[Wittrs] Re: On the Mechanism of Understanding
- From: "Stuart W. Mirsky" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:32:15 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kirby urner <kirby.urner@...> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 7:02 PM, Stuart W. Mirsky<SWMirsky@...> wrote:
>
> << SNIP >>
>
> >> That's OK. I was doing Cult of Athena earlier on this list, have a
> >> whole blog about it I've cited. But you're not necessarily the guy
> >> I'm counting on to make sense of it all. Sorry for these tangents,
> >> but I've got work to do here. You're welcome to lurk of course.
> >>
> >
> > Hmmm, I thought I had actually started this thread and so might possibly
> > have an interest in some of what gets said here! But you're right. At this
> > point you've kind of taken it in a different direction. Maybe I'll drop back
> > into lurker status as you suggest, pending responses that are more related
> > to what I was initially talking about.
>
> I'm interested in some of what you talk about and bounce off it but
> always pay attention to "thread ownership" -- too much overhead to
> keep track. I just a scroll streaming by, each of us jumping in when
> we feel moved to do so.
>
> It's like shuffling multiple decks of cards together, what we do.
>
> My model is a coffee shop or restaurant, people around tables, lots of
> meandering discussion, no set agenda.
>
> Sean is a referee of sorts, and a chief promulgator / advertiser for
> the list ("Wittgenstein-trained people think more clearly!"), as well
> as a discussant.
>
> Sean, if you're reading this: I steer clear of PHP, as well as Visual Basic.
>
> >> I have no clear idea what you mean by "the issues we commenced with"
> >> and I don't know what you mean by stream of consciousness. If you're
> >> implying I don't work hard on these posts, that's incorrect. I'm
> >> being meticulous and to the point (my points, but in a dialog format,
> >> connecting to your points as I see fit).
> >>
> >
> > Yes, you certainly can do it your way. It's just that it no longer seems to
> > have much to do with what I started talking about. I'll shift into lurk mode
> > then as per your suggestion.
>
> I want to inject new content, sometimes without starting a separate thread.
>
> I'll branch off to new topics *within* a thread -- convenient for me,
> and I'm not the only one doing it am I?
>
> >> >> You see I'm being internally consistent yes? As I say above, I've so
> >> >> far seen nothing but fiction from Hawkins, science fiction.
> >> >>
> >>
> >> Guess not?
> >>
> > Looks like you're responding to your own comment?
> >
>
> Guessing about your response, but yeah, just talking to myself there.
>
> >> If a person avers he has no ability to fly a plane, doesn't understand
> >> how to do it, we wouldn't put him at the controls of a plane (most
> >> likely).
> >>
> >
> > Maybe he's just being modest? Or trying to avoid being asked to take over?
> >
>
> Maybe. Like a shrinking violet type.
>
> Other people in the room could fly just as well, he'd rather pose as a
> "non-pilot".
>
> Yeah sure, makes sense.
>
> "Is there a doctor in the house?" Sometimes there's more than one,
> but not all are equally eager to become involved.
>
> >> But even if a person avers he *does* have that ability, we likely
> >> still need to test, no matter how vociferously (zealously) he
> >> proclaims to understand how to pilot (unless we're already in the air,
> >> no one else stepping forward -- prepare for a thrill ride then, lots
> >> of movies go like this).
> >>
> >> Endless similar other examples...
> >>
> >
> > But not to the point of what I was speaking about (i.e., what constitutes
> > understanding something, not how many different ways can we use
> > "understanding" and how do they relate to one another?). But endless, yes .
> > . .
>
> This is a Wittgenstein list, so you should be used to this by now:
> when we ask what constitutes "understanding" we think that means
> something like "what does it mean to understand?" or "what does
> understanding mean?"
>
> As Wittgenstein-trained folks, we're habituated (positively
> reinforced, trained) to then do like an anthropological analysis where
> we call up "use cases" we think are generic enough and ordinary enough
> that people might relate to them ("yes, that's how we talk"), and yet
> are on target enough that some aspect of the grammar is revealed
> (examples should be selected with some care).
>
> Teacher: 1, 12, 42, 92... what's next.
>
> Student: um, um, um.... I don't get it.
>
> Teacher: hint: cuboctahedron.
>
> Student: oh yeah, duh... 162.
>
> Teacher: Excellent! You seem to understand. How about the next number?
>
> (and so on)
>
> The typical "patient in need of therapy" that Wittgenstein casts
> himself as trying to assist, will come forward with such expressions
> as "understanding is an ephemeral brain-hosted process that goes on
> privately in a mental space with only one observer, the cogito".
>
> That's *exactly* the kind of thinking the PI is designed to "clear up"
> (as in "dispel").
>
> Your presence on this list is valuable in part because you're good at
> providing a living example of what we're trained to look for.
>
> I feel like rubbing my hands in Mr. Burns fashion and saying
> "Excellent!" every time I read one of your introspective analyses of
> what "understanding" means. Who could ask for better grist for the
> mill?
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irtsm7mLG5k (over 22K views as of today)
>
> >> Is my mind "synthetic"?
> >>
> >
> > Depends what you mean by the term, and what I do. Given the meaning I have
> > been using here, the right answer is no. But knowing your penchant for
> > innovative thinking I'd expect you would demur. I suppose one might say that
> > if you're oriented towards putting things together or making things, rather
> > than taking them apart, you have a synthetic mind. It wouldn't mean the same
> > thing as my use but the word is the same (spelled the same, pronounced the
> > same, sounds the same and with enough family resemblances between the two
> > uses to allow us to slip a bit between them).
>
> I think if you opened my head and found a bunch of rubber tubing, then
> you'd say I had a synthetic mind. A lot depends on what we find in
> the head.
>
> I go back to The Turk, which beat Napoleon at chess. They'd open the
> doors on this contraption and show only gears. You could look through
> it. This was an early magician's trick.
>
> People didn't know what to say. Debates raged.
>
> Nowadays we know there was a "little man" (a literal dwarf) inside,
> but then we have Big Blue or, more accessibly, $30 chess playing
> devices that would likely beat Napoleon just as handily (I'm guessing
> he was no grand master, more average, like me).
>
> But no one worries today's chess playing computers might be conscious.
> That's not on the table.
>
> >
> >> You mean like polyester isn't a natural fiber but a man-made one, are
> >> applying this meme in the realm of cognitive "science" to conjure some
> >> imagery (fantasies). Anything more?
> >>
> >
> > "Manufactured" might do it. Or "constructed". "Man-made" is another
> > possibility.
> >
>
> If I had the time and the talent, I might write a science fiction
> novel in which whales finally figure out a way to "jam" human
> frequencies and/or control their thoughts, learn how to steal
> elections. They've been wanting to do this ever since the navy
> started hurting them with ear-splitting sonar.
>
> For several cycles, we humans suspect nothing, then one of the whales
> defects and explains how the last eight USA presidents have been put
> there by the whales (it communicates through dreams, to a select group
> of children).
>
> Of course that invokes all kinds of grammars that "modern science" in
> the west dismisses out of hand. On the other hand, I've met Chinese
> bankers who insist large companies would go under without telepathy,
> but then the Chinese character for "telepathy" doesn't exactly map to
> any English concept (not the first time that's happened).
>
> http://www.opentcm.com/Article1198.html
>
> telepathy
> (å??) å¿?é??æ??æ??, å?³å¿?è¡" (getting this Unicode OK?)
>
> http://www.eudict.com/?lang=engall&word=telepathy
>
> >> He was denying the "aha moment" in itself constitutes "the meaning" of
> >> "understanding". He explains why. The explanations are cogent but
> >> have been repeated here too many times already so I won't do it again
> >> (until another post maybe).
> >>
> >
> > I wasn't talking about the meaning of "understanding" in all its
> > ramifications or even in ordinary language applications. I was specifically
> > focusing on explaining the phenomenon we call "understanding' in organisms
> > with brains so that we could see if it was replicable, i.e., what happens in
> > brains that is this understanding. That we often use "understand" in a
> > variety of ways is only tangentially of interest in such a discussion.
>
> See, this is the whole point of our seeming "disagreement". But
> surely you're used to this. This is a *Wittgenstein* list for crying
> out loud.
>
> I'm going to put words in Wittgenstein's mouth (picture a sock
> puppet). You're more than welcome to say I'm misrepresenting his
> thinking.
>
> Wittgenstein: to think of "understanding" as a phenomenon, some
> "process" that happens in the brain, is a misuse of the word that
> betrays a misunderstanding of its meaning.
>
> Now, to go find something I can quote... (don't wanna be too lazy)...
>
> """
> This introduces two more themes which dominate his later philosophy.
> One is the variety of different modes of meaning, and the other is the
> therapeutic character of philosophy, which frees us from the grip of
> false analogies.
>
> The second theme is especially important in the philosophy of mind.
> Take, for example, his treatment of the phenomenon of understanding.
> It is only too easy to be misled by the following piece of analogical
> reasoning. If A uses an ordinary word like 'blue', and B understands
> it, his understanding must be a mental process because it is not a
> physical one. Now we can often explain a physical process by pointing
> to some physical event that produces it. So in order to explain
> understanding, we should look for an introspectible mental event. The
> most likely candidate is the occurrence of an image of the colour in
> B's mind. So we are led to conclude that understanding essentially
> involves mental images.
>
> Wittgenstein's therapeutic treatment of this case starts from the
> familiar fact, forgotten by this theory, that quite often B has no
> mental image. Then he argues that, even when B has one, its occurrence
> does not explain his understanding. For in order to get the right
> image and know that he has got it, B must already understand the word
> 'blue', unless, of course, he got the right image by luck. But in that
> case he might have taken the word 'blue' to mean 'coloured' or
> anything under the sun.
>
> More generally, Wittgenstein claims that understanding is not really a
> mental process at all. If you silently run through the dates of the
> kings of England, that is a mental process. But often there is nothing
> introspectible to mark the achievement of understanding. What counts
> is B's ability to operate with the word 'blue'. The idea that at the
> moment of understanding there must be mental events too quick to be
> introspected is a myth. It is the false analogy with physical
> phenomena that generates the myth, and the cure is to remind ourselves
> of the familiar facts of our mental lives, from which the analogy has
> alienated us. This is not behaviourism. Wittgenstein's point is not
> that there are no mental events or processes, but rather that we
> exaggerate their frequency, because we credit them with more
> explanatory power than they actually possess.
> """
> [ http://www.answers.com/topic/wittgenstein-s-philosophy-of-mind ]
>
> That's really quite good I think, and pretty standard. I emphasize:
> Wittgenstein claims that understanding is not really a mental process
> at all.
I read the cited material by David Pears, thanks. (You've pulled me out of
lurker mode after all.)
Where does Wittgenstein say anywhere that "understanding is not really a mental
process at all" as you do above? Note that Pears doesn't suggest Wittgenstein
denies mental processes per se but only that mental processes are not what we
normally mean when we speak of undertanding.
Pears suggests that Wittgenstein's work aims at explaining something like
"understanding" in a way that is not dependent on a one to one correlation
between an expression and some private image qua mental process. But THAT isn't
the case I was making.
My point was to note that there is a mental process that goes on (or we would
just be inert masses of material) but that this process is matter of
connectivity in a system where different mappings link back and forth and that
each time we use a word the meaning is found in the links that occur. As both
Edelman and Hawkins are proposing, it looks to me like this linking is highly
dynamic. That is, it is constantly changing, re-forming.
Edelman says we never remember the same thing twice in the same way. Hawkins
that we remember adumbrations, structural relationships between different
elements but not all the content, the detail. (Perhaps there are other brain
areas that offer up aspects of detail which we use to color in the lines in any
given instance of remembering.) Understanding involves remembering through this
same re-linking process. Of course this isn't pertinent if we're just asking
about what it means to say Johnny (or Kirby) understands X. We don't point to
some mental image or even to an internal mental process. That would make no
sense because we never see that and language is keyed to observables. The
context doesn't warrant that sort of reference. If we want to know how Kirby
works, on the other hand (a different context in which to ask the question
about how he understands), then we want to know what his brain is doing that
results in the behaviors that are the understanding he is manifesting.
This all actually accords quite nicely with a Wittgensteinian picture which is
similarly dynamic, suggesting understanding is a function of the interplay and
use of terms between language users. The mistake people often make and which
Wittgenstein was reacting against is to suppose that symbol X corresponds to
mental picture Y and that correspondence constitutes the meaning or that Y does.
Neither is part of what I have suggested here. I think you are confusing
different issues, Kirby. If an alien cut you open to know how you ticked, he
(it?) would be looking to see how your brain does what it does to yield certain
behaviors. He wouldn't be looking at how you used your language. Cognitive
science is kind of like that,
With Edelman and Hawkins, I am suggesting that there is constant flux, constant
variance in our usages, a la Wittgenstein, BECAUSE recognizing a meaning
(understanding) involves constantly reconstructing complex pictures through an
associative brain process.
Again, the idea that understanding "understanding" is just a matter of asking
about the many uses of the word in ordinary language is simply the wrong
approach here. What's of interest in this case is how minds work (in this case
that means how brains work). The question before us, what does it mean "to
understand" is not directed to word usage in a range of typical contexts. It's
not behaviorally oriented. It's after a mechanical type answer. The context is
very precise: it is how do human minds achieve understanding and what happens
in the brain to produce or manifest understanding?
What we do as language speakers isn't highly relevant here. It's what happens
in the human organism that enables us to be language speakers that is.
Wittgenstein correctly objected to mixing contexts but there is no evidence I
am aware of that he thought there was no value in studying or thinking about
what brains do to produce understanding.
>
> Here's another one I like, quote often (#97):
>
> We are under the illusion that what is peculiar, profound, essential,
> in our investigation, resides in its trying to grasp the incomparable
> essence of language. That is, the order existing between the concepts
> of proposition, word, proof, truth, experience, and so on. This order
> is a super-order between --so to speak-- super-concepts. Whereas, of
> course, if the words "language", "experience", "world", have a use, it
> must be as humble a one as that of the words "table", "lamp", "door".
>
Interesting as Wittgenstein always is. But how do you think this is relevant to
what I've said above?
> > Hawkins makes no claim to be doing philosophy. He claims to be doing
> > science. I haven't gotten very deep into his book and he is new to me so I
> > can't comment extensively on him. But I thought he made a very interesting
> > point about how human memory works and that 1) it seemed to jibe with what
> > happened to me in the anecdote I recounted and with some other common
> > phenomena and 2) it plays a role in what we mean by "understanding" in
> > relation to what brains do when understanding occurs (since memory is part
> > of this).
>
> There was some storytelling around memory you quoted, didn't see any
> science there. Let's apply the Popperian test: what experiment would
> falsify Hawkins theories about what constitutes understanding? There
> should be an easy answer, or lets agree this isn't science. You can't
> be right about something, unless it also makes sense to be wrong about
> it.
>
Of course I have only dipped a toe into his book thus far so I don't know where
he's headed. But my guess is he's going to say that the theory of how brains do
minds that he is presenting will be testable by building new kinds of thinking
machines which will do X, Y and Z better than computers and more like real
brains do it. His aim, after all, is to develop the capability of synthesizing
human type intelligence. You certainly can't accuse him of not doing science
from the brief quote I offered and my limited reading of him to date. Indeed,
why would you want to, so early on?
As to philosophy, all theoretical science is not ipso facto philosophy. Popper
was certainly right to note there are gray areas, that the demarcation is fuzzy
between them.
> >> No, because you have your canned response to this issue.
> >>
> >
> > I never have "canned responses". I always try to bring in my real life
> > experiences. Sometimes, of course, I will bring up the same experiences more
> > than once because I am taken with the connections. But that strikes me as a
> > pretty fair way to proceed. If I think there are important issues to be
> > uncovered, why not repeat?
> >
>
> OK, I retract "canned" -- you're not just cutting and pasting, except
> maybe that one time with that newspaper article about your heart
> attack experience (nothing wrong with doing that, either, I read the
> whole thing with interest).
>
> You have a fairly standardized way of insisting that "understanding"
> is a mental process, whereas I can assure you I have no experience of
> such a process, don't ever introspect and say "ah, there's that
> understanding thing happening". I can *imagine* thinking that way,
> but it's just not the way I think.
>
Yes, it may be we don't think the same way. It's pretty clear to me that
different brains work differently. I'm pretty crumby at math but pretty decent
with words. I tend to think in pictures a lot but abstractions (when I can't
conjure up some kind of picture) don't work for me. I'm also deaf to the fine
points of movies though I love visual arts. My best writing (and the kind I
most like to read) tends to be highly visual. I expect this is not the same way
everyone operates.
As to what I mean by "understanding", well that has to be seen in the context
of the question of how do brains make minds? I agree that it sometimes pays to
explore how we use a term like "understanding", especially if someone is
offering some general definition or a metaphysical theory about it. Then we
want to get back to the ordinary usages to see whether such high falutin ideas
cohere. But this does not mean there are not distinct and sometimes relatively
technical contexts in which our usage may be lodged.
In that case, there isn't a lot of point trying to talk about other usages. It
is THIS specialized usage that is at issue. Is that "standardized"? Well, I
have, over the years, developed a picture of how this works in connection with
my understanding of consciousness as a phenomenon in the world. I might be
right or I might not. But I find the suggestions of Edelman and Hawkins vis a
vis memory in connection with our understanding the underlying constituents and
dynamics of human type intelligence to be rather helpful in this effort.
> >> You insist there's a separate but equally important meaning of
> >> "understanding" that adheres to internal brain processes and/or
> >> introspected private mental events, somehow connected (threads about
> >> "causation" attach here).
> >>
> >> You have no intention of being talked out of that view (Wittgenstein
> >> would be the ticket, were you ever to tire of it).
> >>
> >> It's a core belief you have. We're up against dogma.
> >>
> >> So what else is new right?
> >>
> >
> > Well I've changed my views on this a few times, actually. That's not usually
> > typical of "dogma".
>
> Well yes, a dogmatic person might flip. And I don't deny that I'm
> non-dogmatic about anything myself i.e. I'm dogmatic sometimes,
> tenaciously cling to various beliefs e.g. that pre-college students
> need to learn about Mites at least (if not Sytes) -- talking about
> some geometric shoptalk involving primitive polyhedra.
>
> > Do I "insist" there's a meaning of "understanding" that is particularly
> > relevant here, a meaning having to do with science? Yes, I guess I do. I'm
>
> I'm not persuaded that it's in any way "scientific" to cling to this
> fantasy of an interior process that is "the mental process of
> understanding". That's like believing in ghosts in my book (I'm more
> open to ghost talk actually, or talk about muses).
>
I suspect you are confusing metaphysical claims with scientific ones here and
that may be because the dividing line is often vague and difficult to discern.
It may also be because you have some kind of dogmatic (of your own) commitment
to a Wittgensteinian approach which you wrongly take to override or sidestep
science in certain areas (like minds?).
> Like I can imagine a big red eye and say "that's the eye of my cogito,
> the mind's eye people talk about" (sort of Lord of the Rings). But I
> don't really *believe* in such a big red eye (nor in a small blue one
> either, nor any "eye" at all).
>
This isn't about a "cogito". If you've been following along with my comments
you'd know that I am most sympathetic to Dennett's thesis that the "self" is,
in a sense, an illusion. (This isn't to say there is no self at all but,
rather, that it isn't, at bottom, self-like because it is undergirded by a lot
of perfectly dumb, unaware, fragmented processes.)
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wukSatWQJI (the cogito, observing its
> private mental landscape)
>
> What you're calling science in this context I call "science fiction"
> and/or "old skool philosophy" and/or "anemic metaphysics".
>
You are wrong then. I think that sounds like a prejudice you are carrying with
you.
> > interested in what constitues the things we recognize as being conscious, as
> > having consciousness, and how the brain does them. That we use the word
> > "understand" in a number of ways is interesting, too. But I am using it in
> > this PARTICULAR way in this thread (or I was, since I'm now supposed to be
> > lurking). The question at hand is NOT how do we use "understand" across a
> > range of cases but how does what we call "understanding" happen in a brain?
>
> I guess I'd say "I don't believe in that science" or "I am confidant
> there's no 'process in the brain' we might identify as 'the
> understanding process' or "this doesn't come across as 'science' to
> me".
I am not claiming a unique "understanding process". I am suggesting there are
proocesses which do certain things which in effect produce our subjective
selves including its various constituent elements and that one of these is
understanding. However, what we call "understanding" might be a number of
different processes rather than just one. More, I am suggesting that the
meaning of anything we understand may never be a single thing but, in keeping
with Edelman's idea, a constantly shifting reconstruction. Again, think of the
film Rashomon where different people have different memories of the same event.
We, according to Edelman, will also find that we remember the same thing
differently over time and that is likely because we are relying on the
mechanism of adumbration, of structural recall, that Hawkins described and
because, as Edelman notes, each time we remember, new associations happen while
older ones may fade. Memory, on this view is a dynamic assembling process,
contra what we call memory in a computer.
>
> What I think isn't all that debatable is this: my response along
> these lines is *par for the course* among people who've read and
> understood the PI, i.e. my understanding of Wittgenstein is in no way
> freakish or unusual in this regard. You can take that to the bank.
>
I think that bank may need an FDIC bailout because I think you are not really
getting the Wittgensteinian point here, even if your view is a common one among
Wittgensteinian exegetes. I recall reading Malcolm a while back on private
language (I think it was) and marveling to myself that he seemed to have missed
Wittgenstein's point. (Perhaps though it was about another issue. It was a long
time ago.) Just being in Wittgenstein's thrall is not evidence of our getting
his points.
On the other hand, I have concluded that I have gotten him wrong a few times
myself. I think Duncan cleared up a few things for me back in the old days and
prompted me to re-think some of what I had once taken to the bank myself. We
are certainly not always the best judges of our own competence as you have
rightly pointed out elsewhere.
> >> OK, so you talked yourself into without that much help from Hawkins.
> >> Congrats then.
> >>
> >
> > Or perhaps I discovered an interesting aspect (at least interesting to me)
> > of what it means when we do what we call understand?
> >
>
> I see you as this inventive narrator in a fantasy world, imagining all
> these ephemeral processes and writing about them as if you were a kind
> of naturalist explorer, a pioneer in some inner world. I'm reminded
> of Narnia.
>
> In olden times, people believed in gods (goddesses!) and angels.
> These would visit and one would converse with them. These days, the
> inner world is more lonely, as only the solo cogito inhabits it, privy
> to its isolated "mental theater" as Gilbert Ryle calls it.
>
> The grammar is malleable though. If we bring in telepathy or thought
> control or any number of competing science fiction ideas into the mix
> (as distinct from the more standard "solitary cogito" fantasy (fairy
> tale)) then we get changes in ethnicity (as I'd put it). We become
> more Chinese in our thinking, or more North American (as distinct from
> Anglo-European). Or maybe we're simply "crazy" (a catch all for
> people who wear tin foil hats cuzza HAARP or whatever -- Patrick and I
> are planning a beer by that brand, with the tag line: mind control:
> inexpensive, not cheap).
>
Here you are tempting me to resume that lurkere status you earlier recommended
to me!
> >>
> >> With or without the benefit of Wittgenstein's insights, yes.
> >>
> >
> > Always with the benefit of Wittgensteinian insights but not to the point of
> > denying new insights or new information or the search for these.
> >
>
> I get the feeling you'd consider telepathy out of bounds, but are OK
> with "understanding" being an introspective process.
You misunderstand. I am not saying understanding requires our introspection,
only that introspecting into what we mean by understanding yields a picture of
physical processes doing certain things and they may work in a certain way or
in another and it's worth considering these different possibilities. I see you
are confusing this with a claim that when we understand we are engaging in
some special category of introspection. THAT is NOT what I have presented here.
> I have a
> different set of biases, obviously (I'm out of the closet Asian in
> some blog posts, fair warning -- picture me as a Chinaman, long beard
> (goes with that martial arts image we were yakking about, earlier in
> this thread)).
>
> Kirby as Asian:
> http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2009/07/outta-da-closet.html
>
> >> It's more like if there's stuff I'd like to say, about other matters
> >> besides the points you bring up, then here is an OK and/or convenient
> >> place to do it.
> >>
> >
> > Yes, of course, feel free. I wasn't suggesting you aren't free to free
> > associate or say whatever is of interest to you. It was just that I had been
> > under the impression that you were responding to me and the items I'd put on
> > the table. When I realized you weren't, I noted that. It's not a criticism
> > or meant to be pejorative. If you're doing a different thing here, there's
> > no reason to worry about my opinion. I can do the lurker thing as you
> > suggest (though I'm not yet doing it very well -- but I'm going to try
> > harder for sure).
>
> It's not that I'm not responding to you, it's that I'm *also* bouncing
> off your walls (from outside), populating a searchable electronic
> archive with stuff about our Coffee Shops Network for example.
>
> I'm chief marketing officer (CMO) for said outfit and since
> Wittgenstein is a hero of mine, it's kinda like I wanna be "buried"
> here, in the sense of leaving auditable content in a Wittgensteinian
> "bone yard". You're in a nearby grave (sorry to be so Halloweeny), so
> hey, lets chatter and be friendly.
>
> >> You seem to think something similar in that you're tracking the
> >> cog-sci people, applaud their efforts as amateur philosophers trying
> >> to solve the mind-body problem all over again.
> >>
> >
> > Say rather that I am interested in their efforts and the information they
> > develop because of the insights into the world I think it portends.
> >
>
> Not holding my breath there, think cog-sci is mostly a fad, not a
> science. If it were honest about not being a science, I think it'd
> last longer, but in calling it cog-sci, it's already too late for
> that.
>
> >> I'm personally not invested in that agenda, but feel I should say why.
> >> Responding to your posts gives valuable context and contrast. Hope
> >> ya don't mind. You make a good foil.
> >>
> >
> > No, I don't, of course. It's just that I have a tendency to keep responding
> > and sometimes don't realize when the issues on the table are no longer
> > connected with what prompted my involvement. I'll follow your comments
> > though. You're always interesting and imaginative and certainly bring a
> > creative flair to the world of Wittgensteinian exegesis.
> >
>
> I'm also trying to establish, that in saying "understanding is not a
> mental process" that I'm providing what many would call mainline
> exegesis, i.e. this isn't some quirky curious
> only-Kirby-thinks-that-way reading. Hence the lengthy quote above, me
> approving.
>
I don't think that quote from Pears went to the point I was making. And I
certainly don't think the Wittgensteinian quote did. In both cases they seem to
reflect your misunderstanding that I am arguing that in understanding anything
we are introspecting. I am not. I argue only that there is a particular process
that enables us to behave in a way that manifests what we call understanding,
that that process is a brain process and that this (what I have sketched out)
may be what it looks like (how we can describe it).
> That being said, I'll cop to *also* sharing some quirky curious
> only-Kirby-thinks-that-way stuff.
>
> <tangent>
>
> When I went to E.J. Applewhite's Georgetown apartment that time he was
> sorting stuff for the Stanford archive, he had a large stack of my
> stuff on one of the chairs. Included in that pile was a manila
> envelope marked "quirky" and inside were a lot of my most quirky
> writings. Did I want that to go to Stanford? Nah. Well, maybe this
> one thing (transferred it). The rest came home in my brief case.
> That was many years ago (he's since died).
>
> You'll see Applewhite's name on this Youtube I just did (if curious to
> hear what I sound like -- doesn't show my face though (other Youtubes
> do that)):
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SwOrnCY4TE
>
> </tangent>
>
> >> However, I don't think Wittgenstein should be cast as some kind of
> >> prototypical cognitive scientists. Rather, I think cognitive
> >> scientists sound a lot like the old mind-body problem folks, dressed
> >> up in slightly newer clothing.
> >>
> >
> > Where do you think I cast Wittgenstein as a proto-cognitive scientist?
>
> I don't. Just putting it out there as an independent reading.
>
> > Following Sean's mandate I am talking here about things that interest or
> > concern me and bringing my interest in and understanding of Wittgenstein
> > (such at it is) to bear as seems appropriate.
>
> Yes, not being critical of your doing that. Plus I welcome your doing
> it for reasons stated above: I think in having "understanding" being
> some interior introspective "mind's eye" type process, you're
> providing valuable contrast vis-a-vis those who don't entertain such
> notions (including other Wittgenstein-trained analysts besides me, I'm
> sure of it).
>
As I said, I think you've missed my point.
> >> Their science fiction (metaphysics) has computers in it now, is
> >> probably the main difference from the 1800s version of this stuff.
> >>
> >> I have the advantage of being rather up on computers so am not easily
> >> snowed by hand wavy AI.
> >>
> >
> > I see a lot of this business about "handwaving" on lists like these. It's a
> > favorite condemnatory remark of people from all schools of philosophy. I
> > guess it sounds good, offers an interesting image and resonates or
> > something. Personally, I don't see much handwaving in a guy like Hawkins who
> > seems pretty down to earth and direct. Edelman could have used Hawkins'
> > co-author, I think.
>
> Yeah, good call.
>
> I agree with your analysis re "hand wavy" as a kind of clever put
> down, makes me feel smarter when I say it (though in using that
> expression, I'm *not* imputing the existence, in any scientific sense,
> of an internal "smart meter" that I consult, like a barometer, to
> figure out my "smartness level" (another internal "brain device" --
> like the controls in some cockpit (fun science fiction though))).
>
> >> I'm remembering how Wittgenstein was in the army, was a POW, taught
> >> elementary school... (is that what it was). At least he didn't live
> >> in some cubicle-cave in some office building.
> >
> > He also put in some time as a monk wannabe in a monastery and lived in
> > isolation on the coast of Norway and western Ireland for long stints. While
> > at Cambridge, though popular with a certain class of students, he seems to
> > have kept himself apart from most of the other faculty and was disliked by
> > many of them.
>
> Yeah, glad to get these bio points on the map. Thanks for putting
> those dots out there. Monastery in what sect I wonder. Did they keep
> their traps shut?
Yes I believe it was a silent sect but I'm not quite sure any longer. It's in
the Monk biography. I'm sure Sean can weigh in on it as he's read it more
recently than I have. (I read it twice because it was so fascinating but that
was a while back and memory, you know, is dynamic and ever changing!)
> Did he do any writing there? I really don't know
> his bio as well as some other readers here, is my thinking.
>
I believe the abbot convinced him the monastic life wasn't for him and urged
him to leave. They never accepted him as a brother or novice so the time he
spent there was as a guest who did gardening for them.
> >> If a philosophy completely ignores the great resource that is
> >> hypertext... well, I'd be skeptical of its value, lets just leave it
> >> at that.
> >>
> >
> > So you're doing the Lord's work keeping Wittgenstein alive on the Internet.
> > Well, I guess somebody's gotta do it!
>
> Yeah! I get lots of help too.
>
> >
> > Thanks for the good wishes. I'll try to be a better lurker!
> >
> > SWM
>
> These days I'm reading just about everything posted to this list,
> including your dialogs with others, like Gerardo. Sometimes I just
> lurk, other times I butt in. But I'm not really keeping track of who
> started which thread or what the "dominant theme" of a thread may be.
>
> I do try to keep my remarks somewhat apropos, even as I go off on
> quirky tangents. I'm walking my talk, practicing what I preach, in
> deploying a kind of web, using "hypertext" to communicate my meanings.
>
> For example, I did work to connect zen to Centers Network (a business,
> since disappeared), have some Python weaving through, especially in
> dialog with Josh, plus have so far made probably 10-20 references to
> "4D" and "4D geometry".
>
> I also name drop, e.g. recently mentioned Kathy, who went to Prague in
> her Linfield College days to study Kafka. I was connecting Kafka to
> Stephen King to gothic writers more generally. She's a Quaker, like
> me, and one of my projects within Quakerism is to make links to
> American Transcendentalism on the one hand (e.g. Margaret Fuller
> Osoli) and to Gothic writers on the other (e.g. Poe). Kathy Hyzy
> (also a blog character).
>
> In other words, I'm working to sustain various threads *within* my
> posting history, so if someone were to compile just my posts, they'd
> find lots of interconnections i.e. if they knew my writings from other
> contexts, they'd feel rewarded, e.g. people who appreciate my
> marketing for Coffee Shops Network wouldn't feel I'd simply turned my
> back on 'em, now that I'm frequenting this Wittgenstein list.
>
> Put another way, I feel I owe it to my fans, my trackers and backers,
> to keep elaborating on certain themes. I'm not "at liberty" (per my
> own self discipline) to just drop all that other stuff when posting to
> this list. I'm very much *not* on vacation these days. I"m a
> professional juggler (Dymaxion Clown).
>
> We each have our work and interests, and asynchronous archival lists
> are a good place to pursue them, sometimes in partially overlapping
> ways.
>
> More power to us then,
>
> Kirby
>
You're much more the renaissance man than I am! I feel like I've been wasting
my life after reading the above.
SWM
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