[FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

Thu Apr 30 17:27:00 EDT 2020

Acceleration can be a changing, non-constant function of time.  The change
is necessarily continuous.  Want to go for a ride?

On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 3:06 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Glen, and all,
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>
>
> This is very good, so good that I am in danger of getting lost in thought
> and never giving it any reply.
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>
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> So let me attempt a short reply.
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> Following Holt, I am going to take the metaphor (if you will) of point of
> view.  Let's say we are all blindfolded philosophers palpating an extremely
> patient elephant.  Even without introducing the qualia problem,  there is
> an odd sense in which we all feel the same thing and an equally odd sense
> in which we each feel a different thing.  And to know what you are feeling,
> I have to question you (and ask you to use metaphors) to convey what you
> are feeling to me.  Here there is no question of qualia.  If I were
> standing where you are and feeling the same part of the elephant that you
> feel, then I would feel the same thing (ex hypothesi).
>
>
>
> One of the challenges here, of course, is how we come to the conclusion
> that we are all palpating the SAME thing.  We could all behave as some of
> my "qualitative" colleagues at Clark wanted to behave, and simply "share
> our experiences"--.  "I am having a scaley experience; I am having a fuzzy
> experience."  "I am having a mucussy experience" "Ugh! Something just
> wacked me over the head." -- and then walk away.   There has to be the
> possibility of classes of objects for us to appeal to before we can begin
> to integrate the various information that each of us is gathering.  And
> there is philosophical difficulty enough here to concern us without
> introducing the problem of whether each of us experiences fuzziness, say,
> in the same way that each of the others do.
>
>
>
> Now if we were determined to study THAT problem, we could take a group of
> extremely standardized objects ... a perfect steel sphere, a perfect
> cylinder, etc., say, and ask each of us to report on what we feel as we
> feel them.  We might notice, from this research, that one of us focusses on
> weight, another on surface texture, another on warmth and coldness, etc.
> And across objects we might find individual differences in how each of us
> describes the objects.  That might get at our individual uniqueness in how
> we approach the touching of objects.  And just as we could agree, after a
> time that we were surrounding an elephant, we could agree, after a time and
> a discussion, that you approach objects in one way and I approach them in
> an other.  We could, with the diligent application of metaphors, come to
> see the world approximately from one another's point of view
>
>
>
> To me, the mystery of consciousness is no greater than the fact that we
> never stand in exactly the same place when we look at something.  But as
> steve Guerin has pointed out, just as we can work out where the fire is by
> all of us pointing our differently located cameras at it, we can as easily
> work out the location of each of the cameras from the same information.
> This is no accident because Steve is a student of Gibson and Gibson was a
> student of Holt, and Holt's metaphor of consciousness is a point of view
> metaphor.
>
>
>
> I note with particular interest this paragraph in Glen's letter:
>
>
>
> The hard problem of consciousness is that any given
> creature/object/thing/situation has a qualitative experience, a
> *comprehension* of the situation/state/condition that creature finds itself
> it at any given time, any given place, or any given trajectory through time
> and space. The hard problem is one of uniqueness. The uniqueness of that
> experience.
>
>
>
> I just don’t think “experience” is that sort of thing.  Experience is
> always a step from one thing to another.  A “unique experience” is like
> acceleration an instant.  A fiction that is useful for some purposes.  We
> know how to study the elephant; and we know how to study the uniqueness of
> the observers of the elephant.  But those are distinct objects of study.
>
>
>
> Not short.  Ugh.  Glen, you are allowed to say I begged your question.
>
>
>
> Nick
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> Nicholas Thompson
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> 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: Thursday, April 30, 2020 9:44 AM
> To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve
>
>
>
> OK. Here's the setup:
>
>
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> Nick says 1: Metaphorical thinker maps their experience onto another's
> experience, modeling that other's experience with their own.
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> Nick says 2: I don't understand the hard problem of consciousness.
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> Glen says: Expressions 1 and 2 are contradictory.
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> I suppose it's on me to show that they're contradictory. The idea that
> abduction is an inference from the unique to a class might be helpful. But
> I think it's a jargonal distraction. So, here goes.
>
>
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> Let's propose that there exist unique situations/objects ... things or
> points in time or whatever that are not, cannot be, exactly the same
> anywhere else or at any other time. They are absolutely, completely unique
> in the entire universe. Because they are unique, there's absolutely no way
> any *other* thing/situation can perfectly model them. E.g. no 2 electrons
> are in exactly the same state at exactly the same time in exactly the same
> place. There will always be something different about any 2 unique things.
> So analogies/metaphors/maps from 1 unique thing to another unique thing
> will always be slightly off.
>
>
>
> Now, a metaphor/model/analogy/mapping thinker will accept an imperfect
> mapping and go ahead and model a unique thing with another unique thing.
> That's what a metaphorical thinker does, inaccurately models one thing with
> another thing.
>
>
>
> The hard problem of consciousness is that any given
> creature/object/thing/situation has a qualitative experience, a
> *comprehension* of the situation/state/condition that creature finds itself
> it at any given time, any given place, or any given trajectory through time
> and space. The hard problem is one of uniqueness. The uniqueness of that
> experience.
>
>
>
> The AI/ALife component of the hard problem asks how can we build a machine
> that will have these experiences. But that's not important to this
> conversation. The modeling/mapping/metaphorical component is how can any
> one thing (machine, rock, golfball, human) *understand* the experience of
> any other thing (car, elephant, galaxy, bacterium).
>
>
>
> The answer is that one thing *models* the other thing imperfectly. The
> only reason anyone would be a "metaphorical thinker" is because they
> recognize the hard problem. If they don't recognize the hard problem, then
> there's no need to use metaphor. Sure, it might be convenient to use
> metaphor, but there's no NEED because there is no hard problem.
>
>
>
> Therefore, Nick *does* understand the hard problem, even if only tacitly,
> and even if he doesn't *believe* in it. He states it and restates it every
> time he insists that thinking is metaphorical.
>
>
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> On 4/29/20 8:19 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > I think the first was Glen, and I agree, I don’t see how a belief in
>
> > the centrality of metaphor to thought commits one to a belief in the
> hardness of, or even the existence of, the hard problem.
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > It was me that floated the thought that “all thinking is
>
> > metaphorical”. (I was trying to draw Dave West in on my side of the
> argument, at the time.)  I meant only to say that the application of any
> word (save perhaps grammatical operators or proper names) involves
> abduction, which I think we both believe, is a very close relative of
> metaphor.  You and I have struggled over this for years, decades, almost,
> but I think we believe that abduction is an inference from the properties
> of an object to the class to which it belongs whereas a metaphor carries
> the process further in some way I have trouble defining.  For instance,
> when Darwin said that evolution was caused by selection, it definitely was
> an abduction of sort.  But as selection was understood at the time, it
> involved the intentional intervention of a breeder.  So the metaphor not
> only abduces selection, it seems also rupture the original concept in some
> say.
>
>
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>
>
> --
>
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
>
>
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