--- In WittrsAMR@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> --- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@> wrote:
> >

> >
>
> > yes, you could reject the definition of identity in favor of a
> > definition that means 'identity and/or non-identity' but that doesn't
> > make the coin metaphor mean something contrary to scientific research.
> >
> > Joe
> >
> >Identity is one whether it may be true or false.
Mark of identity or identification marks.
Entire phenomenal world rests on this identity which is dualistic in its principle.Science to philosophy operates over identification only.

> In syntax, a verb is a word (part of speech) that usually denotes an action (bring, read), an occurrence (decompose, glitter), or a state of being (exist, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. It may also agree with the person, gender, and/or number of some of its arguments (subject, object, etc.). Examples of verbs include "to walk", "to run" and "to murder".
Entire human activity originate from this so called verb in some form or the other.
Dead symbols are alive in the human head and driving the automated organism.

thank you
sekhar.
>
>
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What does "thought" mean in this story? (see below) What if I substituted "impulse" instead? Would it be the same. Or let's say I said, "it isn't thought, its will." Or what if the headline had said, "Man moves robotic arm with mental projection."    
 
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091202/ap_on_he_me/eu_italy_robotic_hand

Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html

Experts: Man controlled robotic hand with thoughts
2 hrs 32 mins ago
ROME – A group of European scientists say they have successfully connected a robotic hand to a man who had lost an arm, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial hand and control it with his thoughts.
The experiment lasted a month. Scientists say it was the first time an amputee has been able to make complex movements using his mind to control a biomechanic hand connected to his nervous system.
The Italian-led team said at a news conference Wednesday in Rome that last year they implanted electrodes into the arm of the patient, who had lost his left hand and forearm in a car accident.
The electrodes were removed after a month, during which the man learned to wiggle the robotic fingers and make other movements.

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Intriguing case. What does a thought mean in the narrative? Well what do we mean in any situation where we say we moved a limb. If I want something on the shelf above me I lift my arm and reach for it. If I can't reach it, I may grab a long pole and poke at it until I can nudge it closer or cause it to fall into my waiting grasp.

A robot arm is normally like that pole and the way we move it is by performing certain physical manipulations, i.e., moving our natural limbs in a certain way.

But now we have a case where the robot arm or the pole is connected to us via our nervous system. There's no need to take hold of it with one of our hands and push it about, jiggle its parts, etc. We do with it as we do with a naturally connected limb in good working order: we simply decide to move and move it. There is no discernible intervening step between deciding to do it and then doing it, though there are certainly cases where, by "decide", we mean something more cerebral, as when I say "in a few moments I will take that pole and poke that can on the shelf" and there is a delay between my decision and my implementing it.

But in a great many cases there is no distinction between deciding and doing and this is what we usually mean by "will".

Is willing in this way a thought? Something else?

On the ordinary understanding of brains and minds it seems to me that there is no hard and fast distinction made between such willing and thinking (having a thought).

So when the narrative describes a case where a man moves a mechanical arm attached to him via the nervous system simply by deciding to do it as he would with a natural arm, we can fairly say he moved it by thought alone. That is he decided to move the false hand and thus moved it.

Is there some special usage of "thought" involved here? It doesn't look like that to me. But thanks for posting this news. I am, of course, interested in such research.

SWM

--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> What does "thought" mean in this story? (see below) What if I substituted "impulse" instead? Would it be the same. Or let's say I said, "it isn't thought, its will." Or what if the headline had said, "Man moves robotic arm with mental projection."    
>  
>

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091202/ap_on_he_me/eu_italy_robotic_hand
>

> Experts: Man controlled robotic hand with thoughts
> 2 hrs 32 mins ago
> ROME â€" A group of European scientists say they have successfully connected a robotic hand to a man who had lost an arm, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial hand and control it with his thoughts.

> The experiment lasted a month. Scientists say it was the first time an amputee has been able to make complex movements using his mind to control a biomechanic hand connected to his nervous system.
> The Italian-led team said at a news conference Wednesday in Rome that last year they implanted electrodes into the arm of the patient, who had lost his left hand and forearm in a car accident.
> The electrodes were removed after a month, during which the man learned to wiggle the robotic fingers and make other movements.

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(Stuart)

.. as always, the matter is not "what can be fairly said," as if it were an act of legislation or consensus. The issue is when deployed, what is said. You don't have any control over that. And if when opening the cupboard I am said to think when moving my arm, then I am left with the need for a new idea when I actually do think about something, such as "hmmm."

Or perhaps "hmmm" is really pontificatious grammar; whereas, "think" in the sense being offered is "concentration" grammar. And families being what they are, "think" stands for either sense, meaning the intelligent are never misled by the journalists. What I have said here, really, is that any word cousin to mind could have been used -- think, concentrate, will, project, attentive, coordinate, etc. -- and the SAME THING would have been reported.    

But my ultimate point is that one could cause an accident in the language game by saying: "no, you are not thinking when you do this," only to be meant in act of disputation of a contrary assertion.

Always, there is nothing here to debate. 

Regards.      
 
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@...> wrote:
>
> (Stuart)
>
> .. as always, the matter is not "what can be fairly said," as if it were an act of legislation or consensus. The issue is when deployed, what is said. You don't have any control over that. And if when opening the cupboard I am said to think when moving my arm, then I am left with the need for a new idea when I actually do think about something, such as "hmmm."
>

The issue isn't what any of us, in particular, mean (how we each use our words in some possibly unique way), but how the community of speakers we are affiliated with use the words. That is what it means to say "what can be fairly said". More specifically, I don't think anything in the examples I gave reflects some unique usage that I deploy apart from other English speakers.

My examples were meant to show what we may all legitimately say about the cases discussed, when speaking in English about them. It's possible that they are not, in fact, reflective of course. But then you or someone else needs to show why that is the case by presenting either problems with understanding the usages I've offered or a claim (that can be supported) that ordinary English speakers simply don't actually speak that way!

More specifically, I was showing what I take "think" and "thought" to mean in cases like this. This isn't meant to suggest that we don't use these words in other ways, too. But if we use them in the way I've suggested, then there is nothing untoward in describing moving our arm without some external aid as moving it by thought or thinking alone.

> Or perhaps "hmmm" is really pontificatious grammar; whereas, "think" in the sense being offered is "concentration" grammar. And families being what they are, "think" stands for either sense, meaning the intelligent are never misled by the journalists. What I have said here, really, is that any word cousin to mind could have been used -- think, concentrate, will, project, attentive, coordinate, etc. -- and the SAME THING would have been reported.    
>

Yes, I don't think this is substantially different from the point I was making except insofar as I was noting that I doubt much is gained by supposing that to speak of the movement as being effected by thought is somehow mistaken.

> But my ultimate point is that one could cause an accident in the language game by saying: "no, you are not thinking when you do this," only to be meant in act of disputation of a contrary assertion.
>
> Always, there is nothing here to debate. 
>

Yes, I agree with this last, that one could cause an accident as it were, by getting hung up on le mot juste when so many mots juste would do.

SWM

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(Stuart)

... you appear to agree, but I am still hesitant if you understand.  The matter has absolutely nothing to do with what the "community says" as if the matter were a legislative action. Imagine: "the community has decided to call it 'thought.' Even if true, this is neither here nor there. The issue is whether one can play an _expression_ in the language game and have it understood. Given the way language works, one could easily violate the community's preferred word (even if there were such a thing!) and still go about the matter perfectly well. This is precisely because of the fact that words like "thought" do not refer to anything particular, but a family of things, certain combinations of which could also be other family ideas (concentration, "will" and so forth). Indeed, one can imagine "thought" working very much like "chair."

So here is the point. You say that no one can say "thought" is the improper word to use. But in fact, one COULD assert that. And if one did, the debate that ensued would be a traffic accident. But what you don't understand is that the accident is as much caused by the person saying "thought can't be wrong" as it is caused by the one saying "yes it is." 

The issue is that the act of languaging always has to be conjugated. It's very about the words; It's always about "what it adds up to." So if one Mormon in this debate confines "thought" to pontificatious grammar while the other Adventist doesn't, .... well, you might as well start arguing about what ice cream is better. It would be the same sort of (worthless) debate. 

Regards.
   

Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html

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... that should be "never." It's never about the words.

------------------------------------

"It's very about the words; It's always about "what they add up to."

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@...> wrote:
>
> (Stuart)
>
> ... you appear to agree, but I am still hesitant if you understand.  The matter has absolutely nothing to do with what the "community says" as if the matter were a legislative action.

No one is talking about taking a vote! My reference was to a finding that this is what we, as part of a community of language speakers, mean when we use the words in question. But we don't do a study either, say of a representative sample of speakers. We are each presumably expert in the language we speak so what we do is examine that usage. When we do it with others, either reporting our findings from examining particular cases (as Wittgenstein did) or responding to the cases they cite, we are bringing that expertise to bear. So it is enough to do this via discussion but we do do it by discussion since we can always miss noticing things and feedback from others enables us to see that.

Assuming we are being honest about the issues under consideration and assuming we have a good sense of the language we're speaking, that is enough for this kind of analysis. In a sense, of course, it's no different than a logical analysis though, in that case when applying logical techniqes there are, presumably, some added knowledge and skill sets over and above ordinary language analysis. But Wittgenstein's point is that ordinary language analysis is more basic than specialized games like logic and so requires attention in and of itself.

> Imagine: "the community has decided to call it 'thought.' Even if true, this is neither here nor there. The issue is whether one can play an _expression_ in the language game and have it understood. Given the way language works, one could easily violate the community's preferred word (even if there were such a thing!) and still go about the matter perfectly well. This is precisely because of the fact that words like "thought" do not refer to anything particular, but a family of things, certain combinations of which could also be other family ideas (concentration, "will" and so forth). Indeed, one can imagine "thought" working very much like "chair."
>

We can always stipulate, individually or by group consensus. When the issue is families of uses though it's not the same since all expert language speakers will share the same understandings of the various uses in most cases. When a use gets more technical or otherwise more esoteric this may is probably a different case, i.e., even all expert users will not always be expert in every constituent language game that's played in the given language. Still, insofar as the language games are part and parcel of the larger language we ought to be able to see the points made against some more esoteric game we are unfamiliar with once it's pointed out to us!

> So here is the point. You say that no one can say "thought" is the improper word to use. But in fact, one COULD assert that. And if one did, the debate that ensued would be a traffic accident. But what you don't understand is that the accident is as much caused by the person saying "thought can't be wrong" as it is caused by the one saying "yes it is." 
>

No word is used improperly if it's used according to its accepted role in a language. However, there are some words which are new to a language or part of a language game within a given language with which we just may not be familiar. Then the thing to do is to explain the game and show how it's played.

However, you cannot simply declare that "thought" is the wrong word, as you seem to have started out to do (before thinking better of it) just because it doesn't accord with your usage or sound quite right to your mind's ear. You have to look at how the other users are using it, what they mean and how that fits with the usual usages. Then you can see the rightness of the use or not.

> The issue is that the act of languaging

Yikes, I hate that maufactured verb! It just sounds wrong to me. Yet I know what you mean by it so, besides objecting to its suggestion of overcomplication of this whole business, I pretty much know what you mean, nor would I ever say you can't use it as you do. All I can say is I don't like it because of this, or this, or this!

> always has to be conjugated. It's very about the words; It's always about "what it adds up to." So if one Mormon in this debate confines "thought" to pontificatious grammar while the other Adventist doesn't, .... well, you might as well start arguing about what ice cream is better. It would be the same sort of (worthless) debate. 
>
>

I think that is only partly true. There is real benefit to be had by examining actual uses and considering the variations. If there isn't, what's the point of Wittgensteinian considerations of the words and their uses at all?

SWM

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Dear sirsOne may use word knowledge instead of thought.Knowledge may have broader prospective

sekhar

The INTERNET now has a personality. YOURS! See your Yahoo! Homepage. http://in.yahoo.com/

Thought according to Wikipedia
Representative reactions towards stimuli from internal chemical reactions or external environmental
factors. The word comes from Old
English . þoht, geþoht, from stem of þencan "to conceive of in the mind,
consider" [2]
In common language, the word thinking covers numerous diverse psychological
activities. It is sometimes a synonym for “tending to believe,” especially with
less than full confidence (“I think that it will rain, but I am not sure”). At
other times it denotes the degree of attentiveness (“I did it without thinking”) or
whatever is in consciousness, especially if it refers to
something outside the immediate environment (“It made me think of my
grandmother”).sekhar

The INTERNET now has a personality. YOURS! See your Yahoo! Homepage. http://in.yahoo.com/

Definition of thought according to Wikipedia
>
> Representative reactions towards stimuli from internal chemical reactions or external environmental factors. The word comes from Old English . þoht, geþoht, from stem of þencan "to conceive of in the mind, consider" [2]

In common language, the word thinking covers numerous diverse psychological activities. It is sometimes a synonym for "tending to believe," especially with less than full confidence ("I think that it will rain, but I am not sure"). At other times it denotes the degree of attentiveness ("I did it without thinking") or whatever is in consciousness, especially if it refers to something outside the immediate environment ("It made me think of my grandmother").

thank you
sekhar
>
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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "brendamirsky" <wittrsamr@...> wrote:

> I think that is a scientific question in the end...

Exactly what is the scientific question? An by what method could it be
evaluated

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
>
> >--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Polanik jPolanik@ wrote:

> > we could then reformulate the hard problem of consciousness research
as
> > 'how does a measurable phenomena produce an experiencable
phenomena?'.

> I don't think your proposed solution will make much of a difference
> though because what is measurable is also experienceable

I agree with you. As I wrote on a related List, if I were looking at my
fMRI while looking around the room, I would be experiencing both my
brain activity and the room both which could be described --measured?),
two experiences, and would be faced with the problem of saying how they
are related.

You would say "causally", not just as a metaphor, but as hard claim that
X leads to Y. I find that claim doesn't survive examination. But that
doesn't mean that mind is a spirit, another substance, or an ontological
simple. Simply means that a causal account doesn't work in this
instance.

bruce

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "brendamirsky" <wittrsamr@> wrote:
>
> > I think that is a scientific question in the end...
>
> Exactly what is the scientific question? An by what method could it be
> evaluated
>
>
> =========================================

Can we build a contraption that has all the indicators of being conscious in the way we are?

The method would be an elaboration of the way we recognize consciousness in one another, i.e., a complex and extensive testing regimen consisting of reporting and behavioral interactions.

Of course there are other scientific questions but they weren't the ones I was referring to in that piece you picked up. Others might consist of things like:

1) Can we correlate precise brain activity to precise percepts (mental images or representations a la Dehaene's proposal)?

2) Can we develop interfacing devices that can decode (again Dehaene) particular sets of signals to the point of enabling the representations they carry to be reconstructed?

3) Can we develop machine models of the brain or aspects of it that can do things it or its aspects do?

SWM

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:
<snip>

>
> > I don't think your proposed solution will make much of a difference
> > though because what is measurable is also experienceable
>

> I agree with you. As I wrote on a related List, if I were looking at my
> fMRI while looking around the room, I would be experiencing both my
> brain activity and the room both which could be described --measured?),
> two experiences, and would be faced with the problem of saying how they
> are related.
>
> You would say "causally", not just as a metaphor, but as hard claim that
> X leads to Y. I find that claim doesn't survive examination. But that
> doesn't mean that mind is a spirit, another substance, or an ontological
> simple. Simply means that a causal account doesn't work in this
> instance.

That's probably because you're still hanging onto that rigid account of causality you have previously insisted on. On the wetness-of-water model there is no reason to think one could not say of an experience that it is an aspect of the workings, at a deeper (a purely physical) level, of a given brain activity (or set of such activities).

So "causal" or "identity"? You don't care for either tag but then you insist on sticking with meanings of the two terms I have explicitly disavowed in this context.

Sean, nearby, says no one can tell anyone not to use words as he wants. Well I certainly can't tell you not to, but then you can't tell me either. The only question remaining then is whether one of us diverging here from a perfectly standard, as in ordinary, use?

Based on my points about the ordinary uses of the terms as I have applied them, I would say that you, by denying my uses (or refusing to acknowledge them because they don't accord with your preferred conclusions) are, indeed, diverging.

SWM

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:

> Huh??? You just answered my question as to what is "physical in
nature"
> by saying, among other things, that "experiences do fit this
definition."

Sorry, typo.

> Anyway, the point is clearly that experience is not an object

which means to me, though it be natural, it isn't aspect of the physical
and hence can't stand in a causal relationship to the physical.

> I will not go from there to saying minds don't exist in any physical
sense
> (because they are obviously existentially dependend on a physical
platform)

Agreed, that's our dilemma. Mind is dependent upon brain and yet not
physical. How does mind originate from brain? Two possibilities.

1. Extend the term physical to those experiences traditionally termed
non-physical. Now mind can easily stand in a causal relationship to
brain. My problem with this: Mind here sounds like a light-bulb. The
switch is thrown. It lights up. The throwing of switch causes mind, as a
light bulb. But there isn't "mind" in solution. It's Bruce's mind. Try
putting Bruce into the causal relationship.

2. We simply cannot (ought not) try to write theories of creation. While
we say that the physical begins with the Big Bang, we exclude the
possibility of examining what came before, from what it orginated. By
the same token, at some point certain entities became aware, mindful.
What happened in the transition between the senseless matter that
operated on causal terms and the living being functioning purposively,
cannot be a subject of study because one can never insert oneself into
time between the two.

bruce

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:

>
> --- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > Huh??? You just answered my question as to what is "physical in
> nature"
> > by saying, among other things, that "experiences do fit this
> definition."
>
> Sorry, typo.

> > Anyway, the point is clearly that experience is not an object
>
> which means to me, though it be natural, it isn't aspect of the physical
> and hence can't stand in a causal relationship to the physical.
>

Why not? Not all objects are physical. My reference above was to that point! Did you cut the rest away? To be an object of reference is also to be an object in our language but that doesn't mean it's to be a physical object. The turning of a wheel is physical even if it is not a physical object like the wheel!

> > I will not go from there to saying minds don't exist in any physical
> sense

So you're willing to say they DO exist in some physical sense? What physical sense do you think is at work here then?

> > (because they are obviously existentially dependent on a physical
> platform)
>
> Agreed, that's our dilemma. Mind is dependent upon brain and yet not
> physical. How does mind originate from brain? Two possibilities.
>

Just because minds aren't physical objects doesn't mean they are not part of the physical universe and, if they are, then they ARE physical in the causal sense, i.e., that it is physical phenomena that cause their occurrence, bring them about! The "dilemma" only occurs when you can't separate this notion of being a physical object from being physically caused (being part of the physical universe). Another way of seeing this confusion is to recognize that involves thinking that mind, if it is not a physical object, must be utterly separate from physical objects. Of course, once you recognize that we cannot separate minds from physical platforms like brains you have this problem of two unlike phenomena coexisting in the same place. If one isn't the source of the other then they must be separately sourced. Of course, that is, finally, dualism. So to suppose there is this "dilemma" you speak of is to presume dualism.

> 1. Extend the term physical to those experiences traditionally termed
> non-physical.
> Now mind can easily stand in a causal relationship to
> brain. My problem with this: Mind here sounds like a light-bulb. The
> switch is thrown. It lights up. The throwing of switch causes mind, as a
> light bulb. But there isn't "mind" in solution. It's Bruce's mind. Try
> putting Bruce into the causal relationship.
>

Remove your brain or shut it off and poof, no more Bruce!

> 2. We simply cannot (ought not) try to write theories of creation. While
> we say that the physical begins with the Big Bang, we exclude the
> possibility of examining what came before, from what it orginated.

What doe theoretical physics and astronomy have to do with this? They address different questions and deal with different subject matters!

> By
> the same token, at some point certain entities became aware, mindful.
> What happened in the transition between the senseless matter that
> operated on causal terms and the living being functioning purposively,
> cannot be a subject of study because one can never insert oneself into
> time between the two.
>
> bruce
>
>

Go tell it to researchers like Dehaene then! He is finding physical markers of consciousness in brains and developing ways of explaining how brains do consciousness based on what he is finding. That's all this is about. The rest is metaphysical puffery.

SWM

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