Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
Steve writes:
1) I don't understand what Nick means when he says :
I doubt that I am conscious and that my consciousness affects my acts.
I sympathize with the feeling, but I don't understand. In particular who the
"I" is who is doing the doubting and whether "doubting" is a conscious act or
not.
Nick replies: this is what it is to be trapped in a language game. If you dont
play the game nobody understands you, and if you do play the game, everybody
accuses you of being a hypocrite.
As I said to Jochen, I grant to myself all the powers I grant to any creature.
If you can see me, I can see me. If you can see me doubting, then I can see me
doubting. Everything a third person can do, I do. Doubting is a conscious act
if the behavior of the doubter implies awareness of the doubting.
Like all behaviorists, I believe that first person perception is just third
person perception directed towards the self.
N
----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Smith
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 6/14/2009 8:44:26 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The ghost in the machine (was 'quick question')
Jochen and Nick-
I don't have any answers on this one, but I do have a couple of observations.
1) I don't understand what Nick means when he says :
I doubt that I am conscious and that my consciousness affects my acts.
I sympathize with the feeling, but I don't understand. In particular who the
"I" is who is doing the doubting and whether "doubting" is a conscious act or
not.
2) I appreciate Jochen's attempts to reduce the mystery of conscious action
into it's (perhaps) more tractable components, but somehow I feel like you are
cutting the head off of a Hydra in the process.
As a young child (<10 yrs) I would lie in the grass staring at the clouds on
lazy summer days until I felt compelled to get up and do something else. At
that point, the habit of laying and contemplating would be deep enough that I
would find myself in an interesting "loop" of "deciding to get up, but not
doing it. I would (deliberately) think very hard about getting up yet would
never quite find the connection between the decision and the action. I would
deliberately search for the connection between the conscious thought "I shall
get up now"with the action "getting up" and the very introspection would
prevent the connection best I could tell. It would get so "bad" that eventually
I would have to play a mental trick on myself and quit thinking about getting
up. At that point, I would simply "get up" and the loop would be broken.
This anecdote might explain why I am sympathetic with both Nick and Jochen, yet
am significantly unsatisfied with either discussion.
Carry on!
- Steve
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