Synaesthesia

Laurentius,
I agree that representational systems do not necessarily describe anything in the world, but there are none that are independent of the world. The fact that a straight line can be described by an arrangement of wooden blocks or an arrangement of people, does not mean that there is any line or representation of the concept of “line” that is in any way independent of the physical world.

If the documentary insisted that anyone who tried to sleep in such conditions would die, they obviously didn’t notice the fact that people can and do sleep in such conditions. (Not just monks either, there are many stories of humans surviving the elements in their extreme.) What survivors we humans are!

Regards,
Synaesthesia

owleye

Laurentius...

When I look at what you quoted of my paraphrase of Kant's views on simultaneity and succession, I admit not doing a good job of it. I won't try to improve on it, but let me merely suggest that "stuff" comes from the world and is organized by our mind, cognitively, and then situated in space and time. Consciousness is streamed, and thus, ordered in time. The way Kant sees it, this ordering capability is something humans (as opposed to other rational creatures) have that permits them to be directed to that which is external to them. Without this capability, there is no world, at least none that is ordered in this way. (Some time ago, I considered what the world would be like to our immune system. What is the temporal spatial nature of this world? Can you imagine it?)

With respect to the "realization" of epistemic conditions, it surely is related to the real cognitive capacities of humans, but as I indicated the last time, I think the epistemic conditions themselves are that set of rules by which human cognitive capacity is generated in the first place. Perhaps we might say they are embedded in the human genome, considered in its ideal sense. Kant, of course, lived in a different world than we do, and was rather pessimistic, to say the least, that we could ever come to understand living things, to the extent we have it based on chemistry, anyway. (Indeed, even chemistry was just emerging as a "real" science (Lavoisier) when Kant became aware of it near the end of his life and was busy trying to incorporate their findings, which changed the way the ether and caloric had to be considered, into a "transition" project.)

owleye

Laurentius

Synaesthesia

Everything there is is in this world and anything that would attempt to exist outside of it would cease to exist - I know. I have been using the terms "independent" and "divergent" when referring to the Mind so as to hint at the relative autonomy it enjoys in its representations.

Yeah, but these guys do it on a regular basis.
Others may survive, or not. Jack London is one of my favorite writers. Do you remember his short story "To Build A Fire?"

AVE

Laurentius

Owleye

Why, I liked it.

Cognitively, you say. There should then be an embeded configuration of reasoning. Perhaps even independent from language (relatively independent, though). Fifteen thousand years ago the humanoid primates did not pride with a language like ours today. There is no absolute certainty, of course, but, evolutionarily speaking, they couldn't have. However, the paintings the performed on the wall of the Lascaux cave in France, for example, demonstrate the same power of abstractization Man is capable of today. Yet, linguist Derrick Bickerton (Hawaii University) thinks that it must be language that has freed the humanoid primates from the dungeon of the immediate experience, giving him the freedom of space and time.

I am wondering then. I once heard of a child that had grown absolutely isolated from any human community, and who behaved like a wild beast (he could not even learn to use his hands so that he could eat humanly, let alone to reason). I am wondering whether this boy can still be said to have a Mind. I mean, the Brain is more or less completely there, but the Mind has frozen at the stage of potentiality.

AVE

owleye

"Cognitively, you say. There should then be an embeded configuration of reasoning."

Reasoning may come later. I'm not sure what you have in mind, though. Are you talking about "rationality," or the giving of reasons for our behavior or judgments, or argumentation itself? Cognition, at least in the use I'd made of it, was only restricted to that part of us which judges, and, possibly, acts on that basis. It is the making use of concepts, both in experience, and derivative of experience such that we adopt propositional attitudes (like knowing, believing, hoping, feeling, etc.) toward the world. It includes more than the ability animals have to discriminate objects since it can know when it has made a mistake. It has language and logic and the ability to decide among choices presented to it, giving reasons for the choice.

"I am wondering then. I once heard of a child that had grown absolutely isolated from any human community, and who behaved like a wild beast (he could not even learn to use his hands so that he could eat humanly, let alone to reason). I am wondering whether this boy can still be said to have a Mind. I mean, the Brain is more or less completely there, but the Mind has frozen at the stage of potentiality."

If you asked me, I'd say humans more than mere biological creatures, and indeed, I think we are more than creatures solely based on the ability to establish a language and culture. However, this doesn't mean that we can completely escape biology and culture, at least not yet, and expect to achieve this "more" that I'm talking about. One may think of culture as that aspect of the human condition that was required by evolution because our biology left it with a bit of a problem. What I'm getting at is that a certain "gap" between stimulus and response arose in evolution that unless it was met by all of the faculties of the human psyche, individually, and most importantly, socially, it would not have survived. Thus, our emotions, our spirituality, our rationality, our sensibility, our intuition, our sensitivity to others, our need to compensate for our otherwise lack of instinct and physical ability in making our way in the world. Undoubtedly this was already underway in the primate ancestry from which we evolved.

The "niche" this may have started from, however, is no longer a niche, in the biological sense. We have long since overrun the planet and are in the process of exploring beyond it. Unlike many who wish to consider the significance of our early history and the environment in which the majority of our biology was evolving in response to it, I'm not a big fan of this sort of determinism.

owleye

excreationist

Laurentius:
In the past day or two I've rethought some of the basic emotions. Now they are more computational rather than human-sounding.
Connectedness has been replaced with coherence. It is about things making "sense".
And newness has been replaced with adaption. I think we seek to adapt to things - just for the fun of it. If we try to adapt but fail, it results in frustration though. In terms of neural networks, adaption is "convergence". It is where the neural network has more or less solved the problem - it has adapted to the problem.
Anyway, I agree that babies need coherence - in fact I think all of us do. If we don't have enough we feel alienated and can even have a nervous breakdown.
If people's desire to adapt to situations can't be satisfied, we become "bored". But I think a need for stimulation is partly a learnt habit rather than a fundamental need.

I don't think so. Are you saying that this week or this hour is totally identical to any other one? Real sameness is like working on a production line for your entire life since you were a toddler, doing exactly the same thing, and being punished for any creativity or talking. You'd be trained to act like a robot. You would do it in a daze. You could be seated and connected up to a life support system so that you wouldn't have toilet stops breaking the repetition.

Well now I'm talking about adaption rather than newness. So I'm saying we like some things to adapt to - just for the sake of adapting to something. It takes effort to adapt, but we feel some pleasure when it is done.

If you haven't completed that goal before, then that achievement is still a new experience. You would be adapting to a new situation - a world in which your goal has been met. And realizing your goal (making it a reality) is about coherence... it is about aligning reality with your desires.

Clumsiness is still not regular behaviour, and over-repetition is unusual in some circumstances. It involves things being ridiculous I think that the person doesn't properly understand. If they rationalize it, it is no longer funny. Taboo things are often funny. Well I guess it's a very complex topic that I've oversimplified.

Basically newness involves a lack of coherence. Then after a while not enough coherence makes the person scared then terrified. It depends on the person.

Well if we didn't seek to adapt to things, we wouldn't learn much (because we would have to be forced to learn anything). So the human race wouldn't have gotten very far.

Ok - as I was saying, coherence is a must - absolute unexpectedness means a total lack of coherence. I'm just saying that without exploration, curiousity, etc, humans wouldn't have all this technology.

What about the desire to go hiking or white-water rafting or surfing? These don't sound like very good ways to flee from stress and fatigue.

Well adaption is about assimilation...

It involves a lack of coherence which is a kind of pain/discomfort. I think crying/screaming is an instinct which helps parents rescue helpless babies who are in trouble. But this instinct can be repressed though we still might scream out when there is severe pain or frustration.

What if you put two dogs (that could mate) in a tiny yard, and they could eat as much food and water as they wanted from a machine. Do you think they'd ever get bored and dig holes for the hell of it? Apparently dogs can dig up lawns if they are very bored. (My dog does this sometimes)

What about new cartoons, new toys and new music, etc... if you have to be educated to appreciate newness, why do parents ever buy their kid new toys? Isn't one toy enough? And why do kids usually get bored of a toy or a book after a while? I mean why might a toddler enjoy you reading a book for the first time, and then want to escape and do something else if you kept on reading the same book dozens of times? Why do people usually prefer to watch 100 different shows than watching the first show a 100 times in a row? Why do feel excited when a new series of episodes comes out that they haven't seen before? Do you think it takes a long education until people can appreciate newness? (But as I said, toddlers crave it)

Well I am talking about adaption now, rather than newness. And I'm saying that we don't really choose to seek adaption - it is programmed into us and so we are forced to. Otherwise the repetition bores us.
You think that our lives are repetitive, but they aren't really. Real repetition is like a boot camp that has a totally repetitive schedule where no one is ever allowed to talk out of line. Or the production line example I gave earlier. With absolute repetition, there is no direction. No unexperienced goals - since that would involve a lack of repetition. It would involve no kind of learning or change or adaption at all.

Laurentius

Owleye
AVE

Let me figure this out. What do you mean that the Kantian category grid can be found at the cognitive level rather the psychological one? How does cognition extract itself from the psyche? And, furthermore, how does cognition pre-exist reason? (I’m just trying to understand these from one that is soaked in and dripping Kant_)

Please, feel free to elaborate. I’m all ears.

Ah, this. But this is consciousness – self-reflectiveness. In order for one to detach from his own self, a gap has to form. The objective perspective presupposes the capacity to regard oneself from afar (spatial gap), and to contemplate one’s passing through events from a relative or absolute static point, both spatially and temporally. This reminds of simulation game in which you can, on the one hand, see the environment from inside your cockpit or cabin, and, on the other hand, from outside it: from a mountain top, from a traffic manager’s office/control tower, from another craft/train, etc.

. . . . . . . .

You’re somehow hinting at the possibility that Man should have surpassed his biological condition and entered a superior stage. What would that be? I’m asking because it sounds like another luring idea.

AVE

Laurentius

excreationist
AVE

I have nothing against coherence and adaptation, except that they seem kind of voluntary while connectedness and newness give a stronger impression of spontaneity.

Obviously, I was not referring to identicalness and uniformity, but to that repetition and sameness that allows one to predict existence.

I hope I haven’t really been that gloomy. I was mentioning tradition, schedules, briefs, all of them involving variation within a strict frame. The frame of sameness ensures the regularity and predictability necessary for the most vital actions to end in success, and receptiveness to variation allows for adjustability, both of them highly necessary for survival.

Yes, there seems to be a natural restlessness, an urge to seek for fresh stimuli – but I’ve already agreed that the capability of a system to become excited triggers a permanent need for excitants. The object producing the excitation is assimilated, coherence within the subject is fulfilled, and a new need for excitation appears. And so on. I guess this is what you’ve been trying to expose.

AVE


[ March 29, 2002: Message edited by: Laurentius ]</p>

excreationist

Laurentius:
I have nothing against coherence and adaptation, except that they seem kind of voluntary while connectedness and newness give a stronger impression of spontaneity.
Well as far as adaption vs. newness goes, I think it isn't the newness that we get a thrill from - it is our *adjustment* to it. So we make sense of the experience - at least on a shallow level. So I am looking how what we get pleasure from exactly and I think it is the adaption rather than the newness.
As far as coherence and connectedness goes, I think they are kind of synonyms.

...The object producing the excitation is assimilated,
The neural network (pattern learning system) converges - there is an adaption...

coherence within the subject is fulfilled, and a new need for excitation appears. And so on. I guess this is what you’ve been trying to expose.
Yeah, except I only started using words like "coherence" very recently.

...But this is consciousness – self-reflectiveness. In order for one to detach from his own self, a gap *has to* form. The objective perspective presupposes the capacity to regard oneself from afar (spatial gap), and to contemplate one’s passing through events from a relative or absolute static point, both spatially and temporally. This reminds of simulation game in which you can, on the one hand, see the environment from inside your cockpit or cabin, and, on the other hand, from outside it: from a mountain top, from a traffic manager’s office/control tower, from another craft/train, etc.
Basically the body or personality is referred to as a symbol (e.g. the word "I") and dealt with using language. To be even more detached you can talk from a third person perspective - and refer to yourself by your name when you talk about yourself.

...For instance, when you decide to give a reply on the forum, is something that you really want, or is it just an illusion? Or you cannot tell?
Well as I've said earlier, our brain is compelled to choose what it determines is the best course of action. This might not be what the socially responsible self wants, but it is what the brain wants. And whether the brain is truly free to make its choice is another topic, but I'd say that it is not - since it *always* chooses what it determines is the best course of action. (based on the information in the short term memory and triggered long term memory patterns)

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

owleye

Laurentius...

I'm obviously not getting through to you, despite now three attempts to distinguish cognition as an epistemological consideration from one that depends on "psychology." I have come to regard it as that which an agent needs in a functional sense to construct a human mind in the first place, where it is possible to conceive this as a product of the human genome, ideally considered, as directed toward constructing it.

You, on the other hand, seem to be in an empiricist box that resembles Mill's psychologism in which logic is no more than a branch of psychology. Both Frege and Husserl (by way of Frege) argued strenuously against the notion that logic is no more that psycho-logic.

I begin with what Husserl has to say on this, since I have it in my library. Husserl himself begins by orienting the reader to what he has in mind with respect to logic (which I'm taking to be a component of epistemology). I will get to the argument itself if it seems that you are not convinced.

In Volume I, chapter 1, of his "Logical Investigations," Husserl seeks to critique psychologism. In the first sections of this chapter, he sets forth the normative nature of theoretical disciplines generally, they being "mental creations directed to a certain end, and for that reason to be judged in accordance with that end."

"Logic seeks to search into what pertains to genuine, valid science as such, what constitutes the Idea of Science, so as to be able to use the latter to measure the empirically given sciences as to their agreement with their Idea, the degree to which they approach it, and where they offend against it. In this logic shows itself to be a normative science, and separates itself off from the comparative mode of treatment which tries to conceive of the sciences, according to their typical communities and peculiarities, as concrete cultural products of their era, and to explain them through the relationships which obtain in their time. For it is the essence of a normative science that it establishes general propositions in which, with an eye to a normative standard, an Idea or highest goal, certain features are mentioned whose possession guarantees conformity to that standard, or sets forth an indispensable condition of the latter...."

He picks up the argument in section 17, entitled "The disputed question as to whether the essential theoretical foundations of normative logic lie in psychology" wherein he relates one of the dominant themes of his time "has a ready answer to the question raised: The essential theoretical foundations of logic lie in psychology, in whose field those propositions belong -- as far as their theiretical content is concerned -- which give logic its characteristic pattern. Logic is related to psychology just as any branch of chemical technology is related to chemistry, as land-surveying is to geometry, etc. This tendency sees no need to mark off a new theoretical discipline, and, in particular, not one that would deserve the name of logic in a narrower and more pointed sense. Often people talk as if psychology provided the sole, sufficient, theoretical foundation for logical technology. So we read in Mill's polemic against Hamilton: 'Logic is not a science separate from and coordinate with psychology. To the extent that it is a science at all, it is part or branch of psychology, distinguished from it on the one hand as the part is from the whole, and on the other hand as the art is from the science. It owes all its theoretical foundations to psychology, and includes as much of that science as is necessary to establish the rules of the art."

Does this make sense to you? And are you seeing your own position in this way, or have I misjudged you?

owleye