Well, that certainly cleared things up!
;-} ;-{
On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 11:33 AM, Nicholas Thompson <
[email protected]> wrote:
> 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/<http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Russ Abbott <[email protected]>
> *To: *John Kennison <[email protected]> *Cc: *The Friday Morning
> Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>;
> [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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>
--
Doug Roberts
[email protected]
[email protected]
505-455-7333 - Office
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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