John,
You may be in trouble,here, because I absolutely agree with what you are
saying.
In fact, I believe, that the first job of the child is to parse the "outer"
world into two subworlds, one that moves with me and one that moves with
respect to me. Immediately, parents start assigning names and meanings to
those two worlds, including the robust metaphysics of the inner and the
outer. ("Do as I say, not as I do"; "this hurts me more than it does you",
etc.) Out of such trivial hypocricies is built the "inner" world. So, by
the time we are 18, we have learned to say to our girlfriends, "But DEAR I
REALLY love YOU!" and other manipulative nonsense. The inner world is a
cognitive model designed to serve the interests of a unitary body.
You are quite right that seeing the world in this way has serious
consequences, and if you detect some moralizing lurking behind my position,
you are also right.
thanks,
Nick
> [Original Message]
> From: John Kennison <[email protected]>
> To: [email protected] <[email protected]>; The Friday
MorningApplied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>;
[email protected] <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected] <[email protected]>
> Date: 6/19/2009 8:40:53 AM
> Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Nick and dishonest behavior
>
>
>
> Nick and I are on opposite sides of the consciousness debate. I think
there is an inner mind and that I experience it. Nick rejects statements
not made from the third person perspective. Perhaps the debate suffers from
a feeling that if we take Nick's third person view, we are not allowed to
use metaphorical statements that suggest an inner mind. But clearly we can
say "The computer had an illusion" or a "breakdown" etc. to describe
behavior. (e.g. The behavior was as we imagined it would be if the computer
had a inner mind which suffered a breakdown.) Moreover, not only can these
metaphorical statements about behavior be defined rigorously, but we can
formulate and test rules about how they are related. We don't have to
believe in inner minds to say that a person accused of dishonesty behaves
as if deeply hurt. That is why we should not casually make such accusations
nor assume they will be without negative consequences even if there is no
inner mind.
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Russ Abbott [[email protected]]
> Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 11:07 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Nick and dishonest behavior
>
> Nick wrote:
>
> To call a man "dishonest" (my word, I admit, but you have embraced it) is
very harsh in my world, and seems (to me) to require a level of certainty
about another person's motives that I just don't know how you could come by
from your limited experience with me. ...
>
> You are insisting on the correctness of your view of my mind based on
inferences from my behavior.
>
> Yes, I'm doing exactly that, judging you on the basis of your behavior --
in this conversation. (The past 40 years aren't relevant to that.) Your
position in this discussion seems to be that your behavior is all there is.
So why are you objecting that I'm doing it?
>
> Furthermore, your objection seems to be that I don't know what your
"motives" are. I'm not sure what you mean by motives in this case. I'm not
assuming any particular motive. In fact I'm confused about what your
motives might be and why you are acting so dishonestly. Yet you are acting
dishonestly.
>
> To review: a good example of your dishonest behavior was your answer to
my question about nausea. Your provided a very nice first person
description of what it means to feel nauseous.
>
> If you say that you are "feeling nauseous" i will understand that your
world seems like it is churning around but that your visual cues do not
confirm (i.e., you are dizzy) and that your stomach feels the way it does
when on previous occasions you have thrown up.
>
> Note your use of the first person words seems and feels. But then you
refused to answer whether that description would ever apply to a robot.
Instead you offered a 3rd person description of what it looks like to feel
nauseous and said that of course a robot could fit that description. I call
that dishonest. You know what a first person description means because you
used it yourself. But then you refused to answer the question whether such
a first person description could apply to a robot. Furthermore, you refused
to acknowledge that this is what you were doing. I see that as dishonest.
But I don't know what your motives for acting this way might be.
>
> Besides, why are you so concerned about my characterizing your behavior
as dishonest? Why is that a very harsh term? It's simply a description of
your behavior.
>
> Are you upset because you are taking my use of the term dishonest to
apply more broadly than to your behavior? In the second passage of yours
quoted above, you talked about my view of your mind. Are you unhappy that I
seem to be implying that your mind is dishonest? I thought your position
was that there is no mind for me to have a view of. I thought your position
was that behavior was all that mattered. It should not matter to you what
"my view of your mind" is if it doesn't mean anything to talk about minds.
>
>
> -- Russ
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