[Wittrs] Re: Fwd: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "swmaerske" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:44:02 -0000
I posted several responses on-line here this evening and saw them show up and
then, poof, they're gone again! Maybe Sean shouldn't be allowed so much time at
the computer! I suspect he'd do more for us chiming in on some of the issues
we're kicking about instead of fiddling with the controls like he's been doing
while the list burns! Whaddaya say Sean? -- SWM
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kirby urner <kirby.urner@...> wrote:
>
> Note: when I replied to SWM just now, it went just to his address,
> yet the incoming was signed by yahoogroups. I'm reposting my reply
> via the wittrs@... address, but suggest an audit of what
> "reply to" is assumed by default.
>
> Kirby
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@...>
> Date: Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 2:31 PM
> Subject: Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
> To: swmaerske <SWMirsky@...>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 2:02 PM, swmaerske<SWMirsky@...> wrote:
> > --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kirby urner <kirby.urner@> wrote:
> >>
> >> > He disavowed the TLP while he is nowhere on record as saying that "if you
> >> > appreciated the TLP, then you're really going to like where I go in the
> >> > PI".
> >> > This last is just your sock-puppet talking and I don't think the puppet
> >> > is
> >> > adequately channeling Wittgenstein.
> >> >
> >>
> >> I think "disavowed" is true strong a word in that he also mentioned
> >> wanting them published together (the TLP and PI).
> >
> >
> > Of course. How can you demonstrate what's wrong with something without
> > presenting it?
> >
>
> There is that aspect of showing how PI is better than TLP, at pulling
> the rug out, pulling the plug.
>
> >> Same guy wrote both. I don't think he actually changed
> >> what he was trying to show, so much as his way of showing it (PI way
> >> more effective, another kind of ladder).
> >>
> >
> > Uh oh, it looks like you DO think that! I have the feeling that many who
> > admire Wittgenstein may just have a hard time separating ourselves from
> > anything the guy ever said, even when he went to the trouble of doing just
> > that himself!
> >
>
> The clues are everywhere. PI is about moving us from disguised to
> patent nonsense in one passage. The emphasis on every thesis being
> agreed to by everyone (read truism, tautology). His use of
> "grammatical remarks" as rungs for his ladder -- it's hard to dispute
> what he says precisely because he stays faithful to his subject,
> sketching actual examples of language use, drawing on common
> experience, sometimes making up a new tribe.
>
> The general thrust of Wittgenstein's writing, in both the TLP and PI,
> is to free us from enslavement from science, which is really just
> another way of saying putting science in its place (and it has one)
> while not thereby paying a huge price in terms of philosophy running
> amok as a weed garden for pseudo-sciences. He's undermining the world
> of "quasi-sense" by turning it into something more transparently
> nonsensical. He does this as a social service. He's contribution has
> a curative influence. That's not to say there isn't a weed garden
> though. We just don't have to plant there.
>
> I'm serious about Richard Stallman being one of the great ethical
> philosophers of our time. As we do that OWL/DAML type mappings, using
> citations as our guide, we'll look for emergent patterns of allegiance
> ala Sean. Who dared to write about OLPC or world hunger? Who called
> themselves an ethicist and dared not to? These are interesting
> empirical questions that computers might help us with (the study of
> mindsets, meme-plexes -- does not depend on anything not yet invented,
> already an art with a state).
>
> >
> >> > Different discussion, different points.
> >> >
> >>
> >> I don't follow your thread structure remember. These are like hiking
> >> trails in some well known part of Bavaria, swarming with people in
> >> lederhosen, with walking sticks. We cross at these sign posts. I
> >> don't need to backtrack the whole way to figure out all the subject
> >> experiences you've been having, in order to converse, and vice versa.
> >> No one here but us Germans, as they say.
> >>
> >
> > That's what often makes it hard to discuss things with you. But I guess
> > that's just your way. You like to take, as Josh puts it, the scenic tour!
> >
>
> Well, if we extend the analogy, you're saying it's hard to discuss
> things with people who don't agree to follow exactly your trail, step
> by step. You must encounter a lot of "difficult people" in your life.
> Good thing German is such a friendly language, for gezundaspitzen.
> We'll just have a beer and not worry about the past. No resentments
> -- that was Nietzsche's chief hallmark of a philosopher i.e. if you
> had an ax to grind, you couldn't be one. He was Austrian though, took
> a dim view of Germans (why branding him a Nazi in retrospect is so
> ridiculously stoopid eh?).
>
> > For myself, I tend not to go for the free associating type of discussion
> > you favor. But that's what makes horse races, I guess.
> >
>
> I consider my web of arguments and themes highly disciplined. I've
> been developing concepts of mindset, relating to connecting dots as
> "folding up" polyhedra, with hyperlinks as edges.
>
> Pretty sophisticated stuff, especially when you connect it back to its
> American Transcendentalist roots in Cyberia. But then I depend on the
> linking infrastructure and my blogs to make this all clear.
>
> I realize my interlocutors have their own tunnels to dig.
>
> Like herding naked mole rats to make us stay on the same page -- I don't try
> it.
>
> >
> >> >> Neuroscientific conclusions about how brains work wouldn't necessarily
> >> >> have anything to do with an "understanding process" though.
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > Depends what you're looking at as the "process". If the issue is what
> >> > your
> >> > brain does when you understand something then it is extremely relevant.
> >> > How
> >>
> >> No, there's no one thing that occurs because "understanding" is not a
> >> physical event *in our grammar* i.e. it doesn't mean something
> >> happening, like an alka seltzer going pop pop fizz fizz.
> >
> >
> > The issue isn't what we mean in ordinary usage when talking about who gets
> > what but what a scientist or physician might mean in their more specialized
> > usages (how do we return this person to consciousness, how does this
> > person's brain achieve understanding in the person, etc.?). Just because we
> > don't gauge understanding in others by measuring their brain waves doesn't
> > mean there is no role for those waves (or for looking at them to assess
> > that role) in the occurrence of understanding.
> >
>
> I think you're just making up about scientists or physicians. I know
> many of these people and I can think of not a one wasting any time
> imagining there's a "process of understanding" that goes on in the
> brain. This is a superstitious notion of no merit and not the stuff
> of real science.
>
> >
> >> You don't
> >> need any empirical science, just a decent memory, to investigate in
> >> this way,to remember ordinary situations where we talk about someone
> >> understanding something.
> >>
> >
> >
> > We're talking about the prospects for neuroscience and cognitive science,
> > not what we need see in order to know if someone gets something we said,
> > etc.
> >
>
> I have those conversations as well, but not on this list. I have met
> no one on this list who seems to speak the language of neuroscience to
> any level. I come here for the philosophy, not the pretend science.
>
> >
> >> We see, together (share the experience) that understanding is free,
> >> unencumbered, doesn't kow-tow to "mental process" game,
> >
> >
> > I know Sean is going to beef, but: ugh, you've got to be kidding, right?
> > Who is talking about a convergence of a "mental process game" with a
> > recognizing-understanding game??? I know you like the scenic route but
> > isn't this really wandering pretty far off the path we are ostensibly
> > following? How can we communicate on issues like this if you insist on
> > bringing things in from left field? Or am I lapsing here into the baseball
> > game?
> >
>
> Because you keep harping on some supposedly "scientific" use of the
> word "understanding" that would focus us on finding it in the brain,
> much as one might focus on some "scientific" use of the word "soul"
> and look for that in the pineal gland.
>
> These are very analogous situations I'm thinking.
>
> You seem to take umbrage on my ridiculing the idea that
> "understanding" relates to specific processes in the brain (and my
> ridicule is on philosophical grounds, not invoking neuroscience). You
> say I'm attacking some off camera group of scientists maybe? The
> scientists I know applaud my defense of good sense against decadent
> latter day phrenology (you can almost see that "understanding center"
> in some diagram, a pointer to an anatomical region -- guffaw).
>
> >
> >> doesn't "doff
> >> its hat" as it were -- "by definition" I might add for Josh's benefit,
> >> though more Wittgensteinian to say it's a truism (tautology,
> >> grammatical remark).
> >>
> >> > does your brain's behavior become your subjective experience of
> >> > understanding something. Think back to my anecdote about the drive up
> >> > from
> >> > the Carolinas. In that I wondered about what mental events might be
> >> > occurring. The question then would be to relate them to whatever physical
> >> > evnts were happening in that brain.
> >>
> >> I'm quite able to understand stuff with no subjective experiences
> >> whatsoever, whereas other times I might report on this "aha!" sense,
> >> like a light going on. But I don't always have those lights going on,
> >
> >
> > Well if neuroscience is on the money, you do in terms of the little
> > electrical charges moving in netlike waves across your brain as you think.
> > You just don't see them!
> >
>
> Yeah, I consider this idea completely bogus and I don't agree that
> neuroscience is putting money on this square on the roulette table of
> life. Some charlatans maybe, but not real scientists, not a one.
>
> Kirby
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