian.
[...]
M&M -> out
Bloxy's
>Patrick Juola wrote:
>
>> firing (my experiences) are the same irrespective of the actual "truth";
The firing is not the same even from moment to moment.
You can perceive exactly the same set of conditions
[if it was possible] and firing would be different.
You are missing some of the most essential aspects of the story.
Secondly, the formulation is very confusing.
It is not clear what you mean that neural activity is the same
regardless of actual truth?
Try to rephrase. The way it is, it is complete confusion.
>> whatever experience I have is the same regardless of whether my belief
>> in a single ball is true or false.
Not true.
Way of of the scale.
>> In short, then, there's no way that truth can be a neural event.
That does not follow from your premises.
>I would agree ... but would have to say that an event *without* the involvement
>of neurons cannot be truth ...
What is truth?
>Put simply, truth is a *product* of "real-world" events and the firing of some
>set of neurons.
Utter bullshit.
>Or is that too simplistic a viewpoint?
Yes, it is.
You can not even begin to argue about the truth, unless
you define the very notion of it.
It is utterly unclear what you mean by "truth".
The way you connected things so far, it does not hold
from ANY aspect in ANY domain.
>
>d.
Ray Scanlon
Anders N Weinstein wrote in message
>In article <36275...@ns2.wsg.net>, Ray Scanlon <rsca...@wsg.net> wrote:
(snip)
>>A man sees his Uncle Ed standing in the yard, he is confused. Later he
says
>>he hallucinated, Uncle Ed is dead and buried. But he did see him. Where
did
>>the representations of Uncle Ed come from if not from activated neurons?
>
>In some sense that is fine. But he did not see his neurons, he had an
>experience that was as if of seeing Uncle Ed, he was in a state with a
>certain content. And the conditions under which we can identify that
>content, may require that he has lots of non-hallucinatory states in
>his history, e.g. that he once saw Uncle Ed, or perhaps, saw other people,
>or at least saw *something* from which to acquire the conceptual materials
>to construct a representation that is as if of Uncle Ed.
>
>>You are challenged to provide an explanation of hallucination that does
not
>>involve activated neurons. Please do not perform a lateral arabesque into
>
>This is weak. I did not say hallucination did not "involve" active neurons.
>I was only reminding you how we use concepts like "dream" and
"hallucination".
>We say that I dreamt, say, of myself showing up for an exam for which I was
>unprepared. Neural activity may be said to cause this event. the
>dreaming itself might be said to be a neural event. Still the event in
>question was a dream about an exam, not about neurons.
>
>When we talk about what a dream is of or about, we are characterizing
>it in terms of intentional or representational content.
I will try again.
When I look at a neuron under the microscope I see a cell. I see dendrites,
an axon, a nucleus, a nucleolus. This is what I see when I SEE a neuron.
When a certain neuron in my brain is active I EXPERIENCE a spot of blue. I
do not SEE a neuron, I EXPERIENCE a spot of blue, I SEE a spot of blue.
When I say I am seeing something, I am experiencing the activity of neurons.
Of course I do not see the neurons, I see their activity.
Wilder Penfield, reported in 1975, happened ? (the numbers refer to a
photograph of sterile papers placed on the exposed surface of the right
cerebrum, 11 marks the first temporal convolution below the fissure of
Sylvius.)
11--"I heard something, I do not know what it was."
11--(repeated without warning) "Yes, Sir, I think I heard a mother calling
her little boy somewhere. It seemed to be something that happened years
ago." When asked to explain, she said, "It was somebody in the neighborhood
where I live." Then she added that she herself "was somewhere close enough
to hear."
12--"Yes I heard voices down along the river somewhere--a man's voice and a
woman's voice calling...I think I saw the river."
15--"Just a tiny flash of a feeling of familiarity and a feeling that I knew
everything that was going to happen in the near future."
17c--(a needle insulated except at the tip was inserted to the superior
surface of the temporal lobe, deep in the fissure of Sylvius, and the
current was switched on) "Oh! I had the same very, very familiar memory, in
an office somewhere. I could see the desks. I was there and someone was
calling to me, a man leaning on a desk with a pencil in his hand."
I warned her I was going to stimulate, but I did not do so. "Nothing."
18a--(stimulation without warning) "I had a little memory--a scene in a
play--they were talking and I could see it--I was just seeing it in my
memory.
Note that the patient is not "seeing" neurons, she is experiencing their
activity. Her analysis of what happened is that she was "seeing it in (her)
memory." And not the experience of a single neuron but of a large number of
neurons that were stimulated dromically.
Again and again the surgeon reports that he stimulates a neuron and the
patient reports an experience, he stimulates it again and the patient
reports the same experience. The experience is very real, the patient is
commonly astounded that they can have the experience and be conscious of the
operating room at the same time.
A reference is The Excitable Cortex in Conscious Man, Wilder Penfield, 1958,
being the Fifth Sherrington Lecture. This book has many, many similar
accounts.
I ask you to give me your "common language" account of what is happening.
Conversation with Neil's Brain, William H. Calvin and George A. Ojeman,1994,
is a popular account of the third generation--Ojeman was the student of a
student of Penfield's.
These surgical accounts of thousands of operations are part of the world we
live in, how can we ignore them?
I say the patient experiences activated neurons. What do you say?
Neil Rickert
>Neil Rickert wrote in message <707snc$8...@ux.cs.niu.edu>...
>>>>>You suggest a mind that has sources of information other than the brain.
>>>>>This is theology.
>>>>No, it is just a way of saying that you need eyes, ears, and other
>>>>things as well as a brain.
>>>The nervous system may be divided in many ways, you may make a big thing
>of
>>>encephalization if you wish. One perfectly reasonable view is to include
>>>sensory receptor neurons as part of the neural net. Some sensory cells are
>>>true neurons, they have axons. Others do not have axons and thus no action
>>>potential, but they do release neurotransmitter.
>>That misses the point.
>ALL knowledge of the exterior world (including the body) enters the sensory
>net through sensory cells. There is NO other route. At birth the brain
>reacts to this signal energy as programmed by the DNA. There is NO other
>source. The reaction of the brain is altered in time by the milieu according
>to the rules of synaptic modification and axonal growth as established by
>the DNA. There are NO other rules.
>I say this is directly to the point.
No, you are completely missing the point. You are trying to argue
things that are not at issue.
My computer is connected to an ethernet, and linked to the Internet.
I currently have a usenet session open, connecting to a news server.
The computer (the hardware -- cpu etc) is only getting information
from the ethernet. The operating system is getting information from
the operating system of the computer that runs the news server. My
newsreader program is getting information from the news server
program. I am getting information from you.
There is no claim in this that the signals which carry the
information are not passing through the hardware. Of course they
are. But the hardware of the computer is not sensitive to the
information content that the newsreader program is using. And the
newsreader program is not sensitive to the information that I am
reading.
Josh Soffer
the net that he's a moral philosopher as well. Right up my alley, except
for the challenge of translating from continental to analytic lingo. You
say that the idea of an interface is only a truism at the suborganismic
level. But I wold add that you have to extend this to conceptualization
as well as perception. In fact, I believe there is no way to make a
coherent distinction between such a thing as a perceptual and conceptual
level, certainly not in terms of functional organization.
I'm more interested in the way we characterize the nature of this
interface at all levels of knowing. There is no 'mind' as a
pre-constituted entity, nor is there enrironment as an in-itself
objectivity. What, after all, is the meaning of inner and outer? An
embodied approach would claim that what we call world and what we call
perceiver are an indissociable interaction, two sides of the same coin,
like affectivity and cognition. The inner refers to the formal ,
constraining aspects of knowing, and the outer is that which limits the
formalizability of the system, the random aspect of its functioning.
Both aspects are present in every act of processing in the system,
whether we are dreaming or observing.
This renders formal truth statements hopelessly inadequate to capture a
profoundly temporal and self-transformational dynamic. Regardless of
the level of our foucus, be it neurophysiological or conceptual, this
dichotomous dynamic applies, because it is a fundamental precondition of
all understanding. When two hands touch, which is sensing and which is
being sensed? The answer is that perceiving ('inner') and being
perceived ('outer') are both simultaneously implied in every relation of
body and a world. A model of thinking which artificially separates the
objective aspects of knowing from the subjective ends up in a confused
tangle of formal criteria of 'truth' which attempt to 'freeze' into
components what always already exceeds their grasp, even as its over
pattern of behavr is more unitary and integral than is conceived within
the limitations of formal logic.