[FRIAM] Eternal questions

[Eric Charles]

So.... This is JUST a question of whether we are having a casual
conversation or a technical one, right? Certainly, in a casual,
English-language conversation talk of "having" emotions is well understood,
and just fine, for example "Nick is *having *a fit, just let him be." (I
can't speak for other languages, but I assume there are many others where
that would be true.)

If we were, for some reason, having a technical conversation about how the*
Science of **Psychology*, should use technical language, then we *might *also
come to all agree that isn't the best way to talk about it.

In any case, the risk with "have" is that it reifies whatever we are
talking about. To talk about someone *having *sadness, leads naturally ---
linguistically naturally --- in English --- to thinking that sadness is *a
thing* that I could find if I looked hard enough. It is why people used to
think (and many, many, still do) that if we just looked hard enough at
someone's brain, we would find *the sadness* inside there, somewhere. That
is why it is dangerous in a technical conversation regarding psychology,
because that implication is wrong-headed in a way that repeatedly leads
large swaths of the field down deep rabbit holes that they can't seem to
get out of.

On the one hand, I *have *a large ice mocha waiting for me in the fridge.
On the other hand, this past summer I *had *a two-week long trip to
California. One is a straightforward object, the other was an extended
activity I engaged in. When the robot-designers assert that their robot
"has" emotions, which do they mean? Honestly, I think they don't mean
either one, it is a marketing tool, and not part of a conversation at all.
As such, it does't really fit into the dichotomy above, and is trying to
play one off of the other. They are using the terms "emotions and
instincts" to mean something even less than whatever Tesla means when they
say they have an autodrive that for sure still isn't good enough to
autodrive.

What the robot-makers mean is simply to indicate that the robot will be a
bit more responsive to certain things that other models on the market,
and *hopefully
*that's what most consumers understand it to mean. But not all will... at
least some of the people being exposed to the marketing will take it to
mean that emotion has been successfully put somewhere inside the robot.
(The latter is a straightforward empirical claim, and if you think I'm
wrong about that, you have way too much faith in how savvy 100% of
people are.) As such, the marketing should be annoying to anti-dualist
psychologists, who see it buttressing *at least some* people's tendency to
jump down that rabbit hole mentioned above.
<echarles at american.edu>


On Tue, Aug 24, 2021 at 10:48 AM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Eric,
>
>
>
> Many points well taken.  I am particularly proud of being dope-slapped by
> Glen about being overly narrow in my understanding of “inside.”  It was, as
> he said, a case of my failure to fulfill my obligation as a thinker to
> steelman any argument before I try to knock it down.
>
>
>
> But let me turn Glen’s steel-man obligation around.  Aren’t you made
> uneasy when people claim that to be private that which is plainly present
> in their behavior?  And doesn’t the whole problem of “What it’s like to be
> a bat” and “the hard problem” strike you as an effort to make hay where the
> sun don’t shine?
>
>
>
> If you do share those concerns, and you worry that I have (as usual)
> overstated my case, then that’s one kind of discussion; if you don’t share
> them at all, then that’s a very different conversation.
>
>
>
> My position on “the realm of the mental” is laid out in many of my
> publications, perhaps most concisely in the first few pages of Intentionality
> is the Mark of the Mental"
> <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312031901_Intentionality_is_the_mark_of_the_vital>
> .
>
>
>
> It’s an old argument, going back to Descartes.  Do we see the world
> through our minds, or do we see our minds through the world?
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *David Eric Smith
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 24, 2021 7:47 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions
>
>
>
> It’s the right kind of answer, Nick, and I don’t find it compelling.
>
>
>
> Put aside for a moment the use of “have” as an auxiliary verb.  I can come
> up with wonderful reasons why that is both informative and primordial, but
> I also believe they are complete nonsense and only illustrate that there
> are no good rules for reliable argument in this domain.
>
>
>
> Also, I don’t adopt the frame of using the past tense as a device to skew
> the argument toward the conclusion you started with.  (Now _there_ is a
> category error: to start with a conclusion.  Lawyer!)
>
>
>
> I think probably throughout Indo-European derived languages, “have” is
> used to refer to inherent attributes.  I have brown eyes.  I have eyes at
> all.  It takes a surprisingly convoluted construction to assert that
> someone looking at my face will find two brown eyes there, that doesn’t use
> “have” as the verb of attribution.  So that’s old, and it is something the
> language has really committed to.  I think you have to commit unnatural
> acts to argue that that is a verb of action.
>
>
>
> Possession isn’t even a lot more action-y.  I have two turntables and a
> microphone.  If nobody is trying to take them from me, it is not clear that
> I am “doing” anything to “have” them.
>
>
>
> (btw, I am not a metaphor monist.  I practice polysemy, like the Mormons.
> So it seems completely natural that there can be multiple meanings, if
> there are any meanings at all, and that distinct ones can use the same word
> because they are somehow similar despite not being the self-same.)
>
>
>
> It seems to me as if the truest action usage of “have” is one that is not
> nearly as baked into the language.  If I have lunch, I eat lunch.  If I
> have a fit, I throw a tantrum.  Many circumlocutions available to me.  That
> also could be quite idiosyncratic to small language branches.  I think you
> would never, in normal speech, say you “had” lunch in German.  You would
> just say you ate lunch.  (Or in Italian or French either, for that matter.)
>  These kinds of usages do not seem to me to carry strong cognitive weight.
>
>
>
> So it seems to me that the semantic core of “have” is probably
> attribution.  The legal sense of ownership is probably metaphorical.  It
> would not _at all_ surprise me if the use both in the auxiliary (widespread
> in IE) and in the deictic (French il y a, there is) are deep metaphors
> describing either the ambient, or the ineluctable structure of time, with
> attributes.
>
>
>
> But, back to whether attribution is natural for emotions (or, as good as
> anything else, and better than most):
>
>
>
> If I “have” a sunny disposition, that seems not far from having brown
> eyes.  Italian: Il ha un buon aspetto.
>
>
>
> If I am having a bad day, that is a little different from having brown
> eyes, and perhaps closer to having a black eye.  Not an essence that
> defines my nature, but a condition I can be in, or “take on". To say,
> indeed, that I parse that as a pattern I carry around (as an aspect of
> constitution or condition) does not seem category-erroneous to me.
>
>
>
> Sure, there are patterns in my behavior: if I take a hot shower and the
> water lands on my black eye, I will wince.  If you say good morning and I
> am having a bad day, I will growl at you.  A Skinnerian can say that my
> wincing is all there is to my black eye.  But a physician would tell me to
> put ice on it, and would use the color of the bruise to indicate which eye
> I should put the ice on.
>
>
>
> These uses of having seem tied up, more closely than with anything else,
> with uses of being, as SteveS mentioned.  So the be/do dichotomy seems to
> determine largely where the verb usages split.
>
>
>
> Of course, living is a process, played out on organized structures.
> Brains probably look different in eeg and electrode arrays in one emotional
> condition than in another, and they probably also have different
> neurotransmitter profiles, and maybe other things.  Even You probably don’t
> want to refer to a neurotransmitter concentration as a “doing”; It is a
> variable of state, like a black eye is a state of an eye.  You might want
> to refer to the brain action pattern as “doing”, but maybe only in the
> sense that you refer to the existence of non-dead metabolism as “doing” —
> they are both processes.  To me, the common language seems to split the be
> and the do on brevity, transience, isolation, or suddenness of an
> activity.  I _am_ surly, and I _do_ growl at you.
>
>
>
> If non-black English still preserved the habitual tense, as John McWhorter
> claims black American English still does, we might be able to make a
> different kind of a distinction, between the pattern or habit as a state,
> and the event within it as an act.  That might give an even better account
> of the split in the common language.
>
>
>
> I also want to acknowledge Glen’s points about working through many frames
> in a dynamical way.  I can’t add anything, but I do agree.
>
>
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
>
> On Aug 24, 2021, at 12:30 PM, <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> <
> thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Now wait a minute!  This is the sort of question I am supposed to ask of
> you?  A question to which the answer is so obvious to the recipient that he
> is in danger of not being able to locate it.
>
>
>
> Ok, so, their meanings obviously overlap.   If you tell me you “had” a
> steak last night, I wont assume that it’s available  for us to eat tonight:
> “had” is serving as a verb of action.  The situation is further confused
> by the fact that both words are used as helper words, i.e, words that
> indicate the tense of another verb.  To say that I “have” gone and that I
> “done” gone mean the same thing in different dialects
>
>
>
> In general the grammar of the two words is different.  If you say I had
> something, I am sent looking for a property, possession or attribute.  If
> you say I did something, I am sent looking for an action I performed.   So,
> there is a vast inclination to make emotion words as a reference to
> something we carry inside, rather than a pattern in what we do.  This seems
> to me like misdirection, a category error in Ryle’s terms.
>
>
>
> Does that help?
>
>
>
> Mumble, mumble, as steve would say.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,JZI_rTsnO4PMxifIK-1Pc4gAtSO08UfA4WqKjx73T4Ek3tY5Xl71BUdt3A807uKgEplYNDHINHuRjmL2qnv7SkO_J10fWv5jebCjhCravg,,&typo=1>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *David Eric Smith
> *Sent:* Monday, August 23, 2021 4:23 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions
>
>
>
> Nick, what’s the difference between having and doing?
>
>
>
> I once heard Ray Jackendoff give quite a nice talk on word categories.  Of
> all of it, the one part I remember the most about is what he said about
> prepositions.  Even after you are getting right most of the rest of word
> usage in a new language (or handling it well with a dumb, rule-based
> translator), you are still at sea in the prepositions.  Their scopes are
> not completely arbitrary, but arbitrary in such large part that speakers
> essentially learn them nearly as a list of ad hoc applications.
>
>
>
> But when we are in a specialist domain, such as reference to the unpacking
> of the convention-term “emotion”, which we all know is a different
> specialist domain from car ownership or the consumption of lunch, we know
> that verbs are not on any a priori firmer ground than prepositions.  Or it
> seems to me, we should expect that to be so.
>
>
>
> I am struck by how widespread it is in languages to use the same particle
> or other construction for possession and attribution.  Both in concretes
> and in the abstractions that seemingly derive from them.  SteveG will like
> this one from Chinese if I haven’t messed it up or misunderstood it: youde
> you, youde meiyou.  Some have it, some don’t.
>
>
>
> Performance of an act, being configured in a state or condition, if we use
> passphrases rather than passwords, we can discriminate many categories.
>
>
>
> So when we use metaphors to expand the scope of reference and discourse
> (to eventually shed their metaphor status and become true polysemes once
> our familiarity in the new domain is such that, as novelists say, it
> “stands up and casts a shadow”), are some of the metaphors more obligatory
> than others?  Are the psychologists sure they are right about which ones?
> Are they right?
>
>
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Aug 24, 2021, at 3:06 AM, <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> <
> thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArgh!
>
>
>
> How we seal ourselves in caves of nonsense!
>
>
>
> And emotion is not something we “have”; it’s something we do.  Or, if you
> prefer a dualist sensory metaphor, it’s a particular mode of feeling the
> world.
>
>
>
> n
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,7HSjAiYZs0TskSYM3z8t3I3vm7JNBV7OyZgHYp-6EjYczSSRW9xIT6typjL4CJpU_atJnKNr9galrl_vRQGGlXHYIX3WqoquVu8Bpe1ntqUc&typo=1>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Monday, August 23, 2021 6:04 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions
>
>
>
> The creators of the Aibo robot dog say it has ‘real emotions and
> instinct’. This is obviously not true, it's just an illusion.
>
> But then, according to Daniel Dennett, human consciousness is just an
> illusion.
> https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/illusionism.pdf
> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fase.tufts.edu%2fcogstud%2fdennett%2fpapers%2fillusionism.pdf&c=E,1,wZyzI4xcowqEH1XfK9Q39EPbwHxfV11-EVaCCROdnuFD-hDpoJBA6vqVkaGgbd-yOuYwvTupjP_Soz_obIbOZjgWkLMocfZEa2BpUqNsBKBy&typo=1>
>
>
>
> On Mon, 23 Aug 2021 at 09:18, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:
>
> "In today’s AI universe, all the eternal questions (about intentionality,
> consciousness, free will, mind-body problem...) have become engineering
> problems", argues this Guardian article.
>
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/10/dogs-inner-life-what-robot-pet-taught-me-about-consciousness-artificial-intelligence
> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.theguardian.com%2fscience%2f2021%2faug%2f10%2fdogs-inner-life-what-robot-pet-taught-me-about-consciousness-artificial-intelligence&c=E,1,0zM4mCzKmbes0weZLeJCmVy6dAfDvfYxSyHKpvl-aa8-hwd84lMymcY9HHVsp4jXbWOCjmb3kQDLfcwUGjHCouKd8sNTTfFuQtv62vY-RfAsXg,,&typo=1>
>
>
>
> -J.
>
>
>
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