[FRIAM] Abduction and Introspection

Fri Jan 24 15:45:30 EST 2020

Hi, Glen, 

At FRIAM today, some of us  were talking with wonder and gratitude about your extra-ordinary ability to read and comment on what others write.  I wish you would come here some day so we can buy you coffee. Also, fwiw, let me say, in this public forum, that I owe you commentary on any writing you are doing that you need commentary on. 

As to the issue of inter-component monitoring, I am  not sure we'll get into it much in this article because the monitoring of one component by another seems to me "other-perception", as I understand it.  Here is how I made the argument some years back, in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311349078_The_many_perils_of_ejective_anthropomorphism:  

p. 87.  

I have always longed to know that an actual computer scientist would say about this inexpert speculation.  How WOULD you wire a computer to assess its own “state”.  

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2020 12:48 PM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction and Introspection

Well, your abstract seems to assume something akin to coherence, the idea that whatever's doing the introspection is a whole/atomic thing perceiving that whole/atomic thing. I think we know that established types of self-perception (proprio-, entero-) consist of one sub-component monitoring another sub-component. It's not clear to me whether you intend to address that part-whole aspect of self-perception or not. But if you don't address it, *I* won't be satisfied with whatever you write. 8^)

On 1/24/20 7:20 AM,  <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:

> Anybody else?

> 

> *From:* Friam < <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Pieter 

> Steenekamp

> *Sent:* Thursday, January 23, 2020 11:05 PM

> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 

> < <mailto:friam at redfish.com> friam at redfish.com>

> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Your worst nightmare

> 

>  

> 

> To put a Popper inspired philosophy of science-hat on this topic. The key is in the falsification and good explanations process. Conjectures form in a human's mind without consciously knowing where it comes from. To try to use introspection to understand the roots of the conjecture is fruitless. A process of cognitive falsification then takes this conjecture further. The first stages might be a very informal process. Without expressing it like that, the mind asks - I have this idea, why could it be false. If it passes the first stages then a good explanation for the conjecture is developed and it could be put out there in the world. This idea which originally started as a conjecture now develops into knowledge whilst continuously open to be falsified and better explanations are developed. There is no knowledge that is immune against falsification and attempts to hamper the falsification process limits the growth of knowledge.

> I think this is a different paradigm in support of Nick's point that too strong emphasis on introspection shuts down rather than inspiring inquiry.

> 

>  

> 

On 1/23/20 2:38 PM,  <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:

> New Abstract:

> 

>  

> 

> As psychologists in the behaviorist tradition, we have long had misgivings about the concept of introspection.  The metaphor behind the concept is misleading, and despite the wide use of the concept in both vernacular and professional settings, we doubt that anybody has ever resorted to introspection in the sense that the concept is usually understood.  Additional misgivings arise from the study of the philosophy of C S Peirce. Peirce’s Pragmaticism, one of the foundations of modern behaviorism, rejects the Cartesian notion that all knowledge first arises from direct knowledge of one’s own mind – i.e., from introspection.   Peirce declares that all knowledge arises from inference.  He even reverses the flow, declaring that self-knowledge is largely inference from what we do and what happens to us.  The logical operation by which we infer our selves is that called  “Abduction” by Peirce.   When we engage in abduction, we use one or more properties of an individual event or object to infer its membership in a class of events or objects that share this properties with our initial event or object.  Abductions have potential heuristic power because when we infer what class an individual event belongs to we may infer by deduction other properties that this individual may have.  However abductions vary tremendously in their heuristic power ranging from the from highly useful and testable expectations to implications that are mere vacuous or misleading.  We argue that the manner in which “introspection” is understood in psychology abuses the logic of abduction, prematurely shutting down, rather than inspiring inquiry.

--

☣ uǝlƃ

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