[FRIAM] do animals psychologize?

Mon Sep 17 19:51:26 EDT 2018

See larding.  

Thanks, Frank. 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2018 6:30 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] do animals psychologize?

Frank confirms.  Here is a conversation between Nick and me that occurred at least ten years ago:

N. Hunger is eating or food-seeking behavior

[NST==>is the relation between food relevant circumstances and food related activities<==nst] 

.

F. No, hunger is what I feel when I'm hungry.

Note:. Nick feels(!) that circularity is a Mortal Sin.

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

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https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:10 PM Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net <mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net> > wrote:

Hi, Glen, 

I realize I am about to make you grumpy and I HATE when I do that.  But ... I think (perhaps Frank will confirm) that I am a person who does not believe in qualia.  Let's see.  I will check my behavior and see.  OH, yes.  I have written: 

Devil’s advocate: If feelings are something that one does, rather than something that one “has inside,” then the right sort of robot should be capable of feeling when it does the sorts of things that humans do when we say that humans are feeling something. Are you prepared to live with  that implication?

Sure.

Devil’s advocate: So a robot could be made that would feel pain?

Well, you are cheating a bit, because you are asking me to participate in a word game I have already disavowed, the game in which pain is something inside my brain that I use my pain-feelers to palpate (see also Natsoulas, this volume). To me, pain is an emergency organization of my behavior in which I deploy physical and social defenses of various sorts. You show me a robot that is part of a society of robots, becomes frantic when you break some part of it, calls upon its fellow robots to assist, etc., I will be happy to admit that it is “paining.”

Devil’s advocate: On your account, nonsocial animals don’t feel pain?

Well, not the same sort of pain. Any creature that struggles when you do something to it is “paining” in some sense. But animals that have the potential to summon help seem to pain in a different way.

Devil’s advocate: But, Nick, while “paining” sounds nice in an academic paper, it is just silly otherwise. The other day I felt quite nauseous after a meal. I am interested in what it’s    like to feel nauseous, and you

237

cannot honestly claim that you don’t know what feeling nauseous is like. Behavioral correlates aren’t at issue; stop changing the subject.

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

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

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

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

Gee.  I guess I don’t believe in qualia.

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> ] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2018 4:50 PM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] do animals psychologize?

In an attempt to avoid a descent into arguing about the meanings of words, it seems reasonable enough to say that whatever plants may or may not feel, what they feel will result in wildly different qualia than what we experience.  Right?

So, we don't have to argue about whether plants feel pain.  We can argue about the extent of the similarity between plants' vs. animals' enteroception. 

On 09/17/2018 01:37 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> So, David,

> 

> A tree, when assaulted by caterpillars, alters its physiology to produce toxins (at cost to its growth) and puts out chemicals to alert neighboring trees which do the same.  

> 

> On what basis exactly do you assert that trees don't feel pain.  

> 

> I stipulate that this question is asked by a person who doesn't think humans "feel pain".  There aren’t two steps, pain and the feeling of it.   

--

☣ uǝlƃ

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