[FRIAM] Eternal questions

Sat Aug 28 13:05:29 EDT 2021

but I also reject the claim that Nick makes that I have no knowledge of myself which is not known by observing my behavior

Careful, there, old freneny!  That is a claim I have never made.

No fool, not even I, would claim that if we stand on opposite sides of a free-staning bulletin board, that each of us does not have some information about the bulletin board that other does not have.  My argument is that it is the same KIND of information and that it is not processed in some especially intimate way.  

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2021 12:21 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions

>If you reject the dualistic idea that we have infallible knowledge about ourselves, 

I reject that idea but I also reject the claim that Nick makes that I have no knowledge of myself which is not known by observing my behavior.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 9:17 AM Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com <mailto:eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> > wrote:

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. 

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