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necessity
skylander
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Posted 04/23/08 - 11:15 AM:
Subject: How do I know what I think until I see what I say? 		quote post
#151
EM Forster. We might suppose that in "normal cases" we have some advanced understanding of "what we mean" just because we are the "meaners", the fons et origo of the meaning of the words we utter, but this position requires supporting arguments, not just a reliance on tradition. The functionally salient gray zone between the preconscious fixation of intention (to communicate) from its execution is an area that is subject to errors, mispronunciations, freudian slips and all matter of error that could be caught before expression is executed (preverbal message, Levelt), changing the expression, or not, which shows that what is expressed is not necessarilly even understood by the speaker. There is no standard in place that can provide the backdrop against which expression can be measured with regard to the "meaners" understanding.

Cognitive psychologists are correct to say you don't have a good model of consciousness until the problem of what functions consciousness performs and how it performs them mechanically, sans benefit of Mind, is solved. Neuroscientists are also correct to say a good model of consciousness will not exist until the problem of where consciousness fits in the brain. Neither approach disqualifies the other, but what is needed is another approach altogether that melds together as many strengths of each field as possible.

In response to what was written:
Suppose that the scientific psychologists have complete access to my brain while I am reading this thread. At a certain point, they determine or predict or observe that I say to myself "Now I understand what Dunamis is saying." If, as seems likely, the scientists do not themselves understand what he is saying, then it seems that they cannot claim to have understood or explained my behaviour.

This seems to me to be conflating two different issues: understanding your behavior, and understanding what you claim to understand. After all, it may very well be that you do not understand what he is saying, and were lying. Or that you think you understand it, but actually do not.

Now, if you do understand it, then in principle they could learn from your brain what he is saying. An obvious way to do this would be to have you explain it to them. After all, when you do so, your brain is what is causing your mouth to utter those statements, so even by the classical method of discourse, they are getting the information from your brain when you explain it to them, whether they realize it or not.
astaire1
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Posted 04/23/08 - 11:44 AM:
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#152
Greetings DeathMonkey,

DeathMonkey wrote:
What information is lost here (again, in principle)? As far as I can see, only information that can only be interpreted metaphorically would be lost. And that is trivial, because just by virtue of the fact that they are different descriptions, the metaphors they use will of course be different.


Hofstadter offers and example of a dedicated calculator built out of dominoes (rather than wires and transistors) and able to calcuate wheter an input number is prime. To input the number you said multiple rows of dominoes falling. If the number is prime, a final row of green dominoes will eventually fall over, if the number isn't prime a final row of red dominoes will fall.

Now the object is to explain why the green dominoes fell over. He suggests that the proper explanation is at the design level. The green dominoes fell because the input number was prime. An unsatisfying explanation would be that the green dominoes fell because the dominoes leading up to that row fell over and so on all the way back to the input rows.

In this case, the causes can certainly be reduced to individual dominoes but at the same time information is lost if you are only presented with a diagram of the dominoes. You would have to reverse engineer the diagram and regenerate the design level information that has been lost. There is no guaranteed that you would be able to find the solution (just as there is no guarantee that the solution to string theory will ever be found, even if string theory is indeed true). It seems inappropriate to appeal to infinite time to attempt to justify the claim that no information is lost.

DeathMonkey wrote:
Dunamis wrote:
Two sentences in two different languages cannot even be translated into one another without losing information,


I am not talking about translating one sentence to another. I am talking about taking all of the non-metaphorical meaning of the claim, and presenting it in the context of a different type of description. For example, I can translate any claim made in the context of the Copenhagen interpretation of QM into a corresponding claim in the Many Worlds interpretation. They are different descriptions, and they use different metaphors, but the parts that can be taken literally will be the same.


As far as I know, there isn’t anything left of any claim whatsoever once you have removed “metaphor”. As I see it, that is why triangulation is required to achieve meaning. There are no foundational truths that you can build claims up from in a hierarchical fashion. As I’ve mentioned even mathematics depends on language to bring meaning to its symbols and formulas. From what I can tell, science is founded on language and is thus deprived of absolute truth or non-metaphorical meaning.

I agree that you can make the translations you describe between mathematically equivalent systems without losing any of the mathematics (that is we are referring to perfectly reversible translations).

Perhaps we should consider the paramecium example Dunamis offered (actually I am more familiar with E. coli bacteria).

- We start with the metaphor: the bacterium is “seeking” a source of “food” within the intestinal tract.
- In an attempt to eradicate the poetic license of that description we translate to a less metaphorical description: the bacterium is detecting sugar molecules and “attempting” to move toward the “middle” of sugary zones.
- Eradicating more metaphors: the bacterium moves forward when in the presence of “sugar molecules” and moves randomly otherwise thus increasing the time in a “sugary zone” on average.
- Still further: the bacterium detects molecules that are shaped according to particular geometric pattern (whether or not that shape is actually a “sugar” molecule).
- Hmmm: but it doesn’t really detect “shape”, it detects *anything* that is able to trigger its “receptor”.

I don’t see any possible end to the eradication of metaphor since all descriptions require concepts/words which themselves require metaphor to achieve their meaning.


-Astaire
P.S. Yes I am VERY interested in pursuing this topic and am very grateful that Dunamis and Deathmonkey have put in so much time clarifying their positions. I've been learning and even making important adjustmenst to my worldview. If anyone wants to move somewhere else I'd be glad to follow. I tend to think picking up the dormant thread "being open to the world" would be a good idea at this point.

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unenlightened
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Posted 04/23/08 - 12:11 PM:
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#153
Death Monkey,

I am making a bold claim, that at a particular moment a few days ago, I read a post and suddenly understood something of what Dunamis has been saying. It may be that I am mistaken (or lying) of course, but let us suppose that I am not. It is certainly the case that people do sometimes come suddenly to a new understanding of something. Now if we imagine that you and a bunch of your fellow researchers have all the access to my brain that you want and all the computer power, such that you can either model me reading the particular post that provoked this event, or that you can read it directly from my brain. The pattern of brain activity would indicate 'an understanding event' taking place, and you would be able to read a thought of "Ah, I see." Possibly you would even identify the cartoon lightbulb lighting up in my visual cortex as I notice that I am understanding and reinterpreting some of my memories of previous posts.

However, although you have read the same posts yourself, as well as seeing the brain traces of my reading them, if you have not had the same depth of understanding, then you will not have 'captured' in your model, the content and meaning of that "Ah, I see." Indeed even if you do have the same understanding, you have it independent of the brain model that you espouse. If I have to explain it to you, again that shows that your modelling is inadequete.

The fact is that I do know what it means to understand Dunamis, but I see little prospect of conveying this to you, although this is what my posts have been attempting. There is a clear (to me) difference between my understanding and not quite understanding, which you could certainly detect in my brain, but the nature of that understanding is not accessible to you by any means whatsoever other than by yourself understanding him. I wish I could make it clear by brain waves but I cannot. I have an image of these scientists peering into my brain, and saying "Look, he's understanding something, it must be that post of Dunamis's, he's reading, look, he's really pleased about it... I wonder what he thinks he's understanding, it makes no sense to me."

Death Monkey wrote:
How do you decide what it means? If you can't decide what it means, then how is it meaningful to say that he does or does not understand him?


This is my whole point. The only way to decide what it means for unenlightened to understand Dunamis, is to understand Dunamis, even an atomically precise model of unenlightened's brain, cannot give you that; even the brain itself cannot.
Death Monkey wrote:
unenlightened wrote:
I think the intentional stance is already hidden in the scientific method; the scientist explains, understands, models, just as unenlightened understands Dunamis, and this is something that is scientifically inexplicable,because the understanding is the science.


I don't follow you.


I don't know how else to say it. Science is an intentional activity; the intention is to understand and explain all manner of things. It may be more than that - institutions, methods, history, but it is at least a behaviour with that intention. Neuroscience, or behaviourism therefore needs to explain the behaviour we call scientific, amongst other things - it needs to explain itself. But you have already pointed out that it cannot do this until it has been decided what this behaviour means.

So what does science mean? (not the word, now, the activity.)

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astaire1
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Posted 04/23/08 - 12:15 PM:
quote post
#154
DeathMonkey wrote:

It is a hopelessly naive notion that the correspondence between brain activity and complex behaviors such as "loving" would take the form of loving corresponding to some specific set of brain states. For one thing, I don't see how brain activity in general could be reasonably characterized in terms of "brain states".

I have been considering Dunamis' use of "brain states" to be equivalent to my use of brain structure (hopefully he'll tell us). Under physicalism (as I see it) the "state" of the brain-body at any given time depends on the previous brain-body state. The brain structure constitues an algorithm at any given time. As the brain structure evolves the algorithm evolves. As such the current algorithm can be considered equivalent to the current state.

DeathMonkey wrote:

The brain is not some simple with a finite number of discrete "states" it can be in. It is an incredibly complex dynamical system that is constantly evolving and adapting.

Perhaps you mean that the number of discrete "states" would be vast. I see no reason why a brain with a finite number of neurons would have an infinite number of possible states.

-Astaire

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astaire1
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Posted 04/23/08 - 12:49 PM:
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#155
Greetings Unenlightened,

enlightened wrote:

if you have not had the same depth of understanding, then you will not have 'captured' in your model, the content and meaning of that "Ah, I see."

Upon first reading I thought you might have a valid point:
The brain scanning scientists have not lived through your history so how could they possibly discover what you have suddenly understood? In particular some of the memories of your readings have presumaby faded. After all the brain doesn't have infinite storage capacity.

However, your brain does indeed contain the faded memories that relate to your current eureka moment. Your eureka moment doesn't have any additional meaning such as the words and phrases of posts that you have entirely forgotten. Therefore the claim that is on the table is that your brain must contain all the relevant information necessary to decode the meaning of eureka moment. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to describe to us that you believe you understand what your internal "aha" meant.

-Astaire

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Posted 04/23/08 - 12:51 PM:
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#156
DeathMonkey,
Can you tell me what your stance is with regard to my handwriting recognition example?
I had to withdraw my claim that Dunamis’ poetry sentences were ever 100% in the brain because of the feedback affecting the drafting of those sentences. Dennett has pointed out the tendency for people (and scientists) to believe that words and images must exist somewhere specific in the brain in order for the person to be able to internally view the image or read or speak the word. In abolishing the mythical “Cartesian theater” one must integrate the notion that the sentence doesn’t necessarily exist until it has reached the lips or the finger tips or even the page.


DeathMonkey wrote:

Such a simulation would clearly not require anything like a "god's eye view", but it would require a detailed cellular-level description of the brain, and several orders of magnitude more computational power than anything we are close to now

I generally don’t suppose that the quantum state of each atom in the brain will be particularly relevant to the algorithms that affect brain processes. However, they certainly could contribute to causing 2 perfect clones to exhibit divergent behavior which would accumulate over time. Therefore to achieve the 100% non-information loss of your claim, your simulation would need to be many orders of magnitude more complex than you have implied here.

-Astaire

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Posted 04/23/08 - 02:35 PM:
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#157
astaire1 wrote:
Greetings Unenlightened,


Upon first reading I thought you might have a valid point:
The brain scanning scientists have not lived through your history so how could they possibly discover what you have suddenly understood? In particular some of the memories of your readings have presumaby faded. After all the brain doesn't have infinite storage capacity.

However, your brain does indeed contain the faded memories that relate to your current eureka moment. Your eureka moment doesn't have any additional meaning such as the words and phrases of posts that you have entirely forgotten. Therefore the claim that is on the table is that your brain must contain all the relevant information necessary to decode the meaning of eureka moment. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to describe to us that you believe you understand what your internal "aha" meant.

-Astaire


I think you have not quite understood me. I am saying that I have understood something. I have understood 'X'. If you do not understand 'X' then you will not understand what it means for me to say that I understand 'X'. You will understand that I have understood something, but what? In order to understand fully what I mean by 'X', in this example, you would have to understand Dunamis in the way that I understand Dunamis. To think that you could gain this understanding by looking at my brain, when you cannot gain it by looking at the sources that my brain got it from is highly implausible. It's nothing to do with my eureka moment as such, that is simply the event that can be 'scientifically observed'. It is the understanding which cannot be observed. (unless you have it - do you understand?)

Because I understand Dunamis, you cannot understand me without understanding Dunamis; therefore you need more than what is in my brain, you need something in your brain, namely that same understanding. And you need to get it from him and not from my brain, because you cannot understand my brain without understanding Dunamis.

That may appear to be circular, but unfortunately that is the circle that scientific psychology is always in, which is why the fashion changes so fast. Any psychological theory is a way of looking at ways of looking - the theory alters the facts.

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skylander
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Posted 04/23/08 - 02:42 PM:
Subject: brain contains memory? 		quote post
#158
The brain processes memory, but there is no evidence that memories are stored in the brain itself. Memory - information - is a function of mind. The only thing we can say for certain is that as memories are being recalled, the recall is accompanied by neural activity in the brain.
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Posted 04/23/08 - 10:39 PM:
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#159
Hi skylander,

skylander wrote:

The brain processes memory, but there is no evidence that memories are stored in the brain itself.


It sounds like you haven't read any of the many books available that describe the current scientific evidence for how memory is stored in the brain.

-Astaire

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Posted 04/23/08 - 10:57 PM:
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#160
Enlighntened: In order to understand fully what I mean by 'X', in this example, you would have to understand Dunamis in the way that I understand Dunamis.

Astaire: Sure. That's what I would presumably be able to do if I could decode all of your memories and their relation to one another and especially their relation to your "aha" memory.


Enlighntened: To think that you could gain this understanding by looking at my brain, when you cannot gain it by looking at the sources that my brain got it from is highly implausible.

Astaire: I wouldn't forcefully disagree with you on that. I tend to assume that the information must be there since your beliefs about "aha require it and it must be decodable since you are able to decode it.


Enlighntened: It's nothing to do with my eureka moment as such, that is simply the event that can be 'scientifically observed'. It is the understanding which cannot be observed. (unless you have it - do you understand?)

Astaire: If the Eureka could be observed then the understanding could presumably be obsereved. In fact, there is a danger of incoherency if you believe that the eureka moment could be isolated from the understanding (the memories and other brain patterns that relate to the eureka moment).

Enlighntened: Because I understand Dunamis, you cannot understand me without understanding Dunamis;

Astaire: I agree since I think you mean that I must understand Dunamis as you have.

Enlighntened: therefore you need more than what is in my brain, you need something in your brain, namely that same understanding.

Astaire: I could presumably gain that same understanding if it were possible to decode your brain structure and translate it into a way for me to absorb it. In practice, there would always be differences but the question is whether those differences could be made arbitrarily small. Also, even if we could get 70% of the way there, people would tend to accept that we could always improve on the percentage.

Enlighntened: And you need to get it from him and not from my brain,
Astaire : No. I can get it from his posts or from someone who records his posts or from your brain. In fact, the only place I can get your view of what Dunamis' posts have meant is via your brain.

Enlighntened: because you cannot understand my brain without understanding Dunamis.
Astaire: right we've agreed on that except that your "because" is inappropriate since it does not serve as an argument for your point. You make a naked claim with no support.

Enlighntened: That may appear to be circular, but unfortunately that is the circle that scientific psychology is always in,

Astaire: I disagree. Perhaps you haven't understood Dunmais' description of Davidson as well as you think you have.

Enlighntened: which is why the fashion changes so fast. Any psychological theory is a way of looking at ways of looking - the theory alters the facts.

Astaire: That would be true of any theory not specifically psychological theories.

cheers
-Astaire

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Posted 04/24/08 - 12:31 AM:
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#161
Dunamis wrote:
Astaire wrote:

In my opinion both claims are too extreme. Isn't it possible that laws may one day be discovered to describe mental predicates thus bridging the gap between the 2 types of causality ?


The reason why this is not the case is that the sociological categories that determine the content of most mental predicate attributions are culturally contigent (what qualifies for "love" or "desires" at one time, might qualify for as something else). The application of those cultural categories in real information bearing facts about the mind and motivation cannot be made brute, objective facts.

To put it another way, one part of Davidson's triangle, the intersubjective, cannot be collapsed into the other part, the Objective.

Right a triangle with only 2 sides would not be a triangle.
I grant that a 3 sided triangle is required in order to acquire meaning. (Example Helen Keller before her teacher was not able to acquire meaning being too isolated from the community).
However, once meaning has been acquired (via 2 decades of normal human culture) a person can then engage in meaninful activities (example writing books) while being entirely isoalted from society. A triangle is not required to produce the book, the book can be read by its author without any contact with society.

Also very quickly some examples of possible "laws":
A duckling follows the first thing it sees moving after emerging from its shell.
An erection is solicited in an adult human male when viewing erotic photos.

Perhaps one day it would be possible to place a 20 year old male human in the vicinity of a beatiful female and administor a drug that would cause the male to fall in love.

I'm sure with time (and help) I can come up with more pertinent examples.

-Astaire

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Posted 04/24/08 - 12:32 AM:
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#162
Astaire,

It doesn't matter to the argument what I understand, Davidson, Dunamis, JS Bach, or quantum mechanics. Supposing that I understand, or appreciate or have a relationship to some person or thing that is complex and particular that 'the scientist' does not have, (even though he has access to the music of JS Bach,or whatever) he cannot understand the thoughts that I have, even when they are laid out neuron by neuron. However complete his understanding of neurology, it will not help his understanding of music, and you cannot understand the mind of a musician if you do not understand music. Your presumably is not presumable, and it will not help you to suggest that actually I do not understand what I think I understand, as it does not affect the argument. Are you seriously suggesting that it is possible to comprehend music, literature, dance, science, philosophy, etc,etc, by examining brains?

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Posted 04/24/08 - 07:21 AM:
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#163
Death Monkey wrote:

I'm not sure what you think I meant by "scientific", because that is exactly what I did mean.


I guess you have never heard of the social sciences? Are you know of the opinion that Sociology is not "scientific" because it is not a "natural science"?

This is a gross generalization that I consider to be extremely innaccurate. In any event, it seems to me to be quite arrogent to suggest that philosophers with little or no scientific training or familiarity with the fields in question, know more about the philosophical implications and backgrounds of those fields, then the people who have dedicated their lives to studying those fields.


Philosophers reflect upon scientific work/fields in a way that scientists don't, that is they ask philosophical questions (hence, they are philosophers), and not scientific questions. One can be both, a philosopher and a scientist. But since you have admitted to be much more of the latter than the former, and this is a philosophy forum, your recourse to "The Community" of science is really a recourse into philosophical ignorance, by profession.


That is exactly what I mean by "supernaturalistic": That they are not law-governed. That what is being described does not function according to any natural laws. I see absolutely nothing about mental concepts that requires that what they refer to does not function according to natural laws.


Then your term "supernaturalistic" is a misleaing term of rhetoric.

And yes, there is something about mental predicate concepts that makes them anomalous.

I very much disagree. The people working in the field do not seem to regard them as such. So far I have seen you repeatedly insist that psychology is a social science, rather than a natural science, but the only justification you seem to be able to give for this is in reference to a particular view of the nature of mental descriptions that I very much doubt is shared by the psychological community.


Ah, yes. The Community. Like I said, The Community would like to be immune to conceptual critique of their ideas.

If they are claims that only have truth values in a metaphorical sense (which I do not believe to be the case, although you may), then they do not contain any information about their referents that can be taken literally.


He loves her, is neither a "metaphor" nor an objective fact.

I do understand what that means. And if that is all you mean by "conceptually dualistic", then I don't see why that poses a problem for being able to redescribe it under neuroscience. Sure it conceptually different. That is the whole point. If it wasn't, there would be no redescription at all.


Because one set of concepts are anomalous, that is, though bearing a causal relationship to behavior, there is no determinative law that governs their factuality.


Your bias against the field of psychology is becoming quite clear.


I have no bias against psychology at all, unless it is to claim that it is a natural science through and through. In fact I love psychology.

So again, I don't see the problem. Neuroscience will give an answer to the question that could be interpreted many ways, but to take those different interpretations literally would be a mistake anyway.


We take "literally" all kinds of mental predicate descriptions, and in doing so work with others in a very clear and understandable way. There is nothing metaphorical about it. And the truths of those descrpitions are not found in neuro-science, nor in the brain.

You're the one who keeps talking about behaviorism, not me. I am talking about starting with descriptions in terms of behavioral psychology, which already are mental predicate descriptions, so there is no first translation, because I am not claiming that other types of mental predicate descriptions can be reduced to neuroscience without a loss of information.


Behaviorism already uses mental predicate descriptions, the cultural indeterminacy is already there to begin with.

But you have already claimed all kinds of things can be "reduced" to a physical description, things that would never enter into a behaviorist psychology approach: the words someone meant to say, the reasons someone holds for an opinion on and on.


Similarly, when I translate from Chemistry to molecular physics, the metaphors change, but the empirical claims remain the same.

Stick with mental predicate concepts and natural science concepts.

I disagree. If the truth value of the mental predicate claim cannot be determined empirically, then its truth value cannot be taken literally anyway. To do so would be a category mistake.


Nonsense. If we, a set of scientists, decide that a set of behaviors is "loving" (and our defintion is entirely culturally based, for scentists in the future or in a different country might decide that another set of behaviors is "loving"), ascribing "love" to subjects is not "metaphorical". In fact all the behavior can be scientifically recorded and theorized about, empirically tested, without the criteria itself (which behaviors are or are not love) having a basis in objective fact (that is, there is no objective standard for what "loving" is even if we want to make one up).

Brain activity is behavior.


But it is not the behavior being DESCRIBED by mental predicate attribution. This is a mistake you constantly make.

This is no different than predicting the presence of a massive object based on our observations of the motion of a planet, and then visually seeing that the planet has a moon that accounts for that motion, and saying that the massive object whose existence we predicted is actually the moon we have visually observed.


Different class of concepts being used, and a different set of criteria.



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Posted 04/24/08 - 07:32 AM:
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#164
Death Monkey wrote:
Again, this issue comes into play when deciding what the meaning of the statement is. Once that is done, the social issue is no longer at play.


It is no longer at play for the working of the theory, but it is at play if you want to reduce a truth statement in the theory to a description of the brain, that is, two theories that have different "no longer at play" uses of mental predicates, will in principle, have contradictory statements in regards to the same brain states.

Once the meaning of the claim is determined, the societal factor is no longer an issue.


It is an "issue" if you want to reduced the facts of that theory to a brain state description. That is, if you want "She is loving him" to be proven by the fact that "brain is in state x" (rather than by the assumption of the criteria of the theory), it cannot be done. In fact, the factuality of the statement resides neither in the theory or the brain, but in the attribution of "loving" in cultural contexts. The "information" in the statement is radically altered (it critieria obscured) if the description is redescribed as "brain state x".

It is a hopelessly naive notion that the correspondence between brain activity and complex behaviors such as "loving" would take the form of loving corresponding to some specific set of brain states.


Then I have no idea what you would mean when you say that a fact in a mental predicate descrption of behavior (here you have refused all such description, except those in behaviorist theory, a stance quite different than what you have claimed in the past), can be redescribed %100 by a description physical state of the brain.

What more would this mean than "she is loving" (true sentence in a mental predicate description) = brain state x (a physical description of the brain)?

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Posted 04/24/08 - 07:43 AM:
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#165
astaire1 wrote:
DeathMonkey,
Can you tell me what your stance is with regard to my handwriting recognition example?
I had to withdraw my claim that Dunamis’ poetry sentences were ever 100% in the brain because of the feedback affecting the drafting of those sentences. Dennett has pointed out the tendency for people (and scientists) to believe that words and images must exist somewhere specific in the brain in order for the person to be able to internally view the image or read or speak the word. In abolishing the mythical “Cartesian theater” one must integrate the notion that the sentence doesn’t necessarily exist until it has reached the lips or the finger tips or even the page.


Very important.

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Posted 04/24/08 - 07:52 AM:
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#166
astaire1 wrote:

Right a triangle with only 2 sides would not be a triangle.
I grant that a 3 sided triangle is required in order to acquire meaning. (Example Helen Keller before her teacher was not able to acquire meaning being too isolated from the community).
However, once meaning has been acquired (via 2 decades of normal human culture) a person can then engage in meaninful activities (example writing books) while being entirely isoalted from society. A triangle is not required to produce the book, the book can be read by its author without any contact with society.


The point about Davidson's triangle is that it forms an epistemic limit, that is, intersubjective facts (that is, real world mental predicate attributions which help us explain the causes of intentional behavior, in a non-metaphorical way) cannot be reduced to objective facts. Part of this is because there are a different class of concepts being employed, and part of this is because intersubjectity itself works to ground in a particular way those intersubjective facts, as facts.

Perhaps one day it would be possible to place a 20 year old male human in the vicinity of a beatiful female and administor a drug that would cause the male to fall in love.


Sure. But then the meaningfulness of the intentional ascription would fade away, as in the description, "That wasn't me talking, it was the drink." When one moves from one description to the next, there is a change in information, not the preservation of information under a redescription.

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Posted 04/24/08 - 10:17 AM:
Subject: Astaire 		quote post
#167
Of course I have. Don't be such an elitist. Just because one reads the latest, doesn't mean one must subscribe to all of it. What I wrote about memory - the studies show no evidence of memory being stored in the brain tissue itself -- stands. The conclusion that it is stored there is made by the researchers/thinkers - it is a typical sort of assumption assigning cause and effect status to events that merely accompany one another.

What is the difference between a forum and a private conversation? A forum is a conversation with all who want to post. In a private conversation no one else is allowed in. There input is ignored until they just go away. That is close minded and rude.
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Posted 04/24/08 - 12:51 PM:
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#168
astaire,

In this case, the causes can certainly be reduced to individual dominoes but at the same time information is lost if you are only presented with a diagram of the dominoes. You would have to reverse engineer the diagram and regenerate the design level information that has been lost. There is no guaranteed that you would be able to find the solution (just as there is no guarantee that the solution to string theory will ever be found, even if string theory is indeed true). It seems inappropriate to appeal to infinite time to attempt to justify the claim that no information is lost.

I'm not sure what you mean by appealing to infinite time. What you seem to be saying is that, practically speaking, information is lost because the system is so complex that the problem of actually accessing the information is rendered intractable. After all, reverse-engineering the domino calculator to derive that it will result in a row of red dominos falling last if the input number is not prime, and a green row if it is, would be a breeze compared to reverse-engineering the brain. But again, this has no relevance to the issue of reducibility. In the case of your domino calculator, I think it is quite reasonable to say that the dominos are what are performing the calculation, or that the calculator is actually a system of dominoes. Likewise I see absolutely no problem with saying that your brain is what thinks, or that your mind is actually brain activity.

As far as I know, there isn’t anything left of any claim whatsoever once you have removed “metaphor”. As I see it, that is why triangulation is required to achieve meaning.

On the contrary, what are left are the empirically testable claims. Going back to the example of QM, when you remove all of the metaphor from any of the various interpretations, what you are left with is simply the standard model, which is entirely empirical, that is to say, it makes no claims other than the probabilities with which we expect to make various observations.

There are no foundational truths that you can build claims up from in a hierarchical fashion. As I’ve mentioned even mathematics depends on language to bring meaning to its symbols and formulas. From what I can tell, science is founded on language and is thus deprived of absolute truth or non-metaphorical meaning.

I think you are mixing up several things here. For one thing, I am not talking about any absolute truth here at all. I am talking about the difference between claims that can be taken metaphorically, and those that can be taken literally.

Perhaps we should consider the paramecium example Dunamis offered (actually I am more familiar with E. coli bacteria).

- We start with the metaphor: the bacterium is “seeking” a source of “food” within the intestinal tract.
- In an attempt to eradicate the poetic license of that description we translate to a less metaphorical description: the bacterium is detecting sugar molecules and “attempting” to move toward the “middle” of sugary zones.
- Eradicating more metaphors: the bacterium moves forward when in the presence of “sugar molecules” and moves randomly otherwise thus increasing the time in a “sugary zone” on average.
- Still further: the bacterium detects molecules that are shaped according to particular geometric pattern (whether or not that shape is actually a “sugar” molecule).
- Hmmm: but it doesn’t really detect “shape”, it detects *anything* that is able to trigger its “receptor”.

I don’t see any possible end to the eradication of metaphor since all descriptions require concepts/words which themselves require metaphor to achieve their meaning.

It ends when you finally break it down to statements that are strictly about what will be observed under various conditions. For example, when you fully break it down to the quantum level. Not that you would ever actually do that, but again that is not the point.

In any event, I am not advocating removing the metaphors and trying to describe things in a purely empirical language (as logical positivism advocates). Quite the contrary. The neuroscience models are themselves very high-level descriptions, loaded with metaphors. They are just different metaphors than are used in the psychology models. In the same way that the metaphors used in describing the calculator in terms of falling dominoes are different than those used when describing it in terms of computation.

Perhaps you mean that the number of discrete "states" would be vast. I see no reason why a brain with a finite number of neurons would have an infinite number of possible states.

Those neurons are not finite state machines. But the issue of finite vs infinite is not the problem. The problem is that it is an evolving dynamical system. It quite literally is never in the same state twice.

Can you tell me what your stance is with regard to my handwriting recognition example?
I had to withdraw my claim that Dunamis’ poetry sentences were ever 100% in the brain because of the feedback affecting the drafting of those sentences. Dennett has pointed out the tendency for people (and scientists) to believe that words and images must exist somewhere specific in the brain in order for the person to be able to internally view the image or read or speak the word. In abolishing the mythical “Cartesian theater” one must integrate the notion that the sentence doesn’t necessarily exist until it has reached the lips or the finger tips or even the page.

Sure, but I don't see why that is a problem. After all, we can only expect to find in the brain something that actually exists.

I am certainly not advocating any Cartesian Theatre notion of sentences existing in the brain. What I am advocating is that we can explain the behavior involved in terms of brain activity.

I generally don’t suppose that the quantum state of each atom in the brain will be particularly relevant to the algorithms that affect brain processes. However, they certainly could contribute to causing 2 perfect clones to exhibit divergent behavior which would accumulate over time. Therefore to achieve the 100% non-information loss of your claim, your simulation would need to be many orders of magnitude more complex than you have implied here.

The same goes for any physical system. Brain activity would not be predictable over any significant period of time because it is a noisy chaotic system. Thus neuroscience predictions of behavior will not be either. But then again, neither are psychology predictions of behavior either. So I submit that the information you are suggesting would be lost by the neuroscience description was not there in the psychology description in the first place. Not unless you somehow think that psychology descriptions can somehow get around quantum indeterminacy and chaotic sensitivity to initial conditions, and provide us with perfect long-term predictions of behavior.


unenlightened,

I am making a bold claim, that at a particular moment a few days ago, I read a post and suddenly understood something of what Dunamis has been saying. It may be that I am mistaken (or lying) of course, but let us suppose that I am not. It is certainly the case that people do sometimes come suddenly to a new understanding of something. Now if we imagine that you and a bunch of your fellow researchers have all the access to my brain that you want and all the computer power, such that you can either model me reading the particular post that provoked this event, or that you can read it directly from my brain. The pattern of brain activity would indicate 'an understanding event' taking place, and you would be able to read a thought of "Ah, I see." Possibly you would even identify the cartoon lightbulb lighting up in my visual cortex as I notice that I am understanding and reinterpreting some of my memories of previous posts.

However, although you have read the same posts yourself, as well as seeing the brain traces of my reading them, if you have not had the same depth of understanding, then you will not have 'captured' in your model, the content and meaning of that "Ah, I see." Indeed even if you do have the same understanding, you have it independent of the brain model that you espouse. If I have to explain it to you, again that shows that your modelling is inadequete.[/quote]
Even if, instead of you actually explaining it to me, I have the simulation of your brain explain it to me?

How is that any different from learning something about a complex non-linear differential equation by simulating it numerically?

The fact is that I do know what it means to understand Dunamis, but I see little prospect of conveying this to you, although this is what my posts have been attempting. There is a clear (to me) difference between my understanding and not quite understanding, which you could certainly detect in my brain, but the nature of that understanding is not accessible to you by any means whatsoever other than by yourself understanding him. I wish I could make it clear by brain waves but I cannot. I have an image of these scientists peering into my brain, and saying "Look, he's understanding something, it must be that post of Dunamis's, he's reading, look, he's really pleased about it... I wonder what he thinks he's understanding, it makes no sense to me."

I think the reason it seems so counter-intuitive that they could actually gain the understanding you have by studying your brain, comes from the fact that no human being could possibly know enough about your brain to accomplish this. It is just way to complicated. But again, we need not talk about brains and understanding philosophy to see this kind of problem.

Just consider the following iterative equation:
X_n+1 = r * X_n * (1 - X_n)

This is called the logistic map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map

For r = 4, this map is chaotic.

Now, there are facts about this map that cannot be derived analytically. They can only be determined via numerical simulation of the map. And since the ability of even the most gifted mathematical savant is quite limited, no human being can possibly learn these facts without using a computer to perform the simulation.

Now, in one sense you could say that this means that even when a person learns something about the map from doing computer simulations, he does not really understand that property of the map. He is, in effect, just taking the computer's word for something that he cannot possibly figure out on his own.

Obviously the same is true for the brain. And obviously this means that your scientists are not going to simply be able to look at a bunch of brain scans (no matter how detailed), and understand what you understand by doing so. They will need computers to process that information (which you acknowledge with your point about having all the computer power they need). And that means that they will not have access to that information themselves, but instead only to the filtered and highly processes information that their computers provide them with.

One could imagine, for example, that the computers they have are so incredibly smart that they are sentient beings themselves, and that they understand what you understand. But even then, the only way for them to convey that understanding to the scientists would be the same way you do: By explaining it to them.

I don't know how else to say it. Science is an intentional activity; the intention is to understand and explain all manner of things. It may be more than that - institutions, methods, history, but it is at least a behaviour with that intention. Neuroscience, or behaviourism therefore needs to explain the behaviour we call scientific, amongst other things - it needs to explain itself. But you have already pointed out that it cannot do this until it has been decided what this behaviour means.

So what does science mean? (not the word, now, the activity.)

You seem to be conflating lots of different concepts here. When I said that we cannot translate a psychology question to neuroscience until we know what the question means, I was talking about the meaning of words, not the intention of a behavior. We often use the terms "intention" and "meaning" similarly, hense asking what a behavior means when you are really asking what the intention of the behavior is. But these are two completely different usages of the word "meaning".


DM


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Posted 04/24/08 - 01:15 PM:
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#169
Dunamis,

I guess you have never heard of the social sciences? Are you know of the opinion that Sociology is not "scientific" because it is not a "natural science"?

I suppose I should then assume that you have never heard of "context"? It was quite clear that I was talking about natural sciences, because I specifically stated that I was.

Ah, yes. The Community. Like I said, The Community would like to be immune to conceptual critique of their ideas.

Let me know when you want to get back to actually discussing the issues, rather than just venting your disgust with a group of people who you do not think live up to your philosophical standards.

If they are claims that only have truth values in a metaphorical sense (which I do not believe to be the case, although you may), then they do not contain any information about their referents that can be taken literally.

He loves her, is neither a "metaphor" nor an objective fact.

Then what is it? If it is not an objective fact, then it is not a claim about the way things actually are, so it is not the sort of claim that I am saying a redescription in terms of neuroscience would be able to provide a truth value for. But this is not a failing of neuroscience or reductionism, because the claim simply does not have a truth value.

To claim that it does is precisely to refute your prior statement that it is not an objective fact.

I disagree. If the truth value of the mental predicate claim cannot be determined empirically, then its truth value cannot be taken literally anyway. To do so would be a category mistake.

Nonsense. If we, a set of scientists, decide that a set of behaviors is "loving" (and our defintion is entirely culturally based, for scentists in the future or in a different country might decide that another set of behaviors is "loving"), ascribing "love" to subjects is not "metaphorical". In fact all the behavior can be scientifically recorded and theorized about, empirically tested, without the criteria itself (which behaviors are or are not love) having a basis in objective fact (that is, there is no objective standard for what "loving" is even if we want to make one up).

And this is, by construction, an example of the truth value of the mental predicate claim being empirically determinable. In fact, you just specified in your post that it is. Again, the issue of how we first decide what we mean by the word "loving" does not enter into it, because if you have two different meanings for that word, then you have two different claims, not one claim that could have two different truth values.

If a British person asks me if I have a biscuit, and an American asks me if I have a biscuit, then those are two different questions. It is not one question whose truth value depends on who asks it. It is two very different questions, each with its own truth value.

Brain activity is behavior.

But it is not the behavior being DESCRIBED by mental predicate attribution. This is a mistake you constantly make.

No, that is a point about which we disagree.

It is a hopelessly naive notion that the correspondence between brain activity and complex behaviors such as "loving" would take the form of loving corresponding to some specific set of brain states.

Then I have no idea what you would mean when you say that a fact in a mental predicate descrption of behavior (here you have refused all such description, except those in behaviorist theory, a stance quite different than what you have claimed in the past), can be redescribed %100 by a description physical state of the brain.

No, brain activity. My point is that brain activity itself cannot reasonably be described in terms of something as simplistic as "brain states".

What more would this mean than "she is loving" (true sentence in a mental predicate description) = brain state x (a physical description of the brain)?

It would mean that her brain is performing certain functions. Those functions themselves are far characterizable in terms of "states".


DM

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Posted 04/24/08 - 03:04 PM:
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#170
Death Monkey wrote:
One could imagine, for example, that the computers they have are so incredibly smart that they are sentient beings themselves, and that they understand what you understand. But even then, the only way for them to convey that understanding to the scientists would be the same way you do: By explaining it to them.


Even a sentient computer is more likely to understand Dunamis's posts by reading them rather than by reading my brain, and will need to understand them to know what I have understood, particularly as I seem to be unable to articulate it clearly enough for you to understand it.
Death Monkey wrote:
unenlightened wrote:
I don't know how else to say it. Science is an intentional activity; the intention is to understand and explain all manner of things. It may be more than that - institutions, methods, history, but it is at least a behaviour with that intention. Neuroscience, or behaviourism therefore needs to explain the behaviour we call scientific, amongst other things - it needs to explain itself. But you have already pointed out that it cannot do this until it has been decided what this behaviour means.

So what does science mean? (not the word, now, the activity.)


You seem to be conflating lots of different concepts here. When I said that we cannot translate a psychology question to neuroscience until we know what the question means, I was talking about the meaning of words, not the intention of a behavior. We often use the terms "intention" and "meaning" similarly, hense asking what a behavior means when you are really asking what the intention of the behavior is. But these are two completely different usages of the word "meaning".


I'm not sure what your objection is here; words are usually used with the intention of conveying meaning, aren't they? And this is verbal behaviour,no? So the meaning of a question is the intention of the behaviour of asking it, unless it is rhetorical. If the question is 'what's the time?', the intention is to learn what the time is, and that is the meaning. Am I being stupid or something?

I am saying that science is intentional behaviour. But it doesn't mean anything, apparently, because it can be reduced to a brain state.

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Posted 04/24/08 - 03:13 PM:
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#171
astaire1 wrote:
Enlighntened: which is why the fashion changes so fast. Any psychological theory is a way of looking at ways of looking - the theory alters the facts.

Astaire: That would be true of any theory not specifically psychological theories.

-Astaire


No! A theory of atoms has no effect on the nature of atoms.

By contast, a psychological theory changes people's psychology, sometimes quite radically.

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Posted 04/24/08 - 03:27 PM:
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#172
Well, I have a neorological "disorder", in which the physical structure of my brain is composed differently than the "orderly", or "normal". Despite the fact that a neuroscientist could examine the structure of my physical brain, and based upon that empirical evidence alone, say that I experience auditory and visual hallucinations, the neoroscientis would be unable to expunge from that evidence what the hallucinations consist of. I would have to utter a (physically, that is) a description of the hallucinations to the Scientist so he could understand what they consist of - what they are composed of. So the Scientist upon seizing the acoustics tumbling out of my mouth, would have to interpret (an activity of the mind ) through the confines, and meta-physical meanings, of our(?), or a community, and structure his imagination (mind) to re-present the acoustic information spoken to him. In this particular case, the world is no longer a shared world, considering the world that I experience is vastly different that the neuroscientist's world, considering that he doesn't experience a world tinged with hallucinations of the mind. My hallucinations are not of the brain, precisely because the neuro-scientist can only say, upon brain examination that I experience halluciations. Understanding what the hallucinations are requires a more holistic study, and to my opinion, metaphysical knowledge. Nueroscience, upon completion will never answer the questions, of "what", and "how" to a sufficient degree. Only understanding descriptions of the world (or hallucinations) will answer these questions to a sufficient degree. Meta-psychology (e.g. the freudian eaodipal model) is something that becomes necessary in the therapeutic process, in that the Freudian Model (within the confines of the psychological discipline) is a meta-narrative that secures itself upon its completion of explanations of behavior and speech. As a discipline, it floats - like all of the human studies.

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Posted 04/24/08 - 05:03 PM:
Subject: synesthesia 		quote post
#173
cypress moon,
Synesthesia is also a "different wiring" of the brain that produces mixed sensory perception not necessarilly related to the original sensory event. Like your hallucination comment, the nature of these "disorders" cannot be ascertained by looking at brain structure at all.

Re: Freud, it's amazing to know there are still people out there who still use his models for "therapy". Anyone considering such should avail themselves of Alice Miller's literature. She is an M.D., Freudian trained analyst (former) who, while undergoing her own analysis discovered how radically flawed Freud's ideas are and then set about to explain why such a repressive, distorted model could be taken so seriously for so long. Her belief is that a psychoanalytical approach is nearly a foolproof way to repress real early childhood memories and which causes far more serious damage to the client than they started with. Having practiced clinical psych for many years, I agree with her findings and also point to the fact, which I found in my research for my master's thesis, that Freud was in such shocked disbelief of the possibility that so many people were sexually abused via incest as his clients were continuously claiming that the only thing he could come up with, when he decided the reports couldn't possibly be true, was projection of repressed desires on the part of the claimant!
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Posted 04/24/08 - 06:12 PM:
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#174
Death Monkey wrote:



Let me know when you want to get back to actually discussing the issues, rather than just venting your disgust with a group of people who you do not think live up to your philosophical standards.


I have no disgust for scientists at all, except perhaps when they, when they play at being scientist, are also claiming to play at being philosopher simply by virtue of being scientists.

Then what is it? If it is not an objective fact, then it is not a claim about the way things actually are,


It is an intersubjective fact. I have no idea why you would think that "He fears bees" is a metaphor.


And this is, by construction, an example of the truth value of the mental predicate claim being empirically determinable. In fact, you just specified in your post that it is.


Absolutely not. You are not following closely. It is not empirically determinable, the results of the application of a contingent defintion can then empirically measured, but the mental predicate claim is DEFINITELY not empirically determinable. No amount of observation, apart from the mental predicate valuations, DETERMINES that the truth of the application, that is, just because this set of scientists say that this behavior is "loving" there is nothing in observation which keeps other scientist defining love such that it is not.

No, that is a point about which we disagree.


Hilariously, you seem to think that when I say, "His fear of bees caused him to run" to NOT be a description of the causes of his intentional behavior, but rather to be a description of the state (behavior) of his brain. Hilarious.

It would mean that her brain is performing certain functions. Those functions themselves are far characterizable in terms of "states".


Unfortunately, the notion of "function" is the importation of a teleology, and is not a strict physical description of the brain, it is a description of the brain colored by purposes. Those purposes, insofar as they are thought to reflect culturally contingent mental predicate valuations, are not objective facts.

You are cooking your "physical description" books.





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Posted 04/24/08 - 06:31 PM:
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#175
DM,

What you are missing out on, in your endeavor to reduce mental predicate descriptions into physical descriptions is something called Referential Opacity. It is for this reason why you flounder between what you call "literal truths" and "metaphorical truths" assuming that there is nothing that is in between, that is, a literal truth which does not have a referent in the typical sense.

This is the way it works, (so to show that there are different concepts being employed when using mental predicate descriptions of intentional behavior):

As Della Rocca explains:

"Let us say that there is an evil spy at work in John's neighborhood, and further, that this spy is John's brother. In such a situation the following claims are true":

1. The spy is a spy.

2. The spy is John's brother.

3. John's brother is a spy.

This is of the form where reference is "transparent". That is, under different descriptions the referent remains the same, and the logical form:

1. a is the G.

2. a = b.

Therefore, 3. b is the G.

In dealing with the natural science the different descriptions a phenomena falls under does nothing to unseat the referent, that is, the truth of the logical relationship is not disturbed. One thing can be re-described without suffering a referential dislocation. (There are subtle aspects to this preservation, and the possibility for coherent continuity of reference, but for the greater part, we can keep this as a fact about natural science descriptions).

Now, if we try this with mental predicate ascription, we find that this redescription excersize does not hold.

As Della Rocca explains what referential opacity is:

"A context is referentially opaque if the truth value of the sentence resulting from completing the context does depend on whch particular term is used to refer that object. For an example of an opaque context, let's embellish the spy case. Although John knows there is a spy at work in the neighborhood, he is completely unaware that his brother is the dastardly individual.

1. John believes that the spy is a spy: (true).

2. The spy is John's brother: (true).

3. John believes that John's brother is a spy: (false).

It is, in part, this referential opacity which sets the conceptual kind of mental predicates apart. It is what keeps mental predicate descriptions from becoming physical descriptions.

"John believes..." is not a "metaphor", as you seem to think, but it is not an objective fact either. It is an intersubjective, social fact.

An example of how referential opacity plays into the irreducibility of mental predicate descriptions to physical descriptions is found here:

Consider a more prosaic example [of referential opacity]. I know Jane wants a promotion at her job, and I know that she has been reading Malloy’s Dress for Success, and I see her following Malloy’s advice ("Dress like people the next level up in the corporation"). So I explain her new look by saying her desire for a promotion causes her to follow Malloy’s advice. To avoid referential opacity, my explanation will be more reliable the more completely I can specify her belief system. For example, Jane’s new look might be an accident; she doesn’t really understand Malloy’s book at all, but just inherited a closet full of clothes from her recently-deceased twin sister, who just happened to have the sort of job Jane wants. So in order to buttress my explanation I add some of Jane’s relevant beliefs:

Jane believes getting a promotion would give her more money.

Jane believes more money is good.

Jane believes she can trust Tom Malloy.

Jane believes that if she follows Malloy’s advice, she won’t be fired.

Jane believes that if she follows Malloy’s advice, she won’t spontaneously explode, shrink to the size of an ant, be thrust into orbit...

Jane believes it is possible to follow Malloy’s advice.

etc.

Now, where do I stop? How much of Jane’s belief system must I specify in order to identify Jane’s intention for certain? Davidson’s answer: there is no obvious stopping place. I would have to be able to rule out all other possible intentional descriptions that may be employed by Jane; I would have to be able to show, for example, that Jane doesn’t have a peculiar learning disability such that she doesn’t understand the word "promotion" at all, and has just fallen in love with her boss and has decided to dress like her. Getting Jane’s intention right might require me ultimately to note the most fundamental and/or trivial elements of Jane’s belief-system: for example, that Jane believes in the existence of a world external to her senses.







Edited by Dunamis on 04/24/08 - 08:36 PM

_____________________
Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam

If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar
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