[Wittrs] Re: some helpful guidelines for reading Wittgenstein's philo...
- From: "c.moeller1" <cmoel888@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:45:28 -0000
Can the result of unconsciousness (e.g., falling to the floor) be termed
"behavior"?
The story:
A conscious human sits for a time looking at a computer screen. An event
occurs that is unexpected and not immediately perceived, which causes a
loss of consciousness, which further causes the person to fall off his
seat to the floor. After a time (unknown) the person regains
consciousness, once more aware of his surroundings, but confused as to
the view he is beholding because it doesn't match his immediate
recollection of the viewpoint (of the computer screen) he thinks he
should be seeing. (His continuous stream of consciousness seems to have
been interrupted and his viewpoint displaced during the interruption.)
Note: Persons losing consciousness usually lose some
stream-of-consciousness memory for a time prior to the event (as well as
after).
The person collects and locates himself (after a few moments of
discovery) to his then-present situation. He subsequently tries to
reconstruct what happened. He realizes he must have lost consciousness
(an abnormal condition) and attempts to determine the cause. The
cause(s) could be either internal or external.
Internal self-examination: are there non-normal feelings or sensations?
External self-examination: is there any evidence of bodily damage that
could have caused unconsciousness?
External examination: is there any evidence of an event in the room that
could have caused unconsciousness?
The proximate cause could be at length uncovered, if warranted, by
investigation, inspection, and introspection aided by: a trained
investigator or questioner, meditation, hypnosis, the person's own
imagination, etc.
The whole exercise can be discussed and examined dynamically: silently;
or speaking with others, or in writing using natural language. This
story, however, can't be expressed formally in logic because formal
logic, if it proceeds at all, moves from static state to static state
and can't directly express cause or change. The changes we wish to
examine and specify occur between static states. This is where logic
fails to be effective, precisely in those dynamic regions of humanity in
which reside the most remaining questions.
Since the effectiveness of philosophy hinges on the effective use of
logic, it too is impaired. Thus your discussion on, and efforts to
capture, consciousness goes `round and `round without
resolution.
Best regards,
Charlie
> (Stuart) When I had that totally private image of my computer screen
> (I had been thinking about it as I looked at it intently shortly
> before I blacked out so it's not surprising that that was what I had
> in my mind when I started coming to. That I was on the floor, my eyes
> closed and then open after having collapsed and fallen there, is
> certainly behavior. That I thought I was still looking at my computer
> screen but could not somehow focus on it and read what was written
> there and that it faded into oblivion the more I tried to read it,
> hardly seems like behavior.
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, gprimero <gerardoprim@...> wrote:
>
> (Stuart) No, no, I wasn't proposing they were evidence Gerardo, only
> that they indicated to me that I could do things without being aware
> of what I was doing. This SUGGESTS to me at least the possibility that
> the Freudian idea of the subconscious could also be true.
> (Gerardo) That´s exactly what I meant by "evidence":
"this suggests
> that". But my point was that your evidence for "doing things
without
> being aware" is NOT evidence for any of the freudian hypotheses.
It´s
> like if you say "I´ve thought in Sue and then she called me,
and that
> suggests to me that I could have paranormal skills". The premise
may
> be true, but it cannot be taken as evidence (not even remote) for the
> conclusion, unless until more plausible explanations (e.g. that
it´s
> mere coincidence) are ruled out.
>
> (Gerardo before) That´s exactly what I consider a
pseudoexplanation:
> if you try to explain an observable event by postulating an event that
> you know even less of your explananda, then you have no explanation at
> all: you have two events in need of explanation instead of one.
> (Stuart) I think you are missing my point here, Gerardo.
> (Gerardo) I think not. I´m pointing to the pragmatic relation
between
> means and ends.
>
> (Stuart) This isn't about metaphysical realms. However it is
> manifestly true that processes happen in our brains while we are
> thinking, etc. It's strange to take no account of these in explaining
> how it happens that brains are conscious in certain cases. Frankly I
> go with Dennett here and think there is no reason to think that we
> have privileged access to our own minds at all levels.
> (Gerardo) It´s obvious that "we don´t have privileged access
to our
> brains" (we don´t know what´s doing our cingulate cortex
right now),
> but what does it mean "we don´t have privileged access to our
minds"?
> If you´re using "mind" for the cases of private
experiences, we do
> have necessarily "privileged access" in those cases (if
there´s no
> such privilege, there´s no point in calling them "private
> experiences").
>
> (Stuart) After all, either the features we associate with
> consciousness simply pop into being full-blown (which really IS a
> dualist supposition) OR they are composites of more basic features
> which are not themselves conscious.
> (Gerardo) You seem to be treating a feature as a thing. People (of
> whom we say they´re "conscious", or not) are indeed
"composed of more
> basic parts" (e.g. organs, cells, molecules...). But that
doesn´t
> imply that "consciousness" (which is not a thing but a
nominalization
> of an adjective) must be either an holistic something "simply pop
into
> being full-blown", or the accumulation of some kind of
> "protoconscious" fragments. A dog can bark and run without the
need of
> an accumulation of parts that proto-bark or proto-run.
>
> (Gerardo) You must clarify with Glen the usages of "mental" and
> "behavioral". You have at least two senses of each term: mental as
> privately experienced event, mental as non-experienced mentalist
> construct (i.e. freudian unconscious, multilayered consciousness
> systems), behavioral as overt muscular action, behavioral as
> interactional S-R event (including private occurrences). You´ve
> acknowledged that "perceptual response" might be considered "behavior"
> in one sense of the term, and that there´re differences between
> private experiences and non-experienced mentalist constructs.
> (Stuart) Yes. But I have never suggested that what is mental is
> somehow basic in any ontological sense. It is, on my view, just
> another aspect of the physical. Merely noting that there is a mental
> as well as a physical aspect to things is not dualist though some at
> least want to claim it's "property dualism". Personally I think THAT
> concept is rather a mixed metaphor and needs more explication. As
> Searle explains it, property dualism is just confused substance
> dualism while he, himself, denies being a dualist of any sort himself,
> while often speaking of consciousness as if it were an ontological
> basic in which case he would be a dualist himself, albeit without
> admitting it. Dualism would certainly need to be explored if I were to
> get into this with Glen but he's been a mite testy of late so I'm
> reluctant to open up a new can of worms!
> (Gerardo) OK, but I think that sometimes you mix this concept of
> "mental" with other kinds of concepts, and that´s
problematic. I
> propose you to distinguish the following meanings of "mind".
M1 is
> "mental as private event", events that can be detected at
least by one
> person. M1 is the content of episodic mental concepts: perceiving X,
> sensing X, feeling X, having imagery of X, dreaming X, and saying X to
> oneself. M2 is "mental as disposition of overt or private
> behavior" (see that this is not the logical behaviorist proposal
of
> overt dispositions, but a functionalist proposal of overt-plus-covert
> dispositions), and includes concepts like being intelligent, knowing
> about X, having a belief, or understanding a sign. M2 is still
> "observable", but in a less direct way than M1: people can
detect many
> criteria that support or refute the ascription of the disposition
> (this usually happens very quickly and without the need of reasoning).
> M3 is "mental as speculative constructs", it includes all the
imagery
> and conceptualization that are not based on observation, direct or
> indirect, but on the social reinforcement of some ideas: freudian
> unconscious, religious souls, unconscious "mental
> representations" (unlike the so-called "neural
representations", which
> are observed physiological events that correlate with other
> variables). Perhaps if we agree with this classification (or we make
> some changes on it, until we get an agreement) we´ll be able to
solve
> some misunderstandings. What would you say until here?
>
> (Gerardo before) I guess that "correlated events" would be a better
> name, and much more discriminative. We can detect different kinds of
> events, and then assess different kinds of relationships, without
> obscuring them with the usage of unclear concepts.
> (Stuart) I'm not sure that gets at what I have in mind. At some point
> we have mental pictures which are represenations and it's not
> unlikely, given what we know of brains, that there are various signal
> transformations that underlie the mental representations we are aware
> of. In that case, they may best be described as represenations, too,
> albeit of a different order. "Events" strikes me as too general here,
> though it may be the case that each such "representation" is also some
> brain event.
> (Gerardo) "Events" is a general term, but the "correlated
events"
> would be individuated by their features (e.g. the physiological event
> of the kind X is correlated with the experiential event of the kind
> Y). I´m saying that this kind of language is much more informative.
> The polisemic meaning of "representation" makes people believe
that
> they´re saying more when they say less, and that they have an
> explanation when they have only a speculation without evidence.
>
> (Gerardo before) I´m not concluding that "it cannot" be used. We
> obviously "can", but my thinking is pragmatic: we possibly have better
> options if our purpose is empirical and technical research.
> (Stuart) I think your aim, by your own description, is to study how
> psychology (the state of minds) relates to behavior.
> (Gerardo) My aim is to study how the environment and the organism
> interact, including the role of private experiences as a very
> important part of such interaction, but not as an initiating and
> uncaused inner agency. I think that it´s too reductionistic to
define
> psychology as "the state of minds": it reduces the
person-in-context
> to a passive and egocentric mind separated from the world.
>
> (Stuart) I'm interested in something a bit different: to study how
> brains produce the mental including all possible mental states. This
> is not to say there aren't inputs involved but only to ask how do
> those inputs become psychological phenomena (including actions and
> dispositions to act)?
> (Gerardo) I don´t think that "brains produce the mental".
The private
> experiences are not "products": they´re not things but
events. And the
> brain is not the "cause": it´s a necessary but not
sufficient
> condition for the occurrence of those events. By the way, if you claim
> that "the brain produces the mental", it is a kind of dualism:
you
> have the brain and the mental as two separate things, and then
you´ll
> have to choose between epiphenomenism or interactionism. The
> nondualist options are either the mind-brain identity thesis (e.g.
> Place or Quine) or the ascription of mental terms to whole persons-in-
> contexts (e.g. Kantor) where the brain is a necessary but not
> sufficient condition as a participant of a wider set of conditions.
>
> (Gerardo before) I´m not arguing that "mental images" are
behaviors,
> but that "imagery" is behavior (it´s an operant or respondent
> occurrence of perceptual responses).
> (Stuart) I find that a stretch of the term.
> (Gerardo) It´s not a "stretch", it´s an explanatory
account of (at
> least) some instances of imagery.
>
> (Stuart) When I had that totally private image of my computer screen
> (I had been thinking about it as I looked at it intently shortly
> before I blacked out so it's not surprising that that was what I had
> in my mind when I started coming to. That I was on the floor, my eyes
> closed and then open after having collapsed and fallen there, is
> certainly behavior. That I thought I was still looking at my computer
> screen but could not somehow focus on it and read what was written
> there and that it faded into oblivion the more I tried to read it,
> hardly seems like behavior. It was like a dream of course since I was
> lying on my back on the ground (which was indisputably behavior).
> (Gerardo) Yes, I´d agree with you in all of this, I´m not trying
to
> "reduce" your description to something else. You had an event
that
> "was like a dream" or "like a visual perception". But
this is just a
> description of the experiential event, and I was giving a plausible
> explanation. I guess an explanatory account should include the
> description of the target event, the actual environment, the
> organismic conditions including its physiological processes, the
> previous contingencies of learning of each stimulus and response, and
> the ethological unconditioned responses and mechanisms.
>
> (Stuart) I think that so broadens "behavior" as to render it
> indistinguishable from what
> others call mental events, in which case why bother?
> (Stuart) Not all that others call "mental events". See that,
using the
> classification of M1, M2 and M3, I would include M1-experiential
> events as "behavior", but would exclude M2-dispositions and
M3-
> fictions: they´re not behaviors, they´re words that might be
part of
> some linguistic behaviors.
>
> (Gerardo before) Understanding a sign can be understood as a
> physiological event that
> changes many dispositions of overt and covert behaviors, which not
> necessarily
> are overtly or immediately shown.
> (Stuart) It CAN but not in this case when the issue was not
> physiological events but
> mental images.
> (Gerardo) You cannot claim that there were not physiological events in
> your brain when you had such images. You´re not conscious of your
> physiological events: they´re not stimuli with which you interact,
they
> ´re necessary components of each of your responses. Physiological
> events are a necessary condition of every experiential event, as far
> as we know.
>
> (Gerardo before) Having an image can be understood as a covert
> simulation of a perceptual response.
> (Stuart) I think it makes more sense to explain it as I did above,
> i.e., that it was the last thing I had been focusing intensely on and
> I had retained the general structure of what I was seeing in my head
> (kind of an after-image) but, because our brains don't retain all the
> details (as Hawkins posits) I was unable to plug them in from memory
> and so, the more closely I thought I was looking at it, the less clear
> it became -- precisely the opposite of what we would expect to happen
> if I were really looking at it.
> (Gerardo) I don´t see much difference in your description.
You´re
> saying that you had first a perceptual activity ("focusing
intensely"
> in the screen) and after the blackout there was a repetition of such
> activity without the presence of the stimulus (a dreamlike event,
> "kind of an after-image"). This activity could be accounted by
the
> simulation theory (the neural activity of the after-image is similar
> to the activity of the actual perception). Then you had an operant
> response of trying to focus your sight, and the actual perceptual
> response replaced the dream-like event.
>
> (Gerardo before) I´ve said that Moore (1980, 1995) divided two
> categories: (a) interoceptive and propioceptive stimulation, (b)
> covert behavior (imagery, dreaming, self-talk).
> (Suart) My blackout "dream" involved no self-talk and no narrative,
> just an image I was trying to see, an image that, of course, wasn't
> there. How is the image alone "covert"? Not only is it not shared, it
> cannot be (directly anyway).
> (Gerardo) Your experience was a repetition of previous perceptual
> responses. When a perceptual response is learned, many causes
> different than the actual presence of the stimulus may trigger it.
> Thinking of them as "images that are observed" is useful as a
way of
> talk, but it´s problematic if taken literally. Images are not like
> observed objects. Observed objects remain when we don´t see them,
but
> "images" only remain while we are having the imagery. Observed
objects
> may be ostensively denoted, but "images" don´t. There´re
no literally
> "images" as internal copies of stimuli: there´s only the
whole
> organismic event of "visualizing X".
>
> (Gerardo before) Having an image can be understood as a covert
> simulation of a perceptual response. Once you´ve learned the
complex
> behavior of "seeing a dog", the same activity can be triggered by
> other causes that are not the presence of a dog. There´s no dog,
> outside or inside: there´s only a covert activity that has some
> similar effects (and other different effects).
> (Suart) If you call the image an "activity" and mean anything else but
> the brain events that underlay it, then I think you are stretching the
> meaning of "activity" beyond where it can sensibly be stretched.
> (Gerardo) I don´t understand our point here.
>
> (Suart) Seeing is not the same as looking.
> (Gerardo) Of course not.
>
> (Suart) Yes but then it isn't "behaviorism" per se but some hybrid.
> Frankly I share some of your preferences for behaviorist accounts. I
> just think they don't cover everything and that the solution lies, not
> in redefining "behavior" so they do but in broadening the picture of
> mind so that we see that it's not all "behavior."
> (Gerardo) Well, if it´s some hybrid, so what? Many good things came
> from hybridization of previous proposals. I´ve been arguing that
your
> criticisms don´t apply to this proposal. I think this proposal
covers
> everything that must cover as explananda: publicly and privately
> observed events. It includes M1, M2 and M3 as explananda, but only M1
> can take part of the explanation, and never as uncaused agency. It
> also includes physiological events as an important mereological
> component of the explanation, but never as "the cause of mind and
> behavior".
>
> (Stuart) Quine's approach as you've defined it strikes me as yet
> another effort at redefinition. However, these terms (mental terms)
> occupy an unusual place in our language game so it seems we are always
> busy trying to get our hands around these particular greased pigs.
> (Gerardo) There´s nothing wrong with redefinitions. The issue is
how
> useful results the redefinition for each speaker´s purposes.
>
> (Stuart) Well as I've repeatedly said, I am not arguing against
> behaviorism. I don't know enough about it. I am arguing against the
> view you say no one actually ever held (and I've also expressed my
> opinion, numerous times, that I'm inclined to agree that no
> respectable thinker ever held such a view). My point is that
> Wittgenstein certainly cannot be enlisted in the class of simplistic
> behaviorists and even expressed his doubts about behaviorism as I
> recall -- but I don't know if he thought of it in the simplistic way
> we have both agreed is mistaken or not.
> However, I do think that some of the moves you have made to render
> behaviorism more sophisticated strikes me as a bit weak, i.e., why
> redefine behavior to include things not typically understood as
> behavior? Wouldn't it make more sense to simply broaden your theory to
> include behaviors and other stuff (like mental images, having
> realizations, etc.)
> (Gerardo) Why should we take as a given that they are "other
stuff"?
> Couldn´t we propose a different conceptualization? Should we take
> something for granted just because many people considered it to be
> truth? I think that when you put aside the inertia of thinking
they´re
> other stuff because we´ve always thought they´re so, the rival
> conceptualization is not weak at all: it explains much more, and it
> avoids the many problems of the traditional "other stuff"
> conceptualization.
>
> (Stuart) My point is that the broader thesis you have been sketching
> out here, and arguing for, is more stipulative than empirical since it
> involves stipulating new meanings to terms.
> (Gerardo) No, it´s not. Once you compare the two
conceptualizations,
> there´re differences in what we can and cannot do with each of
them.
> For example, when you weaken the dichotomy between public and private,
> you can take the learning mechanisms that have been studied with
> public behaviors and apply them to the explanation, prediction and
> control of private events (which is a valuable purpose, both for
> empirical and technical research). And when you strengthen the
> distinction between M1 and M2/M3, you can avoid "Throwing the baby
out
> with the bath water" (like logical behaviorism did) and also you
can
> avoid "keeping the bath water for fear of trowing out the
baby" (as
> speculative cognitivists do).
>
> (Stuart) While we can always redefine our terms, sometimes
> redefinition can go too far. I genuinely see the effort to call mental
> images behavior as just such a mistake, whether anyone ever held a
> more restrictivist theory of behaviorism or not.
> (Gerardo) I repeat: it´s not "mental images", it´s the
activity of
> imagery what I´m considering as behavior (in the sense that it´s
event-
> like activity, and in the sense that it´s accounted with the same
> principles that apply to other perceptual responses). The
> nominalization of "mental images" may lead to mistake them
with
> observed objects, when the grammar of talking about imagery and
> talking about observation has some important differences.
>
> Regards,
> Gerardo.
>
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