[FRIAM] Eternal questions

Tue Aug 24 11:52:56 EDT 2021

'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.)

Nick está teniendo una rabieta...  In Spanish.  Perfectly parallel to the
English version.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 9:37 AM Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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