On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 2:06:27 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 16 Jul 2014, at 15:02, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > http://www.autism-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/TOM-in-TD-and-ASD.pdf > > > This test was also originally devised by Wellman and Estes, and involves > asking the child what the brain is for. They found that *normal 3-4 year > olds already know that the brain has a set of mental functions*, such as > dreaming, wanting, thinking, keeping secrets, etc., Some also knew it had > physi cal functions (such as making you move, or helping you stay alive, > etc.). In contrast , *children with autism (but who again had a mental > age above a 4 year old level) appear to know about the physical functions, > but typically fail to mention any mental function of the brain* > (Baron-Cohen, 1989a) > > This paper on autism and theory of mind really shines a light on the most > intractable problem within philosophy of mind. In particular > > ...children from about the age of 4 years old normally are able to > distinguish between appearance and reality, that is, they can talk about > objects which have misleading appearances. For example, they may say, when > presented with *a candle fashioned in the shape of an apple,* that it > looks like an apple but is really a candle. C*hildren with autism*, > presented with the 5 same sorts of tests, tend to commit errors of realism, > *saying > the object really is an apple, or really is a candle, but do not capture > the object’s dual identity* in their spontaneous descriptions > (Baron-Cohen, 1989a). > > This cartoon from a Psychology Today > <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/aspergers-diary/200805/empathy-mindblindness-and-theory-mind> > > article illustrates the kinds of tests that show whether children have > developed what is called a theory of mind; an understanding of the contents > of other people's experience: > > "Children with autism are virtually at chance on this test, as likely to > indicate one character as the other when asked “Which one knows what’s in > the box?”" > > > So often it becomes clear to me in debating the issues of consciousness > that they are missing something which cannot be replaced by logic. The way > that many people think, especially those who are very intelligent in math > and physics, only includes a kind of toy model of experience - one which > fails to fully realize the difference between the map and the territory. It > makes a lot of sense to be that having a very low-res, two dimensional > theory of mind would correlate with having a philosophy of mind which > undersignifies privacy and oversignifies mechanistic influences. The low > res theory of mind comes with a built in bias toward behaviorism, where all > events are caused by public conditions rather than private feelings and > experiences. > > There are several other interesting findings in the (brief) paper > <http://www.autism-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/TOM-in-TD-and-ASD.pdf>. > > Autistic children find it difficult to tell the difference between what > they meant to do and what they actually did, so that when they shoot at a > target and miss, they don't understand that they intended to hit it but > ended up missing it and say that they meant to miss. Overall, the list of > deficits in imagination, pragmatics, social mindreading, etc has been > called mindblindness. This is not to say that everyone who doesn't > understand the hard problem has mindblindness, but I would say it is very > likely that having mindreading-empathy deficits on the autistic spectrum > would tend to result in a strong bias against idealism, panpsychism, free > will, or the hard problem of consciousness. > > > Craig, you beg the question in a novel interesting way. I agree with the > concluding sentence, but that would describe exactly the state of a > rationalist who decides to keep comp and materialism, and de facto > eliminate the person and consciousness. >
Maybe all such rationalists have low theory of mind skills? > > But the big discovery is that when we look at computer science, we can > apply to machine (ideally correct believer in arithmetic) the simplest > notion of knowledge (Theaetetus), and the incompleteness (which already > guaranty universality and the consistence of Church Thesis) prevents any > possible confusion between the first person knower and any machine or 3p > description, and this already for the machine in their own 1p view, so > defined by Theatetus (with believability played by provability in rich > enough theory of numbers or digital machines/programs, combinators). > It's hard for me to figure out what you're saying there. By reading your book I have picked up a little better understanding of how you use modal logic, but it only makes me more sure that it is a red herring. To me, the only issue with the hard problem is feeling. Math does not allow feeling. It has no reason to create it or to use it. All of the rest - the first person and third person partitioning, etc, I have no problem with. I don't understand the specific math of how 1p-3p physics fall out of arithmetic, but I have no trouble believing you if you say that it does. The trouble is with feeling, tasting, hearing, etc. If a number can do things without sensation, then there can be nothing that can't be done without sensation. The same thing which makes Church-Turing true of reducing all computation to simple operators is the same proof that no complex machine would ever need to generate experiences which are felt. There would be different computations inside and outside of the machine, sure, but there is no cause to invent the flavor of tomato soup just to transfer information about nutrition into the machine's body. > If the theory above of autism is correct, a machine would become autistic > when denying they are their unnameable "[]p & p", and identifying > themselves with their body (the describable []p part). It is a bit the > correct conclusion of the materialist computationalist, and I am OK to > consider the materialist eliminativism (of the 1p and consciousness) as a > form of autism. Good point! But again, the machines like it too, and is not > a point against mechanism, but against mechanism + materialism or > non-idealism. > Yes, I agree, a machine which identified with its own output and the (input that it gets purely from the output of other machines) would seem autistic-equivalent, at least in some sense. Human autism is of course a much more complicated beast, but I have often thought that the spectrum of consciousness is Autistic-scientific at the West end, and Artistic-bipolar at the East end...they can overlap in a single person though also. Craig > > Bruno > > > > > > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] <javascript:>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <javascript:>. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
