[FRIAM] Self-Consciousness, experience and metaphysics

[Marcus Daniels]

We keep returning to it because some people think brains are special – like nonphysical and non-computable -- and in ways they can’t or won’t articulate. 

 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2024 9:25 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>; Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self-Consciousness, experience and metaphysics

 

Not at all clear to me why we keep returning to BRAINS in a discussion of EXPERIENCE or BEHAVIOR.  Experience and behavior remain the same and and their organization needs to be described, no matter how they are manufactured.   As Professor Joan Collins Famously Said:

 

We've looked at brains from both sides now

>From in- and out- and still, some how,

It's brains illusions we recall, 

We really don't know brains, at all.

 

 In brain talk, there is a history of introjecting brain structure or process from behavioral or experiential regularities,and then coming back in the next sentence to explain those regularities as physiologically determined.  Why indulge in careful description of complex processes when a little circular reasoning is so satisfying.  

 

N

 

 

 

On Tue, Jul 23, 2024 at 12:56 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

David's last post so effectively blurs the lines between these two that I am going to give up, for the moment, on my attempt to keep them straight.

 

Intuition tells me that Dave's post falls on one side of the line, and Glen's on the other,  but I have to go shopping.   I am still hoping to hear examples of particular experiences with animals, computers, spouses, etc., that confirm your sense that they are not  only responding to the world around them, but also responding to their own responding to the world around them. 

 

Back to this later when stocked up

 

In the meantime, Please, you-all, don't dick with this thread, don't fork it and do, if you are responding to a particular comment, speak to that person, don't just fling your wisdom out into the ether.

 

I never thought you guys would turn me into a thread-Nazi.  

 

Nick



-- 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology

Clark University

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