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

Sun May 10 17:20:00 EDT 2020

Eric

Your second paragraph seems exactly right to me.

By the way, I confirmed rather than wrote those last two words, thanks to
Android or the Gmail client or something.

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, May 10, 2020, 3:12 PM David Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu> wrote:

>  No one but me knows the content of this message until i click "send" and
> they read it.
>
>
> I think you can argue that even this has two layers.  There is a narrative
> “you” that knows the content of the message _after_ it has been typed out
> but before it has been sent.  By then it is an artifact in the world, with
> which the narrative you interacts as it does with other artifacts.  If you
> are on an irritating neo-microsoft Mac that constantly tries to replace the
> words you type, you could say that the Mac knows about the message in a
> similar way to the narrative you.
>
> But there is also the event stream of converting an intended idea
> (whatever _that_ palr of words should mean!)  into the composition of the
> particular message sequence.  My experience of that is that the composition
> keeps unfolding into the view of the narrative you, from someplace that the
> narrative you doesn’t see, like a spring of which I see the surface pool
> but which is fed by a subterranean source.  Presumably that
> language-production phenomenon is also associated with a concept of “you”,
> and I would not presume at all that it is coextensive with, or even of the
> same kind as, the narrative you that can proofread the sentence.  Even the
> process of proofreading, to see whether the extant string really renders
> the intended idea or needs to have parts replaced by newly-conceived
> strings of words, almost seems like a collaborative exchange between two
> quasi-autonomous faculties.
>
> Artists I talk to, and particularly writers for whom the unfolding of
> narrative is a high concern, very often emphasize this sense that there are
> two actors at work.  Whether those two seem like one person, or like two in
> a dialogue, is a necker cube.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
> 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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