[FRIAM] Eternal questions

[Eric Charles]

The question of mechanism is not an easy one. There have been several
attempts to figure out how to speak of it, by those who think mostly along
the same lines as Nick and I do.

Gilbert Ryle famously talked about "dispositions" in this context. Nick
wants to go with pure "up reduction". My buddies Andrew and Sabrina want to
talk about how organisms transition between being different types of
special-purpose machines. There are other options.

No one is denying that there are internal mechanisms which, in the right
environment, will produce the pattern of responses being discussed. The
first question is how to properly understand the relationship between
that *part
*of the mechanism and the "higher-level" phenomenon of interest. All I care
about, and all Nick should care about, in that context is that we keep our
descriptions and explanations distinct. Discussion of brain parts serves to
help explain the behavioral patterns of interest, and at no point should we
confuse the brain parts for the behavioral pattern. That would be like
confusing the breakdown of baking soda with the rising of the bread.
Obviously the baking soda is important, and it is worth describing how it
breaks down when wet, but also we can't rule out that there are other ways
for bread to rise, and if we remove all the wet baking soda, no amount of
staring at it in isolation will result in our finding leavened bread.

The second question is how to understand how we "feel" the emotion. The
answer is going to be something of the form: *We are socially taught to
recognize early correlates of the larger patterns, and to label them in
particular ways.* If you reject the dualistic idea that we have infallible
knowledge about ourselves, you are going to end up at some variation of
that. And if you are *not *going to
reject infallible-dualistic-self-insight, then we shouldn't be anywhere
near this discussion yet, because there are much more basic issues
to figure out first.

Again, in a casual conversation, we can really not care about any of this.

Also, I'm not sure what's up with the thumbs metaphor. You have thumbs, I
could definitely, have your thumbs. Yes, there's a sense in which your
thumb is a complex, dynamic system. But also, your thumb is easily removed
and handed to me. In this modern wonder-age, I could even have it attached
and made functional on my own hand.

<echarles at american.edu>


On Thu, Aug 26, 2021 at 3:21 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

>
>  uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
> > It's not a matter of being absolute or not. It's a matter of nit-picking
> the particular word used rather than trying to dig into the mechanism.
> Balling up the composition into "have", "are", or "doing" is all useless
> posturing. I don't care. Use "are" if you want. I don't care. It's silly to
> distinguish.
>
> It is not silly to me insomuch as each of those *feels* very
> different.   I see others who seem to *do* their emotions... "throwing
> tantrums" vs "having fits" vs "being spastic"...
>
> My inner experience is more that of "having fits" in the moment, but on
> careful analysis, I sometimes recognize that I might have "thrown a
> tantrum" trying to disguise it as "having a fit".   In the long run
> though, it seems that it does sum to "being spastic".
>
> > What I do care about is *how* we compose from part to whole.
> Superposition is, at least implies, a particular composition, a frequency
> domain, overlay. But I'd argue it's an impoverished one. The question is
> about the "hard problem", qualia, quality, etc. When you look at the
> experiments surrounding general anesthesia, with electrodes planted in
> various places on and in the body, you see time series that exhibit very
> long- and very short- term patterns. Consciousness can be quantified based
> on these time series (and spectral analyses of them). You can do the same
> with semi-conscious sedation. They are not superpositions so much as
> sequential modes, iterative feedback loops, waxing and waning in intensity
> ... waves upon carrier waves. So superposition is necessary, but
> insufficient.y
>
> yes, more aptly "coupling" I'd hazard, though to a casual outside
> observer, superposition is what is observed from the outside?
>
> I was in a men's group for a while which had any number of silly (to me,
> not to them) rituals which included checking in to the group with our
> emotions.   They desperately wanted everyone to conform to the
> mad/sad/glad/scared basis space.   I resisted, often checking in with
> "hopeful yet trepidatious"...   which was the only words I felt
> comfortable using to describe the feelings I had.  They tried to
> intimidate and cajole me into mad/sad/glad/scared.   The best I could
> offer was "I'm glad to be here, a little sad that I have to describe it
> in these four words, scared that you will reject me because I'm not
> following your code precisely, and mad that you might do such a
> thing".     I thought "hopeful but trepidatious" was a good shorthand
> for that.   I stuck with them for a few months until I attended a
> weekend intensive which was quite profound but mostly just made me
> realize I had better things to do than drive 90 minutes round trip once
> a week to struggle with these guys who had too tight of a formulation
> (bless the cardinal directions and their colors, check in
> mad/sad/glad/scared, etc.) for my interest (over time).
>
> > Anyone who wants to talk about emotions and things like qualia or sense
> of self, has to talk about such things. If they don't, they're merely
> talking to hear themselves speak.
>
> That's a tight prescription and judgement...
>
> Carry on!
>
>  - Steve
>
> >
> > On 8/26/21 10:16 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> >> uǝlƃ ☤>$
> >>> Ouch! Dude. No! 8^D You're committing the same sin Nick commits.
> >> I understand that I was being provocative with the specific formulation
> >> "we ARE" as if it were an absolute.
> >>> To say we "are" our emotions ignores the composition, the algebra by
> which parts compose the whole.
> >> I agree and only wanted to add to the composition "are" along with
> >> "have" and "act-out" .
> >>> The point is the very high order conscious *attention* to lower order
> frequencies. Not all is one. There are many parts to organize. How are they
> organized?
> >> To what extent are our identities/sense-of-self (inner experience and
> >> outer presentation) the superposition of our "emotions"?   yes, we are
> >> more and less than that, yet for some purposes it seems we ARE that.
> >
>
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