[FRIAM] Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

Sun May 10 16:44:55 EDT 2020

Eric,

Nick has said to me that "thought" is mentalist language and that I only
think I think.  Note the paradox.  Surely you've heard him deny the
existence of mental life and the private access that I (you) have to mine
(yours).  I think it happened here recently.  No one but me knows the
content of this message until i click "send" and they read it.

Frank

On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 2:35 PM Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Frank,
> So far as I can tell, no one is denying thought. I'm certainly not. There
> are phenomenon at play, and one of the things that happens when you science
> a phenomenon is that you end up with descriptions of the phenomenon (and
> explanations for the phenomenon) that don't match mundane intuitions about
> things,. We should expect that the science of psychology defines its
> subject matter different from mundane intuitions in the same way that the
> science of physics and the science of biology did for their respective
> subject matters: Sometimes those definitions end up pretty close to the
> mundane intuitions of a given era, other times you end up with definitions
> that are radically different.
>
> In these contexts, I like to remind people how mindbogglingly unintuitive
> Newtonian momentum is. When was the last time you moved an object and it
> didn't come to rest? Aristotle's system is much more intuitive.
>
> -----------
> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
> Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
> American University - Adjunct Instructor
> <echarles at american.edu>
>
>
> On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 10:46 AM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> As I said to Nick approximately a dozen years ago, people who deny
>> thought must not have it.  I don't mean that as an insult.  It's that for
>> me thought is the one thing I can't deny because it's the first *experience*
>> At that point Nick dismisses me as a Cartesian.
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>> On Sun, May 10, 2020, 8:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Ha! Well, by ignoring the poignant example, you've ignored my entire
>>> point. And it's that point by which I can't agree with the unmoored
>>> distinction you're making. The celery example isn't about being alive.
>>> Sorry for injecting that into it. The celery example is about *scale*.
>>> Celery's movement *is* movement. An antenna's behavior *is* its movement. I
>>> introduced antennas' behavior in order to help demonstrate that behavior is
>>> orthogonal to life.
>>>
>>> Now, the distinction you're making by saying that behavior is a proper
>>> subset of movement, would be fine *if* you identify some movement that is
>>> *not* behavior. I didn't see that in the Old Dead Guy text you quoted ...
>>> maybe I missed it?  Anyway, that's the important category and celery and
>>> antennas fit right in.
>>>
>>> But the behavior/movement discussion (including observer-ascribed
>>> intention) is a bit of a distraction. What we're actually talking about is
>>> *hidden* states (a.k.a. "thinking", maybe extrapolated to "consciousness").
>>> So, the examples of light-following or higher order objective targeting is
>>> like trying to run before you can walk. Why do that? Why not talk about,
>>> say, the hidden states of an antenna? If we could characterize purely
>>> *passive* behavior/movement, we might be able to characterize *reactive*
>>> movement. And if we do that, then we can talk about the complicatedness (or
>>> complexity) of more general *transformations* from input to output. And
>>> then we might be able to talk about I⇔O maps whose internal state can (or
>>> can't) be estimated solely from their I&O.
>>>
>>> We don't need all this philosophical rigmarole to talk about the
>>> complexity of I⇔O maps.
>>>
>>> On 5/9/20 6:17 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
>>> > Ok, so it sounds like we agree there is a distinction can be made
>>> between behavior and "mere movement". So what is that difference? I would
>>> argue, following E. B. Holt, that it is the presence of intentionality.
>>> Note crucially that the directedness of the behavior described below is
>>> descriptive, /not /explanatory. The intention is not a force behind the
>>> behavior, it is a property of the behavior-to-circumstance mapping that can
>>> be demonstrated by varying conditions appropriately.
>>> > [...]
>>> > P.S. I'm going to try to ignore the celery challenge, because while we
>>> recognize plants as living, we do not typically talk about them as
>>> behaving. And I think the broad issue of living vs. not-living is a
>>> different issue. We probably should talk about plants behaving a bit more
>>> than we normally do, but I think it is worth getting a handle on what we
>>> mean in the more normal seeming cases before we try to look for
>>> implications like those.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> ☣ uǝlƃ
>>>
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-- 
Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
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