[FRIAM] Self-Consciousness, experience and metaphysics

Wed Jul 24 21:46:31 EDT 2024

Glen,

These are wonderful!   They help me see in what sorts of experiences your
concept of consciousness is anchored. I take it  that "smell the wood
burning"  is equivalent to my "see the gears turning."    a  theme that
seems  to run through these examples is that the animal pauses between two
possibilities.  we are tempted to understand these behaviors in terms of
the consideration of alternatives,  internal mental models and all of
that!  Ethologist have a hydraulic way of thinking about it.  Two ducks,
arriving at an impass in their contest over a female suddenly cease
squabbling and take to frantic grooming.These have been called displacement
activities, the idea being that the arousal initiated by the contest,
deprived of "expression" by;the standoff, is "vented" into grooming, but
the observer's experience is that ducks that should be charging at one
another and battering each other with their wings  are suddenly grooming
like their lives depended  on it, just as you cat instead of doing either
of the two things you might expect,  hovers between the  two, making what
the ethologists would call "intention movements" in either direction as the
pressure leaks out.

But what calls for an explanation in both cases is the violation of the
observer's expectations.

Thanks, again.

Nick

On Wed, Jul 24, 2024 at 3:36 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On 7/24/24 11:55, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> > Intuitively, I want glen to put those experiences in a broader context
> so I can see why, for him, they indicate self consciousness  -- make them
> more like anecdotes, Glen!
>
> I'll stick to the ones that best target "smell the wood burning".
>
> • Cat grooming himself
>
>    When the summer began, my cat came in covered in grass burrs. The first
> thing he always does is meow, rub up against me, and purr a bit. I pet him,
> notice a grass burr and yank it out, along with some of his fur. He then
> begins yanking, with his teeth and tongue, other burrs. This is more
> interesting than regular grooming because the burrs get caught in his gums
> and teeth, causing him to wag his tongue around, open and close his mouth,
> etc. trying to drop (or swallow) the burr in order to go for the next one.
> I help him out because I have hands, fingers, and tools like fine-toothed
> combs. You can "smell the wood burning" as he thinks about which ones he
> should let me get versus which ones to go for himself.
>
> • Cat reflecting on whether he wants to stay in or go out when I crack the
> door
>
> I get up ~5am pretty much every day. The cats are often waiting for me to
> either give them wet food or to freshen their bowl with water and dry
> kibble. The older one (Scooter) only cares about wet food. If it's Mon-Fri,
> I can choose to either freshen the kibble, sending him the signal that he
> can safely go outside without missing out on any wet food. *Or* I can go
> directly to the door and crack it open. At that point, you can smell the
> wood burning in his little brain. He looks outside, looks back at the bowl,
> looks at the younger cat, looks at me, stares out the door for sometimes
> 10s of seconds at a time. Then he'll either back further to the center of
> the kitchen, signalling his need for a clearer signal. Or he'll go outside,
> indicating he's given up on the chance of wet food.
>
> • Itch transfer (you have an itch somewhere, you scratch it, and you
> suddenly itch somewhere else)
>
> I often get itches under the very thick calluses on my feet. If I don't do
> anything about it, my foot and sometimes entire leg will twitch
> uncontrollably. If I take off my shoe/sock and try to scratch it, it either
> stays where it is, unscratched because the callus is too thick, or it moves
> to, for example, my lower back. Here, I can smell the wood burning in
> whatever feedback loops exist in my body's interoception. It's not "me".
> I'm not a part of this game. My foot and the skin of my lower back feel
> like a separate entity, a conscious one.
>
> • Losing one's grip on, say, a glass on the table, dropping it, then
> immediately catching it
>
> Similar to itch transfer, my proprioception can take on a life of its own.
> If, for example, I'm talking with my hands at the pub, and one of them
> slaps a pint glass hard enough to knock it off the table, my body seems to
> act of its own accord and my hand will whip around and try to catch the
> glass. It also often works when other people start the process. At the
> Summer Nights at the Port event, a person's hat flew off their head and
> with no time or window for *rational* processing, I snatched it out of the
> air. My body is "conscious" of the context and can interact and adapt
> without me being in control of it.
>
> • Trying to deciding whether you've had enough to eat with food remaining
> on the plate
>
> I caught COVID a couple of weeks ago. And when I finally started to
> improve, I went to the store and got some red meat (T-bone for me Filet for
> Renee'), and we cooked it all up. But because we're both still a bit "out
> of it" because of the lingering effects of the the virus, rather than
> purposefully eating it all because it's very itch-satisfying, we lingered
> while watching some movie or other. As a result, I could smell the wood
> burning in my gut-throat-mouth-nose and just arbitarily stopped being
> hungry. This almost never happens. When *I* am in control, I gulp it all
> down aggressively.
>
> > */NST>>> Glen, could you help me see why one or more of these are
> illusory of self-awareness.  <<<nst/*
>
> I don't know what this question means. "Illusory of self-awareness"? I
> don't think they're illusions. Are you asking why I call them "conscious"
> and not (merely) "self-aware"?
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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-- 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
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