Nick et al-
Thanks for writing.
What I see happening with you and Russ is that from the most
fundamental level, you are using words differently.
You never established definitions for "I" and "feel" or "know", etc.
Yet now you are trying to define those words by using those same words.
Never gonna happen. Retroactive self-referential definitions.
Might work if you perceived identically, but that doesn't seem to be
happening either.
My suggestion, that you look at how you both are applying the
'scientific method', was an attempt to see if you two have any common
ground of agreed-on definitions from which you could jointly build a
verbal infrastructure to examine this idea of first and third person.
I am not convinced your ways of 'doing science' are similar enough.
Concepts of awareness and consciousness are the most notoriously
difficult concepts to define scientifically, for any scientist or
technologist. So the difficulties in this discussion are not surprising.
In any field this is the Ultimate Question...
Many apparently irreconcilable issues boil down to communication
disjoints.
If and when the various sides can agree on what they are disagreeing
about, there's an opportunity to resolve this through creative action,
if both sides want resolution.
These disjoints happen often without conscious knowledge, and usually
happen immediately.
Then onto these disjoints massive monolithic assumptions are built,
and the whole looming edifice defended unto the death, literally in
many cases, rather than anyone pausing in a bit of self-awareness and
looking at the pre-suppositions or assumptions in conflict in the
original shared language set.
Ah, words. They ain't a great tool, but they's the best we got.
Emails, as symbols of symbols representing spoken words, and thus
not including the myriad nuances of spoken or in-person (first or
third or both) communication, are not the best tool for conveying
complex and highly nuanced concepts. We all have had experienced
wildly divergent email interpretations, and know how easy it is to
misinterpret.
I do believe that all our language about experience is necessarily
metaphoric, since our perceptions - our senses- are not taken in
words, they are instead about taking in sight, sound et al.
As they are processed into something we can eventually distill into
an email, those same perceptions become biochemical and
neuroelectrical, and then activate memory and reflection and cross-
referencing, then visual and kinesthetic, then digital...
The elements of a sense of self, and of the experiences that self
has, happen immediately to our senses. That would be the ideal level
at which to share awareness of a sense of self.
I also believe that this metaphoric communication envelope is pretty
effective, since each perception happens in synergy with others, and a
metaphor acknowledges this synergy or holographic experience better
than whatever a non-metaphoric communication tool would be.
Even saying something like 'I sit down' is translated metaphorically
within the listener, related to their own experiences of "sitting",
and "down", and (gasp) "I". Or they would have no idea of what you
were talking about.
But this doesn't have to be a bad thing. If we use it deliberately,
it can be a tremendous resource for innovation, expansion, growth.
As long as we are having this conversation, I see nothing
contradictory in being both a first and third person, at different and
the same times. I have experienced all these states and more. Paradox
exists.
But if there is no room for it in the scientific language, or
methodology, even if we know experientially it exists, what do we do
then?
I know my choice would be to investigate and expand my definition and
application of "the scientific method". Science is about knowledge. My
direct experience is the closest to trustworthy knowledge I can get. I
see no reason to deny my direct experience in order to support a
system that has no place for my direct experience. I want a robust
scientific method that increases my knowledge and augments and
enhances my direct experience, not one that tell me I am in error in
how I experience. Who's in charge here, anyway?
I have read Kuhn, and will go back and reread. And since you seem
open to a diversity of input, I may respond to you personally with
other resources and ideas.
There are many methods in addition to strict scientific methodology
to investigate the sense of self, and many of them work more smoothly
than this one. Guess there is great importance to both of you that
this investigation be done using this method.
Best wishes for the medical stuff to go smoothly, and have a great
time on your long family trip-
Tory
Reply-To: [email protected], The Friday Morning Applied
Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>
Tory,
How interesting that you wrote this BEFORE I wrote my appeal for
articulation!
Before you asked the question, I would have assumed that both Russ
and I would defend the scientific method stoutly... indeed, defend
the possibility of a scientific method, of a reaching toward
objectivity, even in the absence of any ability to know what
objectivity means, given that we both see observers as giving
fallible accounts of the words around them and neither of us is
really comfortable with a God's eye view. But how the dickens could
either of us do that?
A strange man by the name of Jacob von Uexkull wrote a strange paper
long ago that became the foundation for the field of ethology. In
that paper he argued that every kind of animal lives within a life
space of its own creation. This led to all that wonderful research
in ethology that demonstrated that animals living in exactly the
same physical worlds that we live in respond in ways that suggest
that what they see in those worlds is remarkably different what we
see. Lorenz was pleased to point out that in the "umvelt" of his
pet jackdaw (a small European crow) there was no such object as
another jack daw... not as such. For the purposes of species
defense, Lorenz's black bathing trunks made a perfectly good
jackdaw, and for the purposes of courtship, Lorenz himself made a
perfectly good jackdaw. Only for the purposes of formation-flying
was another bird required (and even that could be perfectly well
fulfilled by another corvid). It would be as if you had a good
friend who was a cooking buddy, and a tennis-playing buddy and a
movie going buddy, but you never gave any indication by your
behavior toward her that she was one in the same person.
Von Uexkull has this heart-stopping passage at the end of his essay
in which he suggests that what we gamely refer to as the objective
world is what the life worlds of all creatures, taken together,
asyntotically converge on. From this objective world each
creature picks out what it needs just as a child picks the raisins
out of plumb cake at Christmas.
How could you build a science on that? Indeed! But ethology was
built upon it, and thrived for half a century before it was finally
beaten into the bland cake that now constitutes animal behavior
research.
So, I conclude, somewhat reluctantly, that science is a kind of game
played by people who share a paradigm. The problem with that view
is of course, as Frank Wimberley points out to me every time I start
talking this way, that scientists do get better at stuff, and the
paradigm view doesn't really account for that. Thomas Kuhn, I am
told, regretted this interpretation of his Scientific Revolutions
and wrote at length to correct it. I wonder if anybody reading this
message knows that work.
Anyway, thanks for your "intervention"
All the best,
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
----- Original Message -----
From: Victoria Hughes
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 6/26/2009 7:06:48 PM
Subject: [FRIAM] Re- Direct Conversation
Russ wrote-
The question then is how do we understand/explain/talk about such
phenomena from a scientific perspective.
Perhaps this is the sticking point. The "scientific perspective".
The way 'science' is being applied here doesn't seem to be working.
How are you each using it? Do you agree on that?
It looks like you have to agree on something somewhere in order to
establish a base from which to investigate less-agreed-upon things.
Perhaps the issue lies is the definition of science and its
workings; how you are using it: and needs to be examined and
expanded or altered to suit the facts.
From out here:
You all are obviously 'first persons' for all human needs and
interactions. You walk and talk, etc. You know how to understand and
act from this first-person place without any thought at all. You
know how to observe and interpolate, rightly or wrongly. You already
know and do these things, yes.
The issue arises when you investigate how you do these things.
You are clearly discussing all this from a first person perspective,
in that you are clear about your particular take on the issue (at
least you are consistent) and unable to see the other's perspective
with the same ease you see your own.
If there were a 'third person perspective' in here, wouldn't the
discussion be more accessible to all of you, since there would be no
a priori first person identity with the issues?
What if scientific method could offer you two some neutral agreed-on
ground to start with?
Maybe look into examining / changing your ideas of what scientific
investigation is.
Below the wiki def of scientific method. (my font size change)
? Do either or both of you [think/know/feel ] Is it possible to be
objective about your own objectifying? Can we truly be unbiased
about our own awareness / existance? is that evolutionarily viable?
(As long as you are not a Vulcan, at least?)
Having followed this discussion with interest, if not always
agreement, I am beginning to feel like one of those people hanging
over the railings at a rodeo; watching breathlessly, hooting and
hollering, eyes widening at unexpected moves... Figured I might drop
something in the ring and see what happens. Usually, of course,
these actions go unnoticed by the riders, understandably focused on
things much closer to home. Ahem. As it were.
Tory
ps: Nick, the torrential rains moved west, fyi.
Scientific method refers to bodies of techniques for investigating
phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating
previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry
must be based on gathering observable, empirical and
measurableevidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.[1] A
scientific method consists of the collection of data through
observation andexperimentation, and the formulation and testing of
hypotheses.[2]
Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another,
identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other
methodologies of knowledge. Scientific researchers propose
hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental
studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in
order to dependably predict any future results. Theories that
encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many hypotheses together
in a coherent structure. This in turn may help form new hypotheses
or place groups of hypotheses into context.
Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the
conviction that the process be objective to reduce biased
interpretations of the results.
Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data
and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other
scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to
verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice,
called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the
reliability of these data to be established.
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
