John Page

Hiawatha:

Delightful humour!

1. But I'm much more unpredictable than you are.

2. ...or perhaps you hadn't figured that out yet?

Deconstructing the mind? It occured to me (through the stimulus offered by your previous posts) that in fact we're performing preconstruction by trying to understand each other and therefore know what our positions (or even psyches) entail by anticipating them.

Note: Derrida's author preconstructs his ideal reader(s) who then deconstruct him. Ergo, Derrida has preconstructed his ideal author as one that has in mind his ideal reader(s).

Yes. The interesting bit is how to jump from a modular or fairly homogenous process and combine them in macro to have something (the mind in general) that can "belatedly apply their usefulness".

If you agree that determinism excludes intelligent design theories, the processes (latent and actual) of which we comprise are inherent in our being. The hard determinist must, I feel, admit that there is more to life than physic and the soft determinist must admit that without the physic, there would be no life.

Cheers, John

Kip

KI,

Yes - I share your fascination with these imperfections! Natural selection have finely tuned our DNA exquisitely for millions of years and yet we are not perfect. Our appetite systems fail us in the modern age of abundance and we have epidemic of obesity. I emphasize this point in my essays. We must be prepared to acknowledged that our moral intuitions may be equally misplaced and more appropriate for paleolithic men than business men.

All I meant by this (and I mean to consume all of the popular introductions to modern neuroscience) is that the brain is not a homogeneous slab but rather layered, like a cake, and evolution seems to build on top. The cortex (to my understanding) is the "icing on the cake", right beneath our foreheads, dumped upon the brains of our primate ancestors, and is responsible for self-reflecting thought and mathematical ability, etc.

I would. I would be willing to bet my life that the majority of Americans sleep for at least two hours tonight. I feel that is a safe bet. Is that claim too weak? Rather, I feel the claim is quite strong and it is remarkable that we can make such claims about such allegedly free beings. This phenomenon of predictable and relevant similarity at the macro scale is fascinating and I ask myself what the consequences are...

That is good point. Dawkins happens to be quite a determinist and I think he belongs to that British tradition of philosophers whom I most admire (including Russell, Hume, Mill):

"What do you think you are, if not a robot, albeit a very complex one?"

Kip

King's Indian

Hello John, me old cocksparrer!

That is, like, so thermostat.

As for the point about Derrida, I agree*. The “ideal reader” is similar to what we all do, in a generalized way. At the moment, I’m basing my responses on your anticipated reaction to what I’m writing, basing it on the evidence so far gleaned. Look how often we all get it wrong, though! Particularly when we’re trying to cop off with someone. I’m even starting to wonder if all ideality is derived from a principle of anticipation, so that when we come across something beyond our ken, we already have categories prepared for it. We do seem to see a need for such categories, and we find it difficult to do without them. By the way, I myself don’t deconstruct Derrida when I read him. The resulting mis en abyme may be so powerful that not even light may escape it.

When I mention “belatedly”, in talking about applications of a pattern’s usefulness, it sounds a bit too pejorative. I was thinking more of the sequence, in which the testing against reality (by way of perceptual patterns, rather than ding an sich-type stuff) is applied after a certain amount of pattern-recognizing work has been done. When I mention “Camille Paglia”, however, I find I can’t be pejorative enough.

The homogeneity is a problem, isn’t it**? One problem is that any two mental networks are a fortiori connected already by other mental networks, that would facilitate such a comparison by the module in the first place. How can it distinguish two patterns successfully, against a background of what must be a kajillion similar patterns? Unfortunately my ignorance of how the brain works precludes my giving an answer.
The other problem is that it wouldn’t take long before patterns complex enough to apply to the real world become too unwieldy. Perhaps such patterns arrange themselves constrained by electro-chemical processes that produce “modular government”, even though that doesn’t explain what is unique about humans. I wouldn’t desert the idea for modular simplification/creativity completely, though. When we do stuff in the world, our “reasons” for doing stuff don’t seem to fully inform our actions at the time of acting, if you know what I mean. We reflect on our actions, and may find rich (and sometimes contradictory) motivations, but these never seem available to us until later. I mean, we can do things for a reason, but that reason doesn’t seem a necessary condition: we can do things for which we later find a reason, and that seems a perfectly satisfactory way of going about our business. Perhaps our macro (and macho) behaviour and our reflection/anticipation are distinctive aspects of our module.It’s true: it’s too convenient to either dismiss our creativity as something truly existing in nature, or to imagine our creativity as being somehow above nature. The things I like most about my idea is that it does categorically state that we as animals are creative, and we can’t think about the way we deal with our own self-perceptions without taking into account the fact of how we think of others.

Take care,

KI


*Have you noticed the technical sense in which philosophers use ”I agree”? i.e. “I understand that your point is derived from mine utterly, your comprehension of the matter being tantalizingly within reach of the truth, but probably still needing an avuncular push in the right direction to avoid your further frustration, the evidence of which is becoming all too distressingly clear; I undertake this as a courtesy, as your frustration contributes to the detriment of your fitness not only as a rational, debating animal, but also as a lover, so I’ve heard”.
I just normally agree, to avoid any confusion.
**Or is it, though? Words are pretty homogenous, and we seem to navigate between the use/mention distinction, even to the extent that it is a source of shared humour.

King's Indian

Hi, Kip!

Just to go back a bit.

Refinements to original modular assumptions:
1) Behavioural response to stimuli is not stored in a way that is accessible to perception. This differs from what I said in my first assumption.
2) Networks of patterns that seem to “fit”, get bumped up into a longer term memory than the products of the random aspect of the module.

Quick recap, for clarity.
1) Our brain stores direct perceptions, and the learned and innate responses to such stimuli, as “mental networks” (if you don’t mind, I’m going to abbreviate these to MN’s, and the stored patterns of them created by our module as Mod.MN’s; if I mention MN’s solely, I automatically include the latter. I don’t want to make a habit of creating my own private jargon, but I don’t really want to keep typing the same words, either). These networks usually have this property: real-world objects and reactions, insofar that they share elements in common, correspond with networks that also share elements ion common (to be decided).
2) Our “reducibility module”, In a way analogous to natural selection, arbitrarily selects two networks for elements in common, which generates a third “network”. If there is a match (to be decided as exceeding a fixed quantity on a continuum of shared elements) the selection process starts, which further “compares” the third network to others, whether they be networks of real world perceptions, behaviours, or indeed other “pattern networks”. Any network that has a high composite degree (again, to be determined) of shared elements gets stored longer-term than the random dross.
3) Free will, rationality, interest, inflationary model of brain development, blah, blah, blah (see above post for treatment in slightly more depth).

Language
Sorry, but I’m going to do the “assumption” thing again.

1) “Language” , as applied to humans, is unique on Earth. Other animals have systems of communication. Those such as the honey-bee’s, as discovered by Frisch, and also the differentiated predator warnings of Vervet monkeys; even great apes taught by humans, which have some competence of symbol manipulation. However, for the sake of argument, I’m defining these non-human communication systems as strictly relating to present-tense events, or states of feeling. But our language is more than that: it is a way of categorizing the world using concepts, and using those categorizations to communicate past and future events and states, in addition to present ones.
2) Our mental states and real world events are only accessible to us through language. Let me restate one of Dennett’s points to explain. Say one asks someone to imagine the phrase “A cat sat on a mat.” A person who believes that they can picture such an event in a pre-lingual way may say OK, fine. However, what if the point is pressed, and there are supplemental questions along the line of, “What breed? How big? What is the colour, and condition, of her fur? How may one imagine the ‘pastness’ of ‘sat’?” Our imaginative subject may parry all of these questions, but as he does so, he more and more moves away from the first one as he adds detail. The point, of course, is that we didn’t ask about a particular cat, but a cat. There seems to be no way to imagine such a thing without the detail that negates the usefulness of the concept “cat”. If it were too specific, its general use between people may be compromised. We may go further: how may one imagine “no cat was sitting on any mat”?

In the previous post I alluded to concepts: for example, perceptions of different trees are stored as MN’s. When our module finds a match between such patterns, this is also represented mentally. This seems to be agreeably close to our idea of a concept, or category. When we think of the concept “tree”, we are after all not really concerned with any particular tree. As a matter of fact, we sometimes have great difficulty in deciding the definition by example of even such a simple concept, as when we have difficulty in defining a certain plant as a bush or a tree.
Concepts, then, are general (or “fuzzy”, if you like) enough to be communicated, without having to carry around the things themselves, or models, that we may use in order to specify them (as the philosophers of Lagredo do, if you remember your Swift). After all, anyone who reads does not have the same access to experience that I have had with trees, but yet we all share enough culture (in the form of “English language”) to make myself understood (well, about trees at least).
If we then, as a culture, decide to arbitrarily associate patterns of phonemes (or physical marks, or hand gestures) we may find we end up with something like words. This would work by indication for the shared perception of the outside world. It may also work for interior states (“emotions”, however so defined), on the assumption that there is a large genetic component to these states that the majority of humans share. Therefore, a word like “anger” (and the Mod.MN from which it springs) may be first applied as describing a pattern of another’s observed behaviour, but by modular creativity it may then be extended to the unconscious reactions to stimuli that produce such behaviour in ourselves (see previous post for similar point). We may now have a way of describing language acquisition (very broadly: I’ll address some problems below).
We can sketch the outlines of our approach to tense. We may group a category of events that have already happened as “past”: the unifying element to such MN’s may be that they have been stored for at least a pre-defined length of time. The same with the present: stores MN’s may be found to share elements with MN’s of current perceptions. As for the future, groups of MN’s may be combined to form “event” MN’s that don’t relate to the present, or the past. A specific subset of these may be said to refer to what could, or will happen. However, for reasons of space I won’t try to do too much, with this, except to say how closely a quality like “tense” is related to others, such as “modality” or “aspect”.

Some ideas about usage:
As I mentioned before the Mod.MN’s, and their derived words, are fuzzy. (Just to say, I’m trying to define stuff without using too much reference to already existing, proper, science; so by MN’s I’m not trying to co-opt the already well-defined idea of “neural networks”, and by “fuzzy” I’m not doing the same with “fuzzy logic”, which has a strict, technical meaning). We can, though, use them with some precision. There may be two ways:
a) We can use them in combination with real world MN’s (and perhaps after all this is the function of Mod.MN’s that have their analogue in words like “here”, “this”, “now” etc)
b) Although our module abstracts from real-world complexity, we may of course re-model that same complexity using combinations of generalized Mod.MN words, which may relate to predicates or activities. Eg, a cat, a Persian cat, a Persian cat that I saw twelve minutes ago…etc. If I haven’t changed this sentence from draught, it’s because I haven’t found a predicate-tree on the web. Shame.

Problems:

It seems difficult, going by the above, to usefully separate our module from those parts of the brain that enable language, in the largest sense mentioned above. If language is to be explained in modular terms, we have to recognize:
a) The modular creativity involved in language acquisition cannot be the same as general modular creativity. First-language acquisition seems to follow broad, fixed patterns across varying languages, and also seems to disappear by the time we are about six. I’m not devastated about this, as it may help explain why adult-language acquisition feels so different, and harder: we may only have access to our general module. Whether the difference is flexibility, or development in the way our module decides to generate patterns, I’d welcome thoughts on the matter.
b) A modular approach doesn’t seem to get us anywhere with the question of the importance of the large range of different languages we see in the world, and to how much we owe genetic explanations for it. The range of languages is huge, and perhaps the sole thing they all share is argument structure, and even then I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a language that can consistently express with meaning the phrase, “I’m sleeping you”. If we do share lots of behaviour due to our heritage, why aren’t they all more similar? Perhaps that’s the wrong question to ask: there doesn’t seem to be a language that’s impossible to learn (if we discount sad cases like its speakers dying out).

(Claps hands to shake off dust) Well, that’s language sorted.

That will signal the close of the waffling phase. It’s pleasant to come up with one’s own interpretations fo things like humour, and questions in terms of such a model as the one under discussion, but that is rather airless fun. Hopefully we can spend some time refining (ie attacking) the idea. All thoughts welcome, and if I’ve used terms which seem out of context, just say.

Take care,

KI

[Added PS:] Noted you have posted again: won't respond now, but will take time to digest.

John Page

Blimey! How's the trouble, up the apples having some Rosie I bet.
I knew you were going to say that....
ALERT ALERT! Subconscious to Conscious, to you read me Roger. Anomaly in incoming data. Object does not conform to prior behavioural characteristics. Your concept ref Fido, class dog, anomaly type "whining". Subconscious over and out.

....in this way we might consider categories an integral part of the data compression and manipulation engine we call the brain. Mine used to run in real time...

:notworthy ...but they're all patterns - even Camille and your perjorativity.
Simple comparison to discarding the constancy to leave the "essential" differences. Did you know there are areas fo the brain, for example, that do motion detection. Damage to these areas can cause the subject to be not aware of movement. This causes real problems when pouring the Rosie (can't tell when pouring) and crossing the road (can't tell whether traffic moving).

The meaning of the difference between the patterns comes from the correspondence between those patterns and previously experienced patterns.
Yes, and the reason may be already formed (creating behavior traits that we can recognize in others... e.g. he always takes the largest choccy biccy). We dream, we plan we stratagize... just in case we should meet Cindy Crawford, Saddam Hussein etc. One aspect of Preconstructionism?
:notworthy
I agree
Yes, language requires context to be meaningful and the context is the mind of the reader, which attempts to impute the intention of the author.

Wotcher, John

King's Indian

Zdra’stvootye, Tovarich Ivan!

“Having [or indeed, “pouring"] some rosie”? One prefers to leave that sort of thing to Laurie Lee. Anyway, she’s not my trouble, she’s my Florida*. Well bowled, sir! Line and length, right in the block-hole. It’s an interesting point, too: how far shall we have to re-define knowledge as something that will always have the air of the pre-emptive about it? Even when we use our knowledge as a foundation on which to support our speculations, it will seem that such fundamental truths be always open to the charge of a minimal contingency, and perhaps this is the space where radical doubt lives.Even if we "know" ourselves to have complete control over our lives, we also have to know that we don’t know it. There’s no one concept that we employ that stood inviolate from our modular couplings. Not fair: you’ve summed it up too well, and not left me any room. I sympathize with your last comment: I too suffer such spiritual messages as “Error reading Drive “Me”: Abort, Retry, Ignore?”.

The pattern of my opinions toward La Paglia looks like Alexander’s Horned Sphere, by the way.

I think I may have mentioned my problem with the idea of “essential differences” already: how may dissimilarity share an essence? Even if we turn the question around, “essential similarities” still run into the same barrier: similarities are better considered de facto, rather than de jure, which makes their "essence" a contingency.
As for localized brain functions, did you hear that a group of scientists were ready to test a prosthetic hippocampus (I think): something to do with allowing people to make the transition between short-, and long-term memories. I’d quote from the article myself, but I seem to have mislaid it. No, really. When I attempt irony, I think I can do better than Alanis Morrisette***. Not only that, our ideal strategies end up being the only range of options we can draw from, and we react to the introduction into our lives of new interesting people by jerry-rigging some behavioural contraption formed of our imagined responses exhibited in our fantasies: previous anticipations of celebrity encounters, churned up with our memories of our (seemingly) triumphant social conquests. A cut-and-shunt job, as they say in the used-car trade.
By the way, When one listens to other people’s fantasies, even the ones involving jello, what is striking is how much the stress is laid on the social component. A chap who imposes on you by relating what he would do when he gets the attention of a particular woman will invariably, when guided, move onto the subject of the respect this will generate in his peer-group. (My fantasies solely revolve around owning tapes of all the MST3K episodes ever made, in case you’re interested). So: the gloves are off, John…or should I say, Professor Pagenstein? I see our pas de deux at the Reichenbach Falls did not have the happy outcome I anticipated…I see your facility for disguise did not perish either [tugs at latex mask]…

Well, we all make mistakes.

Take care,

KI

* Florida Marlin – Darlin’
** I’m happy to know that your conscious and unconscious are on first name terms.
*** I did enjoy it when a chap suggested that the examples in Alanis’ song might be more usefully characterized under the rubric “Bummer”. Don’cha think?

John Page

Dobri vyecherom. Kak Dela?
Through that which is inviolate (w.r.t. the observer).
-OR-
Disjunction implies a union of some kind.
The horns of a di-lemma no less.

I can take her or leave her

Slava, moi starry chelovek! John

** "Life, don't talk to me about life" Marvin the Paranoid Android

Primal

Kip: Good essay, especially with the opening quote showing the fallacy of that libertarian argument.


I agree with the argument for hard determinism but not the argument against responsibility.

Many determinists seem to think that by elminitating the notion of free will they eliminate the notion of responsibility and punishment. Note that I am not a compatibilist as I accept the notion of responsibility, not free will.

The problem with that line of thinking is that the concept of responsibility is not necessarily tied to the notion of free will.

Definition of responsible from dictionary.com:

Hence when someone says that a person is to be held responsible they can mean that they are the cause of an action or should be held accountable.

Now I agree that IF a person means by "held accountable/responsible" they mean that a person acted of his or her own free will, there is no such thing as responsibility or accountability.

However a person can mean something different, usually when used by me and others I know saying someone is responsible or accountable means that they should be punished or rewarded for what they did.

Now this causes us to revise our notions of morality/responsibility, not revise free will as compatibilists will argue.

Many moral theorists see human nature as guided by free will, and when the person acts in a way it is because their free will chose to do it, this justifies(somehow, rarely ever explained) punishment or reward, in short responsibility.

Notice however that the above makes a big leap, from free will to responsibility without any explanation. It is a sort of non seq. Lets say a person has free will and I say "they shouldn't be punished or rewarded though" what can you say? Nothing really.

Mine and some other moral theories are different though, in my theory morality consists not of evaluating free will but evaluating character as it. With the reasons for the character being irrelevant.

That means for example, if a person acts a way because they were conditioned to for enviroment or because of their biology, I will treat the pretty much the same way. Free will becomes irrelevant.

Notice my viewpoint of morality as character judgement, a sort of virtue theory, does allow one to make a distinction between acts forced at gun point and acts not forced at gun point, accidents and intentional actions. Mainly because we are judging character and acts done at gun point or accidents say something different then acts taken out of internal motives.

For example there is a difference between lets say punching someone because a psycho with a gun told you to and just punching a person because hurting others feels good. The first cause is an exception of what you are, not the rule. The first cannot be expected regularly and will cease when the psycho leaves. The second is the rule, it will occur regularly unless you are restrained, changed or detered.

The ability the follow up with intrinsic motives without outside interference by other organisms is what I call freedom.

Now wait, haven't I just made a leap as well? Gone from character evaluation to punishment and reward without giving a reason so far? Indeed I have and will now remedy this.

The reason for punishment and reward for an act i.e. holding someone accountable is two-fold.

Reason one, to change a person's character or actions. Basically locking up a rapist or threatening them will cause them to cease raping helpless women. As will, if we could, using nanobots to alter the rapists brain states. That is one reason for punishment, conveniance created by change of the offender or effecting their abilities. That means we reward good behavior and punish bad behavior.

The second reason is the intrinsic good found in punishing another. Lets take a child abuser who killed his own child in a fit of rage, the man lets say is sterilized. The man will have another child again, cannot adopt a child and thus is unlikely to kill another child. Do we let it end there? Just let the guy go now?

Or lets say we have a holocaust criminal. It is unlikely such a person will ever become involved in another case of genocide. Does that mean we let them go?

Obviously most of us will not. If for example any of us was punched in the face, the natural reaction is to hit back. Now hitting back may make the other person hit you more, not less often. But we still do it. Basically because we have a semi-instinctive need to punish people who wrong us or those we love, for its own sake. This is what I like to call our retribution instinct.

Now its easy to see why such an semi-instinctive form of behavior would evolve. Basically if you were wronged by other members of your band, another band or other animals, and you let it slide, people would take advantage of you and your genes wouldn't be around for very long.

If for example I could just punch you whenver I wanted your food and take it, and you didn't hit back, I would be able to rob you blind and you'd starve.



In behavioral science such behavior has been well documented as something called counter-agressive behaviors. This basically means when animals are met with agression, they often respond by displaying agressive behavior themselves. The eye for an eye code so to speak. Such behavior can often times drive off would be attacker/oppertunists.

This likely evolved as a very strong and long lasting emotion in us because it was so necessary, universally necessary, for our survival.

Such a semi-instinctive emotion has obviously not yet died, both in the realm of our biology and culture and this motive of retribution is another reason we hold wrong doers accountable.

Now this counter-agressive punishment can easily explain why we for example would punish a man, lets say for raping, even if such punishment would not prevent other rapes from occuring. Lets say in this scenerio, you are stuck with this man on an island, you will not be rescued or get off and while you were on the other side the man raped and murdered your wife. Now, even though the man will not rape again, I doubt any of us would let it slide. In this case we would likely assault the man.


Now lets say we encounter a robot which kills people. Or a boulder rolls down a hill and squashes someone. We do not feel any immediate need to punish the robot or boulder, nor do we act in such a way.

Why do we have these seemingly double standards? Well evolution helps easily make sense of this. Basically,when we met an agressive animal with agression, or when we retaliated against someone that wronged us via harming them in the future, it helped us drive off the attackers or prevent being victimized. This action works with organisms but does not work with inanimate objects, like rocks, trees, water and machines. So basically we only feel the need to punish animate objects i.e. hold them responsible and we ignore objects which are alien to our semi-instinctive targeted parameters of retribution.

Thus we can easily retain and even explain our notions of morality and responsibility via character judgements, our ability to change things for conveniance and our desire for retribution.