[Wittrs] Re: What is Analysis?
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:40:35 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> I took a break from this discussion, partly because I was busy with
> other matters, and partly because of frustration over the level of
> miscommunication. This post is to tie up loose ends, and might be my
> last post to the thread. I do plan to start another thread on some of
> the outstanding issues.
>
I, too, doubt we are communicating very well, for whatever reason (I can't
actually figure it out).
>
> > My point had to do with your denial of a claim that the world is
> > ordered and known to be so because we have survived in it.
>
> Yet you have failed to make a convincing case that our survival depends
> on there being a human independent ordering of the world.
>
The convincing claim is that there is no grounds for doubting the order that
involves stepping in front of a bus hurtling down upon us on a busy street. If
there were no order external to us, there would be no reason to expect a dire
outcome. Sure one might happen. But it might not, as well. We just would have
no way of knowing. But we do know, or think we do.
Is THAT human imposed order? Well there are certainly human conceptual
categories at work. We can put a name to the entity that is bearing down upon
us, a bus and not some unknown object, etc. But THAT isn't all there is to
order.
Now we CAN imagine that the world is very different beyond what we can know but
that doesn't mean that we are either right or wrong about THAT. It just means
we can't know it isn't. But THAT is not evidence or argument for a claim that
the bus and other aspects of the external world do not operate in an ordered
way.
As I said before, I think, Neil, that you are guilty here of confusing
metaphysical doubt of the order that exists beyond ourselves (the recognition
that we can't know what we can't know) with real doubt that there is such
order. And insofar as real doubt doesn't occur to us, there is no reason to
suppose that the world is fundamentally without order or of a different order
than what we see.
Of course, this doesn't mean we see the world exactly as it is. Certainly we
impose our own sensory and conceptual mechanisms upon it. An eagle flying high
above the open plain and looking down below sees a different world than we do.
So, presumably, does a bat and a dolphin and a fish and, indeed, other
primates. There may even be (and likely is) some difference from human to
human, both by culture and by genetic makeup. But none of this militates
against the idea I initially floated here, that Hawkins' notion that our
brains' intelligence consists of patterning and pattern matching capacities in
a part of the brain (the neocortex) as characterized by the operations of
cellular columns arranged, sheet-like, in roughly six layers.
Against this view you've raised the issue that all the patterning, as far as we
know, is imposed on a world that, for all we know, is fundamentally without
patterns. And I have replied that in the context of Hawkins' description,
namely in the context of Evolutionary theory, it is both intelligible and
reasonable to assert that organisms developed and advanced in sophistication at
least partly in accord with their capacity to pick up and match the patterns of
their environmental surroundings.
>
> > I have had the good fortune to have a number of grandchildren born to
> > my children over the past few years, reacquainting me with infants
> > again. While the very youngest, a newborn, has limited sensory
> > awareness, it's clear that at a very early age the capacity to
> > sense the surrounding world grows dramatically. Yet there is no
> > evidence of conceptual growth in the earliest days.
>
> Of course there is no language ability at that early age. If your idea
> of concepts is closely tied to their use in language, then you would
> not notice the development of concepts.
>
I do tend to think of concepts in language terms but I recognize that there are
other ideas of what it means to have a concept. For instance, a baby, before it
has language, discovers permanence. Does it have a concept of permanence? Not
linguistically anyway. But it can show surprise when expectations associated
with permanence are not met. My cat can distinguish between me and other humans
or between me and a dog or a mouse. I doubt the snail in my garden can do
anything like that. Has my cat some capacity for concepts? I would say yes, but
would not ascribe a conceptual life to my cat. I would say, rather, that
concepts and language use are built on the same foundations. But, as I have
said many times, consciousness and intelligence seem to occur on a continuum
such that there is no clear dividing line between having something and not
having it but that the further apart the different instances are on the
continuum, the more clear the distinctions.
>
<snip>
>
> > ... while I propose, instead, that the conceptual capacity in
> > them, that we recognize as such, grows with the increasing sensing
> > capacities of their bodily equipment.
>
> I'm not sure where the "instead" comes from, for that's quite
> consistent with my view.
>
This tends to confirm a point I've made before, that our miscommunication seems
to have more to do with our different linguistic usages. Here you are agreeing
with me (or I with you) and yet we seem to have been arguing about it! At the
least, in the above, you seem to have gotten to the point where we are not in
disagreement about at least this one thing.
>
<snip>
>
> Suppose you were given an anesthetic that numbed your brain, but did
> not affect the neurons in your spinal column. Now suppose that a
> doctor use his mallet on your knee to illicit a knee jerk reflex. Do
> you think the knee jerk would occur? (I do). Do you think you would
> have any sensation while unconscious with that numbed brain? (I don't).
>
I would not say there is no sensation. Indeed, I would look at such a subject
responding as you describe and say there is sensation though he or she isn't
conscious of it. Not every sensation need make it all the way up the neural
system. Sometimes it occurs and is handled closer to impact. This, again, goes
to the continuum concept. If the neural system, including the brain, operates
at many levels of capacity, this would explain why creatures with more limited
brains (and overall neural systems) would evidence more limited capacities the
further down the line you go.
>
> >> I was just giving a comment on why the example of a snail is not
> >> obviously relevant. But I don't claim to know much about snails.
>
>
> > Nor I. Still it's hard to suppose they get no sensations at all in
> > doing what they do. Possible, yes, but unlikely given what we know
> > of their behavior as well of organisms in general.
>
> I'm pretty sure that an amoeba does not have sensations, though it is
> responsive to its environment.
I'm not. But again where what we would call "sensation" of the type we
recognize as such, would kick in is very likely higher up the scale though I
don't know quite where. I don't think it's reasonable to assume that a snail
that withdraws into its shell from contact with a surface that is uncongenail
to it, is without any sensation of that contact. We can't know. But its
behavior often looks to be sensation relevant, i.e., some surfaces will prompt
a quicker withdrawal while some will actually draw the creature on.
> Somewhere between the amoeba and the
> human, sensations appear. I don't know where the break point is. The
> kind of argument you were using seemed to not recognize that there are
> such differences.
>
>
I don't see why it should have to you. I have repeatedly said here that these
things occur on a continuum and we can't really be sure where the delineation
points occur or even if there are any hard and fast delineation points. I have
said multiple times in these discussions that it looks like the differences
become easier to recognize the farther apart the instances under consideration
are along the continuum of occurrence.
<snip>
> It's interesting that you are so strongly convinced that there must be
> a human independent order, but you cannot tell me where to look for
> evidence. I could give you more convincing evidence than that, for the
> existence of a tooth fairy.
>
> If you want to find evidence of such an order, I suggest that you look
> in the cultural myths of the Western traditions.
>
>
The reluctance to step off the street in front of a tractor-trailer hurtling
down upon us on a busy thoroughfare is not a matter of cultural myths. A
tribesman from a recently discovered stone age tribe in Borneo might not know
what the tractor-trailer is or just how dangerous it can be put put him on that
street and try to get him to walk directly in front of the on-rushing vehicle
and I strongly doubt he will do so with nonchalance!
Yes, we impose certain kinds of order on the world around us and yes some of it
is culturally devised and could be quite different had the cultural history
been different. But THAT isn't the kind of order in question here, and
certainly not what Hawkins was talking about.
> > The issue is how we understand the world around us.
>
> Indeed it is. That's pretty much the question of intentionality that
> you raised when starting the thread. But it seems that you you don't
> want hear how I address that issue.
>
>
I have heard it and consider it mistaken insofar as you suggest that this is
only about cultural myths! Moreover, I have given my reasons why I think THAT
approach is mistaken.
> > We have certain understandings already, of course, ...
>
> Indeed. Those "certain understandings" are from the cultural myths I
> just referred to. It seems that you don't like challenges to those
> "certain understandings".
>
>
What challenges to what understandings are you talking about? I have said here
many times that I find Hawkins' proposal that intelligence in brains is a
manifestation of the patterning behavior of neocortex neuronal clusters, via
hierarchical links between cell groupings, to be a very strong one. How does
THAT become for you "challenges to those 'certain understandings'"?
> > In the present case, the issue is whether there is evidence for
> > evolution (there is) and then what that theory entails.
>
> No, that is not it at all. I have not in any way challenged the
> evidence for evolution.
My point is based on the implications of evolution, not on the evidence for
evolution. I am not suggesting you are challenging evolution but that you are
failing to see certain implications of the thesis.
> The "certain understandings" that you find so
> compelling actually date back to an era when creationism was dominant
> in Western thought.
>
Which ones do you think I am thinking about?
>
> > My claim is only that Hawkins makes a good point when he proposes
> > that brains work by patterning the environments in which they find
> > themselves and that those patterns accurately capture (to varying
> > degrees of course) what is really going on in those environments
> > because, if they didn't, the organisms with the brains would not
> > have survived and prospered in the world as they have.
>
> I don't disagree with that at all. However, that does not require that
> there be a human independent order in the world.
>
> Regards,
> Neil
>
It does because, if there isn't, then there is no benefit for the brain to
pattern one way instead of another. Evolution presumes there is such a benefit
to the organisms and that this helps explain why organisms change and new
species arise.
SWM
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