Dear Doug and "List",
I hope it is clear to everybody by now that "Nick" is a philosophical example.
He was borrowed for this purpose because the best discussions are reflexive ...
i.e, they become examples of themselves. Doug and Nick (the real one, this
time) fell into a paradox. He is arguing that I falsify my own mind when I say
that I dont understand expressions like "I feel nauseous". I am arguing that
he doesnt know what he is saying when he uses them. Notice the paradox: if
"Nick" is right, then Russ is right; if "Russ" is right, then Nick is right.
You are correct to demand that we call a truce on this discussion for long
enough to clarify why anybody should give a damn.
Part of the purported importance has just become clear in Russ's most recent
message. He feels that ethical behavior necessitates our respecting the
sanctity of the inner life of others. To respect the inner life of others one
must first embrace one's own, and so my statement that I dont "have" an inner
life begins to feel like an attack on the most central of moral principles.
As one of my graduate students used to [cheerfully] say, "but Nick, if you
don't have an inner life, it's ok to kill you, right?"
Now, my wisest response to this line of argument would be to go all
technocratic and to deny that I have any ethical dog in this fight at all.
One can, after all, be a moral naturalist and assert that reasoning and
argument only come into play when people are trying to violate their ethical
impulses and that, on the whole, people are designed by nature so that they
dont kill each other. Just as I dont think it makes any difference whether you
believe in evolution or creation whether you are a good person, I dont think it
makes any difference to being a good person whether you believe others have an
inner life or not. Thus, I escape the argument by asserting that it has no
MORAL consequences. I reassure Russ that my absense of an inner life does not
make me dangerous, and, once he takes that reassurance seriously, he doesnt
have to kill me. Peace is re-established.
But we behaviorists are fierce (if covert) moralists. Just read Skinner's
Walden II. We deplore the metaphysics of the inner life because we think of it
as a way of thinking that encourages people to act badly while claiming good
intentions. Now it will become clear to you why I have tolerated the
conversation about my "honesty", or, more accurately "Nick's" honesty : because
I am holding a similar judgment behind my back like a mailed fist. The
function of the inner life view (in evolutionary history) has been to promote
dishonesty!
Animal behaviorists from time to time have tried to serve as expert witnesses
in the societal debate concerning who you can kill (or enslave, or whatever).
I regard my colleagues participation in this argument as akin to that of the
psychologists who consulted in the CIA torture techniques. One of my best
collegial friends -- bless his heart -- wrote an essay entitled "Does octopus
suffer ?" and came to the conclusion that well, perhaps, yes, but nothing LESS
than octopus could possibly feel pain. Therefore you can dissect a cockroach
with impunity, right? Well, anybody who has stuck a needle in a cockroach
knows they dont like it. So, any attempt to draw a line between creatures that
suffer and those that dont strikes me as casuistry of the worst sort. And
people who object to clubbing a cow over the head but who will happily eat a
salmon that has suffocated in the hold of a boat under a pile of his own kind
seems to me to be ... well, kidding himself.
In short, I Russ thinks people would be better if they believed in the inner
life; I think people would be better people if they didnt.
This is probably where the argument should stop, because I dont see any way to
resolve it. I am overjoyed if The People have come to understand that The
Inner Life is a way to think, not the way things are. Russ will have to speak
for himself, but I guess he will be more or less satisfied if we understand
that The Inner Life is fundamental to what we are as humans. We will just have
to hold those contradictory thoughts in our minds and move on to issues we can
resolve.
Two places where I would like to see this discussion go from here are as
follows:
(1) What about "self-awareness" in computers? Now, that discussion got off to
a strange start because I expected the experts on the list to treat as trivial
the proposition that computers ... in some loose sense at least ... collect
information about themselves. That assertion seemed to be already
controversial, and I would really like to understand why. Modern automobiles
gather all sorts of information about themselves. What exactly is going on
when they do this. I see this as a detailed, matter-of-fact, discussion of
self-reference in control systems.
(2) What about "emergence"? Discussions concerning emergence always stray
into discussions about consciousness because, for many, the origin's of
consciousness in the brain is the only truly interesting example of emergence.
But I think the most interesting examples of emergence are the most prosaic
ones. I would like to see us get back to the emergent properties of ...
triangles. I would like to see us build an error-free language for talking
about simple forms of emergence ... triangles, gliders, etc. -- so that we can
have some confidence and discipline the next time we get together to talk
complexity babble face to face.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Abbott
To: John Kennison
Cc: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group;
[email protected]; [email protected]
Sent: 6/19/2009 8:58:14 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Nick and dishonest behavior
As I wrote to Nick directly, I think Nick is gracious and kind and a man of
great integrity.
But this doesn't make sense to me: "We don't have to believe in inner minds to
say that a person accused of dishonesty behaves as if deeply hurt." What could
it possibly mean to say that a person is deeply hurt if there is no such thing
as first person experience? And if there is no such thing as being deeply hurt
in a first person way, what could it possibly mean to say that someone is
behaving as if deeply hurt?
This suggests that it is very dangerous to claim that there is no first person
experience and that observable behavior is all there is. It would encourage
"treating people as objects" because that's exactly the position it takes. An
attitude of this sort would seem to discard millennia of progress in our
understanding and acceptance of what ethical human-to-human interaction
consists of.
-- Russ
On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 7:40 AM, John Kennison <[email protected]> wrote:
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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