Here is a cleaned up version. Not worth a second read, if you have suffered
through a first, but will save you some gear (and tooth) grinding, if you
haven't.
Sorry to try your patience.
N
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
----- Original Message -----
From: Nicholas Thompson
To: [email protected]
Sent: 6/25/2009 10:25:17 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Direct conversation - 1st vs 3rd person
Dear Rikus, and all,
I think one of the hardest things about having been an academic is that while
we are paid to have ideas, nobody else is paid to respond to them. And so,
academic writing is like dropping coins down an infinitely deep wishing well
and listening for any evidence at all that the coin ever dropped.
I think it is safe to say that NEVER in my 30 to 40 years of developing these
ideas have they received as much careful attention as they have in the last two
weeks. There is no greater kindness -- no rarer kindness -- a colleague can
do for an academic. I am deeply in your collective debt. I am humbled by it,
actually.
Rikus's questions are particularly well posed, and I will do my best with them
below.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
I wish I could say that the new realist perspective dissolves the idiographic
mystery.. the fact that people are so DAMNED individual. But it doesnt; it
merely recasts it. From the point of view of the folk psychological account,
the mystery is that an indivdiuals mind is locked away inside a vault that can
never be accessed; from the NR perspective, the mystery arises from the fact
that an individuals mind is a point of view from a place that one can never
stand. I would argue that of the two perspectives, the NR is the more
heuristic because the slope leading up to the goal is more gradual. One is
led, on the New Realist view, to try to approximate anothers point of view;
in the Folk Psychological view one is led to try and break into a vault. And
one is never sure whether the Vault one is breaking into is the vault that
contains the treasure that one is trying to discover.
Eric (and Nick),
I'm still pursuing clarity.
nst ---> As well you might!
Kindly consider the following:
Person A, a high-school student, is asked by a teacher (B) to solve a maths
problem on the board in front of the class. Among the other students is person
C, a close friend of A. A is taking an unusually long time to solve the
problem, frequently erasing partial calculations, now and then pausing to stare
at the board with a frown.
B is a new teacher and has only interacted with A a few times. It appears to
him that the problem is simply too much for A, and starts forming an idea about
A's math skills.
C knows that A is good at maths and that the problem on the board should really
not be difficult for him. He also knows A well enough to recognise that the
frown A exhibits means something is bothering him. Things between A and his
girlfriend are a bit shaky lately and he wonders if it took a turn for the
worse.
A has a really bad headache. He very rarely gets headaches, but woke up this
morning with a monster. He hates giving up on math problems, though, and is
sure he should be able to solve this one. Also, he suspects the new teacher
thinks he isn't very good at maths and he wants to correct that impression.
And he just realised he forgot to do biology homework and is trying to recall
which period biology is.
nst ---> OK. Great hypothetical. As a "New Realist" [the philosophical
perspective from which this all arises], I am committed to using the metaphor
of "point of view" rather than the metaphor of "private space". So, A, B, and
C have different "points of view" on A's behavior. We, also, have a point of
view on the situation, call it "D". All of these points of view are dynamic,
and constantly being updated. So, for instance, from the point of view with
the least information about A, the Teacher's, [B], it appears that a brief
review of A's academic records would show that he had never done well at Maths.
Once that prediction is disconfirmed, B's point of view on A would be
different.
Can you please comment:
1. I understand you to say that A is an observer of A in much the same way as B
and C. You're *not* saying A is not having an experience of A, only that A's
experience is not *privileged* compared to B and C.
nst ---> Yes. Good. Thank you.
Does that mean you consider A's experience to be qualitatively
indistinguishable from that of B and C, or only that the difference in the
quality of A's experience, compared to that of B and C, is not of consequence?
nst ---> I am sorry to say I don't have a good grip on what is meant by
"quality" here. I would strive to make a distinction between sources of
information and the manner in which those sources are integrated into a view of
the situation. And I certainly believe that some sources of information are
better (will prove out when the frame is widened) than others. Even B, whose
viewpoint the hypothetical invites us to disparage, might have information the
others might profit from. True, she has been called into the situation as a
substitute teacher at the last moment and doesn't know these students well, but
she has been teaching Maths for 30 years and has vast knowledge of the range of
skills that students present and of their behavior under the stress situation
of an exam.
2. Obvious A can think a great many things that B and C can't know anything
about. He can access memory about himself that B and C cannot. He has access
to interoceptive sensory information that B and C does not. He has the
experience of directly influencing the mathematical symbols in his working
memory, outside the perception or direct influence of B and C. On the other
hand, B and C has access to some exteroceptive sensory information about A that
A lacks. Do you consider these various kinds of information and experiences to
be entirely interchangeable?
nst ---> Exactly. You said it better than I did above.
3. Do you distinguish between "experience" and "have information about"?
nst ---> Oh what a good question! The field of psychology was influenced by
the New Realists by two distinct routes. One was through the "cognitive"
psychologist, E. C. Tolman; the other was through the perceptual psychologist,
JJ Gibson. Eric and I are from these different traditions and he and I have
often wrestled over this point. Eric will no doubt contradict me at this point.
I see my challenge here to be to come up with a way of talking that is as
internally consistent as possible. I think I would say that "information" is
"potential experience". It involves imagining a kind of universal point of view
that "sees" everything that all observers have ever or might possibly see.
All the stuff about A's headache is information that some observers have and
others do not; as such it is part of the potential experience or information
available in the situation. So, to "have information" means the same thing as
to "experience". If the information is "in" one's "field of view", one is
experiencing it.
4. When you say that A's point of view is not privileged, do you consider
anything beyond the ability to identify motives and intent, gauge current
emotional state, and identify habitual patterns of behaviour?
nst ---> Well, I would have to evaluate each claim of privilege, case by case.
If we are talking about what is written on your side of the cup that sits on
the table between us, I would be inclined, on theoretical grounds, to grant you
privilege; if, however, you are blindfolded, and I put the cup before you a
moment ago, I would ret ain that privilege for myself, on the same sorts of
theoretical grounds. Spouses are often pretty equally privileged with respect
to one anothers' emotional states, which is why marriage is such an interesting
human relation.
5. We can extend the example and allow A to spontaneously start hallucinating a
swarm of hand-sized pterodactyls that are attacking him. His body and mind
responds to the perceived threat like it would to a real one. In some sense he
really is having the experience, yet, B and C would deny that it is taking
place. What exactly does it mean to be "wrong" about one's own experience?
nst ---> The New Realists spent a lot of time talking about hallucination and
what they wrote didn't help me much. My answer would be something like this.
Our own point of view on the situation ... point of view D ... evolves as we
listen to the conversation between A and the others...."Sure looks like a swarm
of pterodactyls there" "Pterodactyls?" "Yep. They're attacking me from all
sides!" "I don't see no damned pterodactyls!" ETC. Now, a fifth observer, E,
watching and listening to all of this, might begin to see the degree to which
the D point of view is shaped by D's experience of A, B, and C's point of view.
So E might say, "From where I stand, D sees A is wrong and B as right."
Thanks again. I feel like my mind is a flock of sheep being moved around by
some very good sheep dogs.
By the way, I think Eric is correct to try and anchor our discussion of
First/third person to grammar. Speech about the self is first person speech;
speech about others is third person speech. Our position could then be
distilled into the statement that there is nothing special about the perceptual
processes that lie behind first person speech.
Nick
Regards,
Rikus
From: ERIC P. CHARLES
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 8:57 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Direct conversation - 1st vs 3rd person
My understanding is that the terms 1st and 3rd person arose as ways of talking
about literary styles - and our use of them is metaphorical. An essential part
of the metaphor is that authors writing in 1st person are typically granted
privileged license to write about the mind of "I". In contrast, people writing
in (a non-omniscient) 3rd person, are typically not granted as much license to
write about the minds. This is not entirely true, as people writing in 3rd
person write about minds all the time, but their writings are considered more
vulnerable to dispute. For example, if Obama wrote an account of his
inauguration and said "I was terrified", it would be considered less vulnerable
to dispute than if I wrote an account of his inauguration and said "He was
terrified". If these linguistic conventions become reified then we can start
taking the "I" not merely to denote the speaker/viewer, but to denote an entity
in possession of unique powers that justify the privileges commonly granted to
the linguistic device. This is suggested as my understanding of the history,
independent of any value judgment regarding the reification.
There is a lurking problem, however, as these conventions do not always seem to
hold in the real world. The most glairing probelm is that, at least sometimes,
"I" can be wrong about my own mind and "He" can be right. (The cause of my
error can range from simply not paying attention to what I am doing, to
intentional self-delusion, to forgetting - think Alzheimer's.) For some, these
problems lead to an urge to collapse categories, to see if the oddness cannot
be gotten rid of if we leave behind the notion of uniqueness that goes with
having distinct labels. I suppose that on some formal level, when a dichotomy
collapses into a monism, it might not be particularly important which category
label remains. However, one category may be preferred over another because it
originally contained properties that the author wishes to retain as implicit or
explicit in the monistic system that remains. These properties are ported along
with word into the monistic system, because the term retains sway as a
metaphor.
In this case, the historical bias has been to retain only the "I" position. In
this move, the "I" retains its unique insight about ourselves, and any insight
we think we have about others must be treated purely as insight about
ourselves, i.e. the mind that I know as "their mind" is really just a sub-part
of my mind. This leads to extreme forms of idealism (where all the world exists
merely as an idea), the two mind problem (is it ever possible for two minds to
know the some object?), etc., etc. These were huge turn of the 20th century
challenges for philosophy, having grown out of a tradition of pushing more and
more extreme the distinguished lineage of ideas flowing from Descartes, Kant,
Berkeley, etc. The problems, for the most part, remain. In the extreme form, at
least, this lineage leads to a heavy intellectual paralysis, as it is not
possible for any "I" to know any other "I", nor to know the "real world"
(should such a thing even exist).
The alternative (assuming we are to retain one of the original labels), is to
have a bias for the "He" position. This leads to extreme forms of realism, and
often (but not always) to behaviorism. In this move, the "I" has to get its
information about the mind in the same that "He" has to get information. That
is, if my brother knows my mind by observing my behavior, then I can only know
my mind by observing my behavior. (Note, that the assertion about observing
behavior is a secondary postulate, supplimenting the fundamental assertion that
the method of knowing must be the same.)
There are, presumably, things that the I-biased position handles well (I don't
know what they are, but there must be some). I know there are things the
He-biased position handles well. Among other things it allows us to better
understand perfectly normal and mundane conversations such as:
A) "You are angry"
B) "No I'm not"
A) "Yes you are dear. I've known you long enough to know when you're angry."
B) "I think I'd know when I was angry"
A) "You usually don't dear"
... several hours later
B) "Wow, you were right, I was angry. I didn't realize it at the time. I'm
sorry"
The I-biased position understands these conversations as very elaborate shell
games, where the first statement means something like: "The you that is in my
head is currently being modeled by me as having a first-person experience of
anger which is itself modeled after my unique first-person experience of
anger". Worse, the last sentence seems (to me) totally incoherent from the
I-biased position. The He-biased position much more simply believes that a
person's anger is visible to himself and others if the right things are
attended to, and hence the conversation requires no shell game. Person B simply
comes to attend aspects of the situation that A was attending from the start.
Now I will admit that the He-biased perspective has trouble in some situations,
but those can't really be discussed until the position is at least understood
in the situations it handles well.
Eric
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