Jochen,
This is starting to remind me of the vortex-drain-water discussion. You recall that I was castigated by experts on the list for trivializing fluid dynamics by asking a naïve question about wash-basin drainage. Explaining vortices in washbasins was beyond my understanding. The complexity was just too great. The devil was in the details, and I was not well-trained enough to know them, let alone to build a theory of wash-basin drainage. Critical as they were for my asking the question, NONE of them asserted that there was a vortex/water problem in the same sense (I suspect) that some would like to assert that there is a mind/body problem. Emergence can always seem mysterious, if one is the right frame of mind. How mysterious are the structural properties of a triangle, as I hold in my hands three unconnected sticks of wood! The British Emergentist Philosophers (Mill?) liked to say that we should approach any instance of emergence with Natural Piety. Well, bugger that! To channel Eric, here. Yes there are mysteries, but there is no Mystery. Best, Nick From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 2:20 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt) If the mind-body problem is solved, we can say how the mind emerges from the body, i.e. from the interactions of billions of neurons and joghurt cells. Can we? -J. Sent from Android "ERIC P. CHARLES" <[email protected]> wrote: Nick, In his last paper, "William James as a Psychologist," Holt tells us that the William James was never one to shun contradictions, and that the one outstanding contradiction in psychology is: The mind seems dependent upon the body, while the mind also seems independent of the body. Traditionally psychology and philosophy try to somehow divide up the turf, but James insisted the problems of the mind and of the body cannot be solved independent of each other. Another way to phrase this would be to say that the problems of knowledge are ultimately identical to the problems of physiological psychology. I wager that you no longer understand the problem, because you are familiar with the century worth of work supporting James's position. A century of research showing that mind and body are not different in such a way as to allow for a 'mind-body' problem. People who don't know about this work still think it is mysterious. Eric P.S. My hunch is that all scientific fields have complaints about things that were solved long ago, but that people still insist are mysterious. Since there are lots of computer people on the list. Imagine that you were stuck in a room with people debating whether there were any problems that computers couldn't solve. You keep trying to convince them that there are well known classes of problems computers cannot solve, and much of the work on this problem was solved long ago, and that there is no 'can computers solve everything' mysterious. However, no matter how much you protest, they are so vested in the mysteriousness that they don't believe you. On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 08:19 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[email protected]> wrote: Glen, I realize that you didn't start this thread, so you may be as perplexed as I am, but, what exactly IS the mind-body problem? Also, not that it's essential, but could you DISAMBIGUATE? I, of course, instantly assumed you were referring to number eleven. Flying Spaghetti Monster, the deity of Pastafarianism, a parody religion FIFA Soccer Manager, a video game about football management Fighting Spirit magazine, a professional wrestling periodical Film Score Monthly, a record label and online magazine Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a motion picture Free Software Magazine, a computing periodical/website Free software movement, a sociopolitical movement in computing Fiji School of Medicine, the central medical school of the University of the South Pacific Fixed Survey Meter, an instrument used by the British Royal Observer Corps during the Cold War to detect nuclear fallout Folded spectrum method, a Solver for Eigenvalue problems Free Speech Movement, at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964 Finite-state machine, a model of computation Field service management, optimization of the field operations of technicians Fatih Sultan Mehmet (as Mehmed II), 7th sultan of the Ottoman Empire Fabryka Samochodów Małolitrażowych Polish car factory Federated States of Micronesia, an Oceanic island nation Fort Smith Regional Airport (IATA code: FSM) in Arkansas, United States Mauritian Solidarity Front, in French Front Solidarité Mauricien (FSM) THANKS, Nick -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella Sent: Monday, September 19, 2011 5:46 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: The Psychology Of Yogurt glen e. p. ropella wrote circa 11-09-19 03:30 PM: > Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 11-09-19 01:07 PM: > You are talking to a man with an insulin pump. I start to think VERY > BADLY if anything goes wrong with it. > > Yeah, I don't know either. But part of my fascination with this topic > lies in the use of psychedelic drugs (not _my_ use of such, of course > ... the FSM knows I would never touch such stuff). We (humans and > some animals, it seems) purposefully make worse some specific body > processes in order to "think badly". > > It seems to me that a little "bad thinking" now and again can be a > Good Thing(TM). Oh, I forgot to mention that I think this issue (mind-body problem) is intimately related to the old adage "the dose is the poison". Whether an alteration in a physiological process is "bad", "good", "better", or "worse", depends a very great deal on just how altered the process is. It seems reasonable that a little of the poisonous ethanol on a regular basis is "good" and a debilitating inhibition of dopamine production is "bad". But there is a large swatch of gray in between where "bad" and "good" are too oversimplifying to be useful. In any case, it's pretty easy for me to see a mind-body problem and to see it as a fundamental, immediate, medical issue. I've experimented quite a bit with my own mind-body dichotomy by switching hands on various tasks. I recently switched _back_ to using my right hand to brush my teeth. When I switched to my left (something like 10 years ago), I could barely finish the job without tiring out my arm. None of the muscles worked in any way that might be called efficient, even though I felt like I was telling my body to behave the same way it did when I'd use my right hand. Well, I finally got good at doing it with my left hand, although in a different way from what I remember for my right hand. I used my wrist much more with my right hand, and my elbow much more with my left hand. Well, when I switched just recently, I seemed to be using my right arm like I learned to use my left arm! I.e. very little give in the wrist and most movement in the elbow. I'm now trying to re-learn to use my wrist more with my right hand. If I do, then I'll switch again and try to do the same with my left. Although this sort of thing may not _seem_ like a mind-body problem, it most definitely is. Despite our realization that the mind is embodied, there may be some processes that can be swapped out, a perfect "impedance match", with another process (like an artificial eyeball, limb, or insulin pump). And yet, there may not be any such processes. If every little mechanism in our body has a salient impact on our mind, then the mind-body problem disappears. But if not, then the mind-body problem becomes one of requirements analysis, scaling, and the autonomy of various components. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com ============================================================ 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 Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601
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