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

Sun May 10 18:16:44 EDT 2020

Nick,

I apologize for misstating your position.  My fault.

Frank

On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 4:07 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> No, frank.  Idon’t think that’s my position.  If you want to make it as
> extreme as the position you lay out, it should be that I can think your
> thoughts as well as you can, not that you don’t have thoughts.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Sunday, May 10, 2020 2:45 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box
>
>
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
> 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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-- 
Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
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