[FRIAM] Abduction and Introspection

[uǝlƃ ☣]

I'm sure you're being generous by *not* calling me argumentative or contrarian, or any number of other words. 8^) But I'll take it, anyway.

In the text you attached, you talk about that other module and privileged access. As far as how I think many *others* talk about self-perception, I have no problems with what you've written. But what the entire discussion, including the text you attached, ignores is that privileged access involves *manipulation* as well as observation, 2 necessary types of interaction.

The idea is one I've lobbed at you before re: feedback. We can consider your example of putting your leg down to get out of bed in the morning. My assertion was that my doubt that the floor is there manifests itself as very FAST feedback (proprioception) regarding the movement of my leg toward the floor and if the distance seems too great, my manipulation of my leg rapidly compensates. So, if I forgot that I'm sleeping in a hotel with a thicker mattress, I quickly *remember* that because of this privileged introspection (manipulate, observe, manipulate, observe, ...).

To couch this in terms of one sub-component extrocepting another (with which I don't disagree, in gist), it's the *speed* of the feedback between the two components that gives the impression that the 2 components are tightly coupled and can be considered one component "me introspecting" or "me propriocepting".

This sort of reasoning founds (I think) Buzsaki's "Rhythms of the Brain" and the concept of "neurodynamic binding". Any discussion of self-perception must surely talk at least a little bit about that, right?

To sum up, I think your discussion should include 2 things: 1) manipulation and observation, and 2) feedback between sub-components of the "self". If you adopted those, then you could easily dovetail into "abduction" (intra-self inference by action) and even "falsification" (intra-self trial and error). It wouldn't take much of a mention in your text to satisfy me ... just some hand wavy stuff telling me you've thought about (1) and (2) in the context of your criticism of the way "introspection" is used in psych literature.


On 1/24/20 12:45 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> 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.
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> 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: 
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> p. 87. 
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> 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”. 

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