[Wittrs] Re: On the Mechanism of Understanding
- From: "Stuart W. Mirsky" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:03:28 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kirby urner <kirby.urner@...> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 7:34 AM, Stuart W. Mirsky<SWMirsky@...> wrote:
>
> << SNIP >>
>
> >> Hey thanks for responding. I think it was actually Hawkins I was
> >> thinking of, but in a long quote from you (wasn't it?). That thing
> >> about how one knows, reading a novel, that one understands it, e.g.
> >> Robinson Crusoe doesn't have to wait until he gets of the island to
> >> know he understood the twelve books washed ashore with him -- or at
> >> least he maybe understood eleven of them, this 'Philosophical
> >> Investigations' thing was maybe a stumper. He'll check in with some
> >> others if he's ever rescued, maybe find out if he understood it at
> >> all. He's especially intrigued by the "private language" stuff!
> >>
> >
> > Yes, it was Hawkins and I did post the text. I wasn't sure who you meant
> > though. It could have been my own comments since, from time to time, I've
> > been accused of something like that, i.e., equating a thought with an image.
> > In fact, of course, I don't and neither as far as I can see does Hawkins.
> >
> > What Hawkins does do, which I'm inclined to agree with, is recognize the
> > role mental images play in our thinking processes. I would just cite, again,
> > my anecdote about seeing the sign, not getting it and then realizing what it
> > meant on the drive up through the Carolinas. What happened there? Was it a
> > behavioral response as Gerardo or Glen might want to say? Was it something
> > that simply doesn't fit our grammar, as you might say?
>
> Yes, I have no problem with recognizing the role of mental images, as
> long as one also accepts that sometimes these have no role i.e. let's
> not over-generalize about their role.
>
> I'm able to understand about road signs without a lot of "mentation"
> we might say. When I'm playing a computer game, the imagery is right
> there in front of me, so what's the point of imagining yet more crap
> "off to the side" as it were -- or maybe I'm thinking about the cup of
> coffee I lust after...
>
Yes, sometimes the imagery is right before our eyes, physically. When it's not,
the brain provides a substitute. But whether perception or "mentation", it's
still an occurrence in the brain and it's still mental, i.e., there is
something that is going on which is essentially subjective. Understanding what
that is is a project of cognitive science and any who touch on that including
AI researchers keen to replicate minds. That Wittgenstein was not, himself,
engaged in cognitive science doesn't mean there is nothing to be done there.
After all, would he have wanted or expected others to slavishly follow him,
either in terms of a penchant for turtle necks or subject matter?
> The point being, thinking and understanding shouldn't be hard-wired to
> this idea of "a private mental process" (Wittgenstein goes to a lot of
> work to break the hold of that bewitching and misleading image). To
> say images *play a role* in understanding is not to *identify* them
> with the concept of understanding (at the risk of not seeing the
> actual grammar around "understand" i.e. at the risk of not seeing how
> we actually use the word).
>
The question has to be considered in all its dimensions. I think Searle rightly
shows that "smart" behavior which isn't backed up by understanding is not what
we mean by "intelligence" in ourselves generally and it is THAT kind of
intelligence that is of interest to cognitive science and related fields.
The question then is what is this understanding? It doesn't help to provide a
list of other uses for the term unless it is to show that the use in question
is misguided. But I think there is plenty of reason to think it is not, i.e.,
behavior alone does not suffice to provide a full account of understanding in
this sense, and thus of mind (read "consciousness") itself.
> To say "understanding is a mental process" is a first turn off the
> main road into some little side streets neighborhood, an ethnic
> conclave of some kind.
>
That's an odd way of seeing it, as if there is this one road that is official
and which we should use and to turn off it is to somehow break a
Wittgensteinian traffic rule. In fact, I think there is no such rule in this
case.
> Likewise to say mental imagery is a kind of "behavior" is a dialect, a
> village talk -- not how we think in the big city (you were making that
> point to Gerardo and I agree with you).
>
> >
> > In fact, of course, I can describe what happened pretty well (suggesting
> > that grammar is perfectly functional here): I saw a sign, wondered about it
> > (the wording had initially stumped me), then, in an instant, it made sense
> > and I had a whole slew of mental images run past me, images that related to
> > following the words on the sign or to not following it. There was no change
> > in my behavior. I just kept driving (indeed I was already doing what the
> > sign required) and I didn't turn to my wife and say, ah, now I understand
> > that sign. The only changes involved the mental images I suddenly had, the
> > connections I made to my stored memories.
> >
>
> Fine, but the next guy I interview reports no mental imagery. He was
> yakking with his wife the whole way, understood all the signs with no
> thoughts about them. He understood just as surely. So when it comes
> to understanding what's meant by "understanding", I don't take your
> lengthy and detailed account as my one true account. It's more grist
> for the mill, raw intelligence for my database.
>
Yes, we can say the person who sees the sign, absent mindedly responds and does
what it says, without thought, understood, too. I am making no claim that
understanding always manifests as it did in me at that instant. This would be
another place I would disagree with Gerardo, by the way. I'm inclined to think
that our minds operate on many levels with greater and lesser amounts of
self-awareness. Sometimes the connections we make are ones we are aware of and
sometimes it happens so fast or off the main line (off the main road?) that we
don't notice or otherwise attend to it.
What interests me is what happens in brains to produce instances of
understanding which manifest, at times, as various mental imagery and, at
times, as appropriate behavior? Searle seems to think that understanding,
intentionality and awareness are wholes, cannot be explained as something else.
I think that's a mistake. But if it is, then there must be an explanation in
how brains work. Computationalists think the way computers work is the answer.
That may be true though there's plenty of differences to take account of. It
does look to me, though, as if we can explain having awareness, including aware
understanding (which probably also means intentionality) in a way that is
consistent with how computers work.
> Your accounts tend to be introverted, focused on your process. You
> have a track record of doing "internal landscape journalism", are good
> at it, enjoy exercising that skill that you have. But we don't
> *require* such accounts to anchor our meanings, don't need everyone to
> be gifted in the way you are.
>
I am merely applying personal experience to the questions before us. There are
many considerations, of course, but given the issue (what is it to think, to
know, to be aware, etc.?) it would be strange to leave out personal accounts.
Note that I am not saying anything about what's required to "anchor our
meanings". Like you, I don't think it has a lot to do with introspection. But
if we're interested in issues that concern HOW we do what we do and are what we
are, then it pays to consider what we do and what we are, and if that means
looking inward, then not doing so would be to miss an awful lot of potential
evidence.
> A lot of people think, understand, know, otherwise get through their
> day, without making such accounts a big part of it. In studying the
> grammar around these words (or I could say: in studying these
> concepts), we learn what's critical to the language game, versus
> what's maybe relevant, maybe not, depending on circumstances and who
> we're interviewing.
>
Right but I am not talking about knowing what we mean but knowing how it is we
mean anything at all. This question is of interest to those who want to better
understand how brains make minds and how minds fit into the rest of the world.
> I'm being faithful to Wittgenstein here. He often points out how you
> might have *no* mental images where other times you do, hence their
> dispensability to "the meaning" in some logical (grammatical) sense.
>
I fully concur that images aren't always the key as I've already said. (Not
though, the introspective aspect of Wittgenstein in this -- to have recognized
the role of images he would have had to think about what it means to think
about things.)
> I get the feeling that "brain people" (loosely defined) are more than
> average focused on their interior lives and so want to "suck down"
> words like understanding to make them names of "mental processes"
> which they then suppose "run on the brain" (just as processes and
> threads run within operating systems). That's an analogy they've
> "suckered for" (willingly), and there's no way to talk 'em out of it.
> Those associations are "hard wired".
>
I don't know about "hard wired" here. But I do know that if one thinks
computers offer a possible model for how brains work AND one is interested in
how brains work, then it's only reasonable that one would pay attention to the
processes in order to 1) distinguish and identify them and 2) get a sense of
what they consist of for purposes of replication at some point.
> > But I am not suggesting that any of those images, or even the complete
> > panoply of connected images, were the meaning per se (that they were the
> > same images as the writer of the sign had had in mind). Indeed, I would
> > doubt that any two of us ever have the same images much less the same
> > network of connected images. If you saw the sign and understood it, I expect
> > you would have other mental images reflecting your comprehension. It's not
> > the images but something else at work.
>
> Of course when we go to the movies or watch Youtubes, we get to share
> a lot of the same imagery -- partly why I cite YouTubes a lot, wanting
> to build up a database of "clips in common". You could call this a
> "shared mental process" and get away with it in some circles. Others
> would raise objections, saying that's not the "right way" to talk.
>
> It's important to our civilization that we know a lot of us watch the
> same TV programs.
?????
> Having a high school aged kid helps remind me of
> that fact. Not every civilization is like that. Shared texts (e.g.
> the Bible) is also critical. So much of classical western civ writing
> assumes readers will be able to conjure imagery around Greek and/or
> Hebrew mythos, otherwise how could we write about the Apollonian
> versus the Dionysian and hope to be understood? Important in
> Nietzsche etc.
>
A purely practical concern though.
> > A memory or an instant of understanding does not consist of particular
> > images but of a complex of images, held together in a certain way, and
> > shared understanding OF THIS TYPE occurs when two or more of us have roughly
> > similar complex networks. This is in keeping with Edelman's interesting
> > point that human memory is not like a computer's. (A point Hawkins makes,
> > too.) Computers must call up a precise replication of what is to be recalled
> > each time or they are deficient in their operation. As Hawkins notes, if a
> > picture is stored in a computer's memory, it must be precisely the same each
> > time it's summoned onto the screen. But human memory doesn't work like that.
> > Edelman points out that human memory is rough, fluid and always different
> > with each instance (think Rashomon). Each time it is called up, new
> > associations are added and maybe some fall away or lose significance. So
> > human memory involves constantly reconstructing complex pictures and that
> > process, that of construction, is different than simple replication.
>
> Yeah, there's somewhat different grammar involved, when we impute
> "memory" to computers versus impute it to humans.
>
Edelman thinks it's all a matter of "memory" though he recongizes a vast
difference between what we mean by human memory, computer memory and the memory
evidenced by species, cell and molecular scale entities.
> The idea of an "instant of understanding" is what I was noting earlier
> as an "aha!" experience, then following Wittgenstein in reminding the
> reader that one may have such an experience -- yet not understand.
> Turns out later this wasn't an instant of understanding but of
> misunderstanding.
>
Yes, the experience of thinking we understand is no guarantor that we do. But
that's not the issue. What is of concern is that we have any kind of experience
at all and how can we account for this scientifically in a physical world? If
consciousness can be understood as a function of certain physical goings on,
then there is no problem and then, too, we ought to be able to find a way, at
some point, of replicating a synthetic consciousness by manipulating certain
physical phenomena. The point of all this introspective "journalism" is to see
if we can't come up with some ways of answering the pertinent questions.
> "...does not consist of particular images but of a complex of images"
> needs to be balanced with "no images whatsoever" in some cases, i.e.
> don't fall for the notion that mental images *must* be there, for
> someone to understand.
>
I don't believe I ever made THAT claim!
> Understanding is more about passing tests, meeting criteria, e.g.
> getting on TV and saying coherent things that other people consider
> insightful.
Ah, you mean that others think they understand or, if they don't, think they
should or really want to? All of this, of course, is language that implies
mental goings on. If we cannot dispense with it, perhaps there's a reason?
> "Private mental imagery" may be of little interest in
> this context given we're all watching the same shared clips from the
> video database (Youtubes etc.).
>
> > Hawkins actually explains it this way: The human brain, unlike a computer,
> > he says, doesn't store every bit of data it receives. It works by storing
> > the general structure, an adumbration of the pictures it is holding onto but
> > not a "pixel" by "pixel" deposit in the storage bank. When called back to
> > active duty, it's that structure that the human brain pulls up. Other parts
> > of the brain, with other stored images, are relied on to plug in details.
> >
>
> To me this sounds like someone making stuff up out of whole cloth. I
> could write similar stuff, fill books with it, but I'm not sure I'd
> regard it as work. I shouldn't be paid for it. I should get a
> work-study stipend, yes, but not for this "work" in particular.
>
I'm not sure your "ethical" judgment of this project is relevant to the project
though. In Hawkins' case he's a trained systems engineer who made his bones in
Silicon Valley, inventor of the Treo and founder of Palm Pilot. So he has bona
fides in the computer field. He is apparently currently self-funding his brain
initiative. I guess he'll get paid if he succeeds (and as the book sells). Is
he making it up? Why would you say that? It certainly accords with my own
experiences and may be the best explantions I've seen to date as I hope I
showed adequately below.
> I'd encourage Hawkins to move into a more productive area, were he on
> my team (which he isn't). Probably they wouldn't assign him to me as
> his manager, as I have low tolerance for "brain people" (Buzz knows
> this, but we overlap on iPhone talk, which seems more productive).
>
> > This helps explain why, when I had blacked out after sitting for a prolonged
> > period at my computer watching an image on the screen, the first thing I
> > "saw" as I was coming to was that same image. But, when I tried to focus on
> > the details, they weren't there and the image began to fade too! It was like
> > an afterimage, just a rough picture of the overall structure, the look of
> > the actual screen "page" I had been working on but not the page with all the
> > details on it, itself. Since it wasn't a real image, there were no details
> > present and I had no details in storage to plug in. But it looked perfectly
> > real, just as true to me in my half-wakened state anyhow as the real thing,
> > until I began to look for the details.
> >
> > This may also explain the phenomenon of photographic memory. Most of us
> > don't have it but perhaps the brains of some of us do have the ability to
> > capture detail to a far greater extent than most of us (or a better ability
> > to use other brain areas to rebuild lost detail when structure is recalled
> > and associations summoned up to plug details in).
> >
>
> I have a reputation for having a good memory, will sometimes warn
> people that I do. But then I forget names and stuff...
>
Yes, I find my memory is no longer what it once was and I miss my former
facility. But c'est la vie, as they say.
> Anyway, what I think the behaviorists are right about is they put a
> lot of emphasis on what I'd call "3rd person accounts" where one is
> like this omniscient camera floating about (like a movie camera) and
> not "getting into the heads" of the people one observes. You listen
> to what they say about mental images, about whether they understand or
> not, you hear their disputes, and that way you build up a sense of
> their meanings, their conceptual apparatus. You're more an observer
> of others than an observer of yourself.
>
Yes, behavioristic approaches (as with Dennett's "heterophenomenology") are
perfectly reasonable strategies to follow in some cases. But I don't think they
yield a fully adequate account of mind as I hope I've made clear with my recent
comments and examples.
> This switch to the 3rd person is important for philosophical
> investigations of the Wittgensteinian variety. That's not to say you
> shouldn't go 1st person from time to time, but even here, it's wise to
> see yourself "from the outside" when you talk about your interior
> life, as that's how everyone else sees you and there's more of them
> than there are of you (saying that somewhat tongue in cheek -- but not
> because it's untrue).
>
And everyone else also has a subjective standpoint from which to see me. That
most of the time we are looking through the lense and not at it is no reason to
assume we shouldn't consider it, too. What if the lense is scratched or clouded
and we failed to notice?
> "Don't be too selfish, or you'll never understand anything!" might be
> my enjoinder to a newbie philosopher. But then we say "know thyself"
> which seems to invite navel-gazing. Philosophy accommodates all of
> these tendencies. "Stay nimble!" might be the better advice (as in
> "keep switching points of view, don't get stuck in a rut").
>
> > I know that I've always had a pretty good memory though it is hardly
> > photographic. I was always great at meetings, never taking notes. Colleagues
> > used to assiduously scribble down the comments being made, the details of
> > responses, etc. I would occasionally note something interesting but
> > otherwise just sit quietly listening (or join in). Yet, afterwards, I could
> > reconstruct the meetings in great detail. Not verbatim to be sure, but in a
> > way that resulted in my eventually doing away with notetakers at meetings I
> > ran (staff assigned to take down the proceedings) since I could do it better
> > than they could and found them coming to me for details after the meetings
> > anyway.
> >
>
> Part of what makes you good at interior journalism (if we might call
> it that). But your colleagues who rely more on notes are also
> entitled to say they understood the proceedings.
Many times there was ample evidence many didn't. Besides, my facility with
putting together a comprehensive, credible narrative after the fact tended to
drive out competitors and my understandings, recollections, etc., usually
became the official history.
> We don't say "she
> didn't understand what went on, because she had to take notes about
> it" although the "had to" in that sentence does suggest a kind of
> disability, applies a negative spin.
>
> In our Quaker business process, we take minutes because that's a
> stated goal of the business process i.e. to leave an auditable trail.
> We might say: if you didn't get written minutes out of the meeting,
> then you don't understand what it means to have a business meeting,
> were just goofing off. Having a video recording would not be a
> substitute. Minutes are distilled, to the point, easy to consult.
> Videos of meetings are ponderous, not pithy, especially if unedited.
>
I've always found minutes distracting, inhibiting and time consuming when
incorporated into the meeting process. But that's just me and only really
applies to meetings I was a key figure in. I certainly didn't much care if it
was someone else's meeting or I was there mainly as a bystander.
> On the other hand, sometimes we meet behind closed doors about private
> matters and have learned a way of minute taking that doesn't violate
> (betray) confidences. We need to be public and yet keep secrets.
>
> That's a big part of language, this knowing something others don't
> (pictures of boxes, closets, closed rooms.... so many analogies).
Maybe too many at times?
> Nietzsche considered "secret keeping" the beginnings of the individual
> ego (as a linguistic institution).
>
> If you suppose angels spy on your thoughts, then go tell the Pope,
> that blows privacy all to hell, leaves one "naked" to religious
> authorities. Some parents (nasty ones in my book) would deliberately
> encourage children to have such beliefs. This children would readily
> confess and confide, rather than have the angels tell on them
> (religion as "thought cop").
>
> Folk culture has always had this fear of "mind readers" who might
> ferret out our deepest secrets even though we're hell bent on
> protecting them. The polygraph machine plays an iconographic role in
> this grammar. Some people might fear an MRI will reveal their
> thoughts and it's easy to imagine a police station where they
> encourage this way of thinking. A lot of televised cop shows are
> designed to imbue viewers with this sense that police have
> superpowers. There's this show on today about this guy who "just
> knows" if you're lying (in my book, that makes him a liar, the
> screenwriters too -- so the show has an ironic flavor).
>
> All of the above is quite important if you're doing a serious
> investigation of this "public" versus "private" stuff, wanna explore
> that grammar. You need to explore "violation of privacy" in many
> situations, if you wanna develop a clear sense of what "privacy"
> means.
>
> > My ability to do this worked in a way consistent with Hawkins' proposal,
> > i.e., I would simply start reconstructing the meeting in my mind and who
> > said what would start to come back to me. Remember I wasn't producing a
> > verbatim record but mine was so thorough that it tended to replace most
> > efforts to be verbatim. It was better than a tape recorder which captured
> > all the chaff as well -- mine was already edited and since I was pretty good
> > on the details and always tried to be focused and fair, people came to trust
> > and rely on my recaps. (It also gave me the ability to shape the record, of
> > course, an added benefit in any business or bureaucratic environment,
> > especially when I thought important matters had been left out or
> > inadequately stated).
> >
>
> I don't see Hawkins as proposing or explaining. I see him as
> storytelling, with the brain as his heroic protagonist, his principal
> agent. He's a myth maker.
>
I disagree but I am really just at the beginning of his book. I found Edelman
hard to read but worth the effort in the end. There was plenty of good stuff
within the confusion and obscurantism. Hawkins has the virtue of being much
clearer (but he also had a co-author who is a science journalist so I guess
that helps).
> I think it's easy to piggy-back on ordinary language to spiel out such
> stuff. I don't consider it science so much as engaging (to some)
> science fiction.
>
Time will tell. It looks like a pretty credible account to me, especially since
it explains the post blackout experience I've described as well as things like
photograhic memory and why it is so rare, i.e., it seems to require something
more than the usual human brain remembering facility.
> But then I think science fiction is critically important, not just
> fluff. It's an important aspect of our culture that we used to have
> more positive futurism (e.g. about this "freeway system" we were gonna
> have, and now do) but ever since 'Blade Runner' have mostly indulged
> in making the near future seem dark. That's edgier, more thrilling.
> More like a roller coaster, less like a merry-go-round.
>
> > What I wrote tended to become what everyone later referred back to. It also
> > became the basis for my own expectations from participants (both of staff
> > and colleagues). The phenomenon I'm describing was possible NOT because I
> > could or did recall every detail but because I recalled enough of the
> > general meeting structure which would trigger my plugging in enough details
> > to create a convincing and satisfying record of the proceeding. I suspect
> > that Hawkins' comment on structural recall as opposed to computational
> > recall is as good an explanation of how this aspect of our thinking works as
> > any as I've seen.
> >
>
> I don't see much in the way of "explanation". I'd use the word
> "account" maybe.
Okay, fair enough. Perhaps that's better at this stage when more remains to be
covered (explained) to have a really comprehensive account. Of course we should
bear in mind that we use words like "explanation" and "account" in a wide range
of ways, too.
> Way too much 1st person for my taste. I don't think
> the meanings of words like "understanding" and "thinking" are revealed
> in first person mode alone.
I didn't say they were. I've always included behavioral observations in my
ACCOUNT. I just think it's a mistake to put all our eggs in the behavioral
basket. Besides, this is not just about the meanings of the words. It's about
very specific meanings as regards some very specific applications. Answering
the question at hand by proposing a host of different kinds of uses for the
same word in this case doesn't really address the issue since this, in the end,
is about the application of "understanding" in certain kinds of instances but
not others.
> We don't each have privileged / private
> access to what these words mean. Their meanings have grown up between
> us, in a shared space.
>
No argument. But what does it mean to say so and so has grasped my point?
Sometimes we just mean look how he's acting now (or writing or speaking). But
not always and, certainly, when so and so grasps, and he knows he is grasping
(or thinks he is), more is going on than just some external behavior. That's
how we can be fooled, after all, i.e., we can be confused by the behavior and
err in thinking so and so has gotten it. We can test him more, of course, and
surely there will never be any stronger measure than that. But enough testing
should reveal the truth (even if "enough" is always open ended and without any
finality to it).
> Wittgenstein is a lot about curing us of this tendency to find the
> meanings of words by introspection. Given how introspective you are,
> I'm thinking you're drawn to Wittgenstein because his school of
> thought seems to challenge yours at some level and you want to quell
> any doubts you may have on that score i.e. you seek to put his
> philosophy to rest, so that you might be even more at peace with your
> style of cogitation.
>
As I've said, I think Wittgenstein was quintessentially introspective and
certainly something of an introvert (your term). If so, it's odd to imagine his
philosophical work was the antithesis of that as you seem to. But what he was
isn't entirely relevant. It's what he said and a lot of his work relies on
introspection.
> Any truth to that assessment? Not a criticism. Lots of people are
> drawn to a given philosophy because it seems to run counter to theirs.
I don't think so but who knows, we are rarely the best judges of ourselves.
> Many died-in-the-wool capitalists will read Marx in the closet, not
> because they secretly agree with him, are closet Marxists, but because
> they want to fight it more effectively. Marxists read Adam Smith for
> the same reason.
>
> "Knowing thy enemy" is probably intrinsic to "Knowing thyself" (we
> define ourselves by what we oppose).
>
I am interested in understanding things. Insofar as Wittgenstein seems to me to
point the way, I want to follow his markers. But I am certainly not convinced
he was a god or was right on everything. When he is wrong I think we have to
see that, too. Still I don't think that's the issue here since I don't think
you're right that a concern with what happens mentally when we understand,
think, argue, believe, etc., was outside his field of interest or that he
counseled that we ignore such issues. Of course AI and cognitive science were
yet to be born as were modern computers so his world was quite different from
outs, as were many of his day to day concerns, philosophical and otherwise.
> >> > > Although I've made it a point to note that understanding in my own
> >> > experience is not always accompanied by actions and is often solely
> >> > internal, characterized, say, by a feeling of "getting it" which is also
> >> > usually accompanied by various images, thoughts, etc., I have also been
> >> > quite clear to note that I am not arguing that any PARTICULAR image,
> >> > thought, etc., IS that understanding. What I've suggested is that
> >> > knowing
> >> > anything (and this includes understanding anything) seems to consist of
> >> > a
> >> > complex set of relationships reflected in various mental mappings by
> >> > which
> >> > we hold together pictures of different aspects of the world we
> >> > experience.
> >> > (See my moment of insight on the road through the Carolinas.)
> >> >
> >>
> >> I'd go further and saw "no picture at all" is often just as well, i.e.
> >> "I understand the traffic laws of the state of Oregon" is sort of
> >> tacitly assumed by the fact that I have a drivers license. I don't
> >> only understand these laws when I'm thinking about them or driving my
> >> car. People can say "Kirby understands the rules of the road in
> >> Oregon" without pausing to consider what I might be reflecting on at
> >> that moment. The grammar of "understand" is a lot more like that of
> >> having a badge or award of some kind.
> >>
> >> To take another example, I'll walk up to an elevator and simply use
> >> it, punching buttons while yakking about something else. I understand
> >> how to use an elevator, but there's nothing whatsoever I feel I need
> >> to report about mental states or mental pictures or anything. I'm
> >> actually thinking about a meeting I'm about to have.
> >>
> >> There's really know time to reflect on all the stuff I understand as I
> >> go through my day, yet understand I do.
> >>
> >
> > Yes, not all of memory involves images. Many times we remember things
> > physically (my fingers typing away on this keyboard, hitting mostly the
> > right keys for instance).
> >
>
> Or people will remember that Jesus saved some woman from being stoned
> to death by some assholy hypocritical mob, and picture all this stuff,
> but then hey, they don't know what Jesus really looked like, or the
> woman, or any of the details.
Well here it looks like you're referencing a remembered story rather than an
eyewitness acount. Of course the facts to be remembered will be quite
different.
> It's all "staged in the head" and yet
> they'll say "I remember that...". I remember Shakespeare wrote Hamlet
> which I recall includes a soliloquy with the words "To be, or not to
> be, that is the question". Do my mental images matter at all? Do *I*
> even care about them? It's not clear that I do.
>
I'm not sure that matters here either. But again what you're doing is switching
horses on us, as though we won't notice. The issue is not about every use of
"remember" or "understand" but about certain uses already pointed out.
By the way, when I recall such things I get some vague, very faded images,
barely noticeable but there nonetheless. I "see" and old black and white
kinescope image of Hamlet holding Yorick's skull, from an old version of the
play I once saw. When the question is who wrote Hamlet I recall sitting in a
schoolroom and I recall the echo of a discussion. These images are thin, barely
there but they are there if I pay close attention. So even here, at least in my
case, images seem to have a role.
> Sometimes when I listen to a person tell me a story, maybe a true
> story from their own lives, I observe all the mental imagery I conjure
> and dismiss it as fluff, thinking to myself "I'm just supplying infill
> and that's a lot of garbage, a lot of crap, given I wasn't there and
> really have no idea what the honest documentary would be like". In
> other words, to use more Hawkins-like language, I frequently catch my
> brain lying, churning out fictitious crappola in response to another's
> story. Mental imagery gets in the way of understanding because it's
> 98% BS at least 50% of the time.
>
I'm not sure that's the right way to think about this. Even if false, even if
the images are yours and not the storyteller's, it looks to me like that is the
medium of your understanding. What else is understanding? Is it something
transparent? Then what are all the associations kicked up? What the point to
have them? What's their role? If you got no images at all when you heard a
story what would be left?
If we created a machine that could relate the sounds inputted to it to a
layered set of schemas consisting of different representations about the world
and itself, and if these roughly hung together like yours did, would something
still be missing in the machine's case?
If this machine could "hear" a sound and connect it with other things it
already maintained somewhere in its database and this connection involved links
with the same kinds of things we link to when we hear that sound, and this
machine could act on this (respond as we might, act as we might) then to what
extent would we think this machine lacked understanding or awareness of what it
had "heard"?
> Yes, I think Wittgenstein's philo has helped raise my "suspicion
> quotient" (made me more of a private eye, in the sense of detective).
> He's always having us fight the bewitching effects of mental images.
The issue with mental images occurs when we take them as if they are things in
the world because of the way our language treats them instead of recogizing
they are entirely different and that the language works differently in relation
to them!
> Unless one develops deep suspicion of these mental pictures, I don't
> think one has cultivated the necessary mindset for "getting" the
> Investigations.
I think it's as easy or easier to be bewitched by the Wittgensteinian attack on
mental words and to think, by this, that Wittgenstein meant to completely
jettison such terms. In fact, he only wanted us to use them in their right
contexts, not to take them on holiday as philosophy so often does.
> Being *proud* of one's interior process is not what
> one needs here. Be *skeptical*. See how mental imagery might *get in
> the way* of understanding and thinking.
>
And also how it might enhance it. Wittgensteinian philosophy is famously
critical as it should be. But that doesn't mean we must take it as entirely
destructive of other ways of thinking. We must see that it's constuctive in
very important ways, too, because it enables us to see new angles, new aspects
of old things, while clearing away the cobwebs that so often impede progress in
other disciplines.
> This is especially clear when it comes to listening. You can easily
> tell when you're dealing with a poor listener. They glaze over. Why?
> Because they're thinking hard about what they're going to say next.
Or they'r not getting it or we're genuinely boring the hell out of them. I
sometimes do that when I wax too philosophical.
> We've all met these people in meetings. They look at you blankly,
> spinning their wheels about their own little speech. That's partly
> why their recall is so poor.
>
> Among Quakers, we like to cultivate spontaneity. We tend to ridicule
> the "monkey on your back" little voice in the head (often equated with
> "a thought process"), the "yama yama" as some call it. If you're busy
> listening to "the internal shithead" (shop talk) instead of tuning in
> the other person, then how will you ever be an effective clerk of the
> meeting? Bloody unlikely you'll ever get nominated, as people will
> see you're caught up in your own process, tune others out. We call
> that "selfishness" and don't value it highly.
>
Everyone is sometimes susceptible to that.
> > Your point about understanding even when you're sleeping or not engaged in
> > whatever it is you are said to understand is a good one but not quite to the
> > point here. The issue I was raising re: understanding had to do with the
> > instant or condition of getting something, of grasping a meaning, etc. While
> > we use "understand" to also refer to longer term dispositions to act in
> > certain ways, etc., that use isn't at issue here. The fact that we can use
> > words in different ways (as we manifestly can with "understand" here)
> > doesn't eliminate the interest we may have in a particular use.
>
> You say "the point" as if it were some objective thing between us we
> could both refer to, but of course it works both ways.
>
Well you were responding to a point I had made. I don't think you want to say
that it is impossible for someone to get off topic!
> If the point is to understand Wittgenstein, then I think one needs to
> wean oneself from so much 1st person obsession with one's mental life.
Apparently we have hit the old bedrock of our past disageements then. I make no
claims to be an expert Wittgenstein exegete or even to get him right all the
time. Nevertheless, I don't think my understanding of his thinking too far off
as the old crow flies. But then I'm sure others here will see this a little
differently. But that's what one would expect when thinkers from various walks
of life gather to hold forth.
> That may be an endless source of fascination for one but it's like
> reading a novel (by Hawkins?) while on a tour bus driving through
> Italy. One is going to miss seeing Italy.
>
Has Hawkins written fiction? If so I'm unaware of it.
> >> Speaking of elevators, there's a new kind catching on with all the
> >> buttons on the outside i.e. you commit to a floor before you get on.
> >> Once on the elevator, no buttons inside. Wild eh?
> >>
> >> > Any given individual's instance of understanding something will
> >> > certainly be
> >> > accompanied by understanding behavior when appropriate but, while it
> >> > will
> >> > not be identifiable with any single image or even the same image that
> >> > others
> >> > have, I want to say that it looks to me like we make a lot of
> >> > connections in
> >>
> >> ... or any image at all mind you, let's not anchor understanding to
> >> any ghostly or interior process, *not* because it's somehow illegal or
> >> irrelevant to mention such things (as I've already said, those "aha!"
> >> moments enter into it) but because the grammar evidently (on the face
> >> of it) follows a different pattern.
> >>
> >
> > Depends which use of "understand" we're interested in. Understanding as
> > getting it, as having a moment of insight or realization is not the same as
> > when we speak of understanding a language or of how to do something even
> > when we're not doing it.
> >
>
> I'm saying you don't want to artificially enumerate these as separable
> meanings of "understanding", imagining some fictitious dictionary
> where "my meaning" (the "selfish" 1st person one) always rises to the
> top as "the point" whereas what people actually mean by
> "understanding" in the great by and large (Italy) just flies by out
> the window, of no particular interest.
>
Why not? And why is it to artificially enumerate or separate them? Certainly
you don't want to say that all meanings are equal in all contexts!
> Wittgenstein goes to a lot of work to divorce "understanding" from any
> specific "aha!" experience.
Does he? Where? Yes he talks a lot about behavioral criteria. But he also talks
about seeing things in new ways. What is that but to have an aha moment?
> You can have those, and still
> misunderstand, ergo these experiences are not "the meaning" of the
> term, may just get in the way.
Or not. Why should we assume that "may" is the case?
> Be suspicious. At least just for a
> day, learn to "hate" your internal process. That might be impossible
> for you, but it's good advice I'm thinking, if the point is to grasp
> the PI.
Maybe I'll just have to pass on your grasp of it and stick with mine then.
> Put Hawkins and Minsky aside. They're getting in your way.
You sound like a religious teacher, a guru. Is that really an appropriate way
to approach Wittgenstein do you think? Would Wittgenstein have wanted us to put
other thinkers aside? Did he do that when he criticised Freud and Turing and
others?
> You can always go back to them, once you've had the gestalt switches
> Wittgenstein is hoping to induce (yes, more "aha!" experiences --
not
> denying their importance,
But that is precisely what you WERE doing just a little while ago! (You'd
probably be better off to skip the stream of consciousness response mode and do
a little more editing and pruning before clicking "send". Then you wouldn't
have to deal with these internal contradictions. -- Hope this doesn't get me in
too much trouble with Sean but this really did seem to warrant saying.)
> not for a moment, but different philosophies
> require different ways of looking and we know from the Necker Cube
> etc. that it's hard to see "both ways at once" (and there are more
> than "two ways" where philosophy is concerned)).
>
> Example: if you think "race" is a useful concept, you learn to see
> people as "pure" or "mixed" specimens, and this colors your world. On
> the other hand, if you know a lot of genetics, know there's not 'race
> gene', nor any secure basis for the concept in science, then after
> awhile you stop seeing 'pure' and 'mixed' people -- what a crazy idea!
>
So there IS a right way of looking at this? If so, then the question of whether
understanding in humans is made up of aha type moments strung together in a
history of experiences could be right, too! In that case, then what would be
the point of taking time out to smell the Necker Cube?
> You can see the world as "flat" and not know it, then fly around the
> globe, go into space, have some other experiences, and report later "I
> never realized it, but I used to think of the world as 'flat' -- I
> couldn't go back to that way of seeing even if I wanted to at this
> point" (like looking at words in a language you know, and being
> *unable* to see it as "just squiggles" -- "the brain has changed!" I
> can hear Hawkins saying).
>
Again, this assumes a right way hat we can reach. If Wittgenstein's thinking
can't be applied in a field like cognitive science, then what good is it? If it
can, then why cut oneself off from those writing in that field? You remind me
of my old martial arts teacher. Her insisted that those who entered his school
give up eveything they had previously known or thought they knew about martial
arts, fighting, etc., and learn things from scratch, his way. I can see how
this makes some sense with some people in martial arts (though I have seen the
rule violated numerous times successfully). But should we approach philosophy
like that, too, relying on the master-student model?
> Wittgenstein wants to radically rewire your brain. You can fight
> that, say he's got it wrong, or you can take the red pill (you may
> remember I suggested taping one to the back of the PI as a marketing
> gimmick (it's just a placebo, doesn't really get you out of The Matrix
> (that'll take work!))).
>
I'm sorry but I reject the Alice in Wonderland-Matrix analogy. Wittgenstein is
not working wonders. He was a profound and original thinker but he wasn't
Morpheus or Neo or any other mythological archetype. Isn't it enough that he
added so much to the philsophical project?
> >> If you read a lot of political stuff, you'll see propositions like
> >> "UNDP failed to grasp the implications of these funding changes and
> >> continued its spending spree" i.e. we easily involve corporations,
> >> NGOs, agencies in the grammar of "understanding" ("failing to grasp"
> >> is a kind of misunderstanding). You might say "oh no, I'm talking
> >> only about what humans do, not agencies" but that's to simply slice
> >> away a big piece of the grammar and our goal is not to twist the
> >> meaning of "understand" but to accept standard usage and investigate
> >> accordingly.
> >>
> >> > our networked map-pictures (which constitute a level of representing --
> >> > a
> >> > nod here to Gerardo) and that it is the rough connections, types of
> >> > linkings, etc., that are the internal experience of understanding
> >> > something.
> >>
> >> Not everyone is so navel-gazey about this stuff. Introspective types,
> >> always fascinated by their interior processes as we call them, are
> >> probably not the most qualified to investigate meanings per
> >> Wittgenstein's philo. The PI is always taking us out of these first
> >> person scenarios and reminding us of when *other people* get to say we
> >> understand or not -- and they *do* get to, i.e. it's grammatically
> >> correct to say stuff like: "I don't care about your process, I just
> >> want to know if you understand or not, and for that, I don't need to
> >> give a fig about your 'mental life' as that's entirely irrelevant to
> >> my making my assessment" (that might be a driving instructor).
> >>
> >> Indeed, you'll get these defensive people who, when you tell them they
> >> don't understand something, like to fall back on lengthy descriptions
> >> of some mental process that led them to conclude thus and so. Who
> >> cares really? They don't understand, nuff said.
> >>
> >
> > I think the evidence shows Wittgenstein was a pretty introverted guy! More,
>
> Yes, he was, but he worked long and hard to overcome its bewitching
> aspects. "Takes one to know one" we might say, re solipsists (funny).
>
He was an introvert to the day he died on all the evidence available.
> > much of his thinking arises from long bouts of solitude or intensive
> > thinking about how his own mind works. The private language argument, for
>
> ... or how one's own mind *deceives*, is a sucker for misleading
> pictures. He's taking on hundreds if not thousands of years of
> philosophy, shifting the context. He's like a super duper athlete in
> some ways, had to work out intensively. The PI is philosophy on
> steroids compared to most of the anemic metaphysics you'll get from
> the bully pulpits.
>
This kind of hyperbole doesn't work for me.
> > instance, (an insight, really, more than an "argument") could only be
> > constructed if one thought carefully about what one is doing when using a
> > language and compared that in different scenarios including a private one.
> >
>
> I'd use "radically" in place of "carefully".
>
> >> > In keeping with Edelman's point about memory, I would suggest that when
> >> > we
> >> > share understandings with others it isn't because we have the exact same
> >> > linked representations, the same map connectors in play but, rather that
> >> > there is enough similarity for each to understand the other (even if
> >> > particular mental images differ as they very likely to).
> >> >
> >>
> >> I can't think of any mental images that'd be important to "prove" I
> >> understand the rules of the road in Oregon. I can play a "mental
> >> YouTube" of me stopping at a red light, putting out a flare when
> >> broken down, signalling before turning, but these all seem gratuitous
> >> and beside the point, to you as well I would suppose. Like, who cares
> >> what I imagine? This is about understanding, not what I'm imagining
> >> -- distinct concepts with different grammars.
> >>
> >> We don't say: she's sleeping now, so for the next few hours she has
> >> no understanding of politics or driving a car. How peculiar and
> >> strange that would sound, really goes against the way we use the word
> >> "understanding". Anyone talking in such a bizarre fashion is likely a
> >> philosopher or AI guy of some kind (a euphemism for "vaguely retarded"
> >> in some circles).
> >>
> >
> > Same point as I made above. This really refers to a different use of
> > "understand". I am asking about what it means to get something at the
> > instant one gets it, not what it means to have demonstrated an ongoing
> > ability to do or get something.
>
> "I'm not talking about the knight moving, just the bishops and the
> king" -- that's how the above sounds to me. You're very deliberately
> dissecting the grammar to keep just that little piece of it you
> consider "the point" (the "beef tip") and don't want to factor in the
> fact that these "instants of understanding" are complemented,
> intrinsically, by 3rd person viewpoints. You can have all the "aha!"
> experiences of understanding you like, and still not understand -- is
> how the grammar actually works, no ifs ands or buts.
>
We can be wrong in our aha's and we can be right. The question though isn't if
we're are one or the other but that both are examples of something happening in
our brains. I have yet to see an aha moment in a stuffed teddy bear (Dorothy's
Scarecrow friend notwithstanding).
SWM
> >> > Edelman's point that human memory is rough, approximate, constantly
> >> > changing, unlike computer memory, and that it thus operates differently
> >> > than
> >> > computer memory does, seems to me to be key here. Understanding, which
> >> > certainly relies on the memory function, is imprecise and fuzzy in the
> >> > same
> >> > way. This explains a lot, including our frequent uncertainty about what
> >> > others mean, the difficulties inherent in translating between languages
> >> > and
> >> > our own shifting grasps of things. Understanding is like shooting at a
> >> > moving target though, as we know in the world outside ourselves, such
> >> > targets are often successfully hit and some of us are better than others
> >> > at
> >> > doing so. Moreover, despite inherent capacities, our skills level can
> >> > often
> >> > be improved by practice and dedication.
> >>
> >> I don't think Edelman's focus on memory is especially explanatory w/r
> >> to "understanding". He's drawing us back to thinking the meaning of
> >> "understanding" is some first person ghostly process we can introspect
> >> about and point to with our mind's eye. That's so not helpful.
> >> Introverts who endlessly obsesses about their interior life shouldn't
> >> be allowed to drive a Wittgensteinian car as they'll just hit the
> >> first tree they come to. They won't understand.
> >>
> >> Kirby
> >>
>
> Kirby
>
> >> > SWM
> >> >
> >> >
>
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