Standard Disclaimer for most: TL;DR
Steve,
Thanks for getting into this for real.
Well the language *was* a bit too easy pickings there for a moment.
And I think *that* is also relevant to the conversation, even if I *was*
being teasing and flippant. The dialog in place *was* as much about
language as about consciousness. You were talking about abstractions
like "cup" and "card" which are at some level simply idiomatic. To
members of a modestly (let's say non-westernized) different culture,
both "cup" and "card" would not mean the same thing and when you met in
person and showed one another those artifacts, there might be as much
surprise as recognition. I know this may be tangential to the
intended point, but I still think it cannot be ignored?
I keep starting to feel I have irresponsibly bent this thread, but then I
remind myself that, to me anyway, the question of whether ant colonies have
personalities is the same kind of question as the question of whether
computers are conscious.
I'm not a stickler about thread-bending myself, it is certainly a
motivated tangent to the original. And don't be shy about changing the
subject-line if you feel like you are being bendy.
Just to bend/fork/twist it in another direction... I can't help but
imagine that Ant Hill Art <http://www.anthillart.com/> is a useful
technique for trying to measure the "personality" of an ant colony (the
same way the Israelis are trying to measure the "personality" of the
Palestinians right now?). Other than being destructive testing to the
max, can we say that such artifacts (the aluminum casts of the ant-hill)
correlate with anything we might want to call "personality" of the
ant-colony collectively? I might suggest "mood" would be a more
appropriate metaphor, but still implying something familiar to
consciousness. Is it not apt to refer to an ant colony as "angry" or
"calm" or (when analyzing the nest structure) "curious" or "withdrawn"
or "aggressive"?
How it gets answered depends on the kind of
question one takes it to be. It could be a question of fact, in which case
the answer must begin with some sort of straight-forward definition of what
would constitute a personality or a consciousness: how we would recognize a
personality or a consciousness if we met it on a dark street in the middle
of the night.
Turing Test. Right?
Or it could be a question of metaphysics, in which case the
answer concerns the most central, and closely held presumptions of the
answerer's thought. My sense is that you and John and Frank WANT the
question to be of the first type, but that it is, for you truly, a question
of the second type.
I believe that the question *has* a significant component of the second
type and that the first type is the only thing that has a chance to be
measured directly. At worst, the first type of question suffers from
perceptual and semantic differences, while the second suffers from being
at some point strictly grounded in shared axioms.
You START with the notion that at the core of every
human being is an inner, private space from which she or he speaks, and
without that presumption, all thought must stop.
I can't quite parse this completely. I *do* think this is how we
operate, or at least this is how I subjectively feel that *I* operate
and for the sake of sanity or at least social embeddedness, I assume
others operate in a sufficiently similar manner. I'm not sure what
"thought" is if it isn't mediated by (if not entirely originating from)
the neurological (highly coupled with and informed by the vascular, the
lymphatic, etc.) system of the body. I'm not beyond granting some
ground to those who want to suggest that our individual, confined to our
own body, neurological systems are somehow coupled with those of others
in overt (visual, aural, pheremonal, etc.) ways, or even through shared
mythologies (Ancient Greeks shared the same Pantheon, the Romans, to the
extent that they
Thus, my claim about
you-all is, that you are asking for a factual answer to a metaphysical
question, and that, of course, nobody can ever provide.
I agree. But I also think that whilst mulling over facts in the light
of metaphysical perspectives, the facts can take on some (provisional)
meaning that they did not have without that, and in complement, hanging
facts all over one's theories can help one to refine and understand
their theories more better/differently?
My claim about
myself is that I am just treating the question as the factual question that,
and answering it in the way that factual questions are answered. "Is there
a unicorn in the room?" "Oh, you mean, a horsey sort of thing with a
narwhale horn in the middle of its forehead? No, I don't think so." So,
the template for such a conversation would be a question, "Is X conscious or
does X have a personality?", followed by an agreement on some sort of a
procedure by which consciousness or personality is to be recognized,
followed by an attempt to relate the behavior of X to those criteria.
Ok... trying to unpack this a bit... if I understand you correctly, I
would rephrase the above to say: I intrinsically think of this as a
metaphysical question (or perhaps more aptly an epistemological one?) .
I also believe that FACTUAL things (facts about the world vs relations
between ideas) are the only ones which can be tested directly.
Sometimes the *expression* of ideas and their relations can be tested
(this is what psychologists and anthropologists do?), which amounts to
determining (experimentally and statistically) "what people believe or
perceive" but not "what they experience", if the distinction is not too
subtle?
So, I have some questions for you. First, do you accept my characterization
of the template for a factual discussion? If so, can you explain to me what
on God's green earth you think MRI images have to do with providing a
factual answer to the question of whether X is conscious or has a
personality? That's an honest question. I honestly cannot see the
relevance.
It represents the only way *I* know of right now to measure or observe
anything about brain states of directly. In this case of humans or
possibly all animals. I don't think we can put an ant colony in an MRI
and get anything meaningful from it. I suppose we might be able to put
a single ant in one, though I'm not sure. Putting a computer or a
vending machine in one would be silly of course.
Well, I can see SOME relevance, but only if I adopt the
metaphysical stance I am identifying with your position. In other words, I
think introduction of MRI "evidence" for consciousness (or personality) begs
the question of the nature of consciousness.
This is why I asked if there were any new insights that came from such
activities. It isn't clear to me that such measurements help directly
(or it is somewhat clear that they are not). The current model, as I
understand it of what MRI's (or similar) measure and what can be
correlated with other observables and subjective inner states ( e.g.
show me flash-cards of colored shapes and maybe you can map what parts
of my brain respond to which colors and shapes, and maybe you can
correlate that with others' physiological responses to the same stimuli,
but does that actually say anything about my subjective experience of
color and/or shape?). I realize I'm talking more about "perception"
than "consciousness" but I think the two are inextricable ("Embodied
Mind" arguement).
I happen to experience modest amounts of synaesthesia, and I have never
met anyone else whose synaesthesia presents identically to my own. I
recognize the *pattern* of their descriptions of the way things get
tangled, but the specifics are always unique to me (and them?). The
fact that many people can agree that "blue and green are cool colors"
and "red and orange are hot colors" is a lovely generalization. I have
learned to nod (up and down) to such claims, yet my experience is
somewhat more complicated and unconventional. I can speak the vernacular
language of color (if someone asks me to choose a warmer or cooler
color, I know what they mean and can usually satisfy them) but the
metaphors aren't as fully apt for me. Blackbody radiation and
therefore most of physics maps red to "cool" and blue to "hot" for
direct physical reasons, yet the average individual maps blue to water
and green to vegetation which are usually cool and red and orange to
flame which is usually hot. If we go to asian cultures however, for
example, we discover that Red is associated with life and positive
energy (oxygenated blood?) whilst Green is associated with warnings and
death and decay (mold and overgrowing vegetation?). Green stop signs
and lights and red traffic lights meaning *GO!*. Such things are at
least learned, if not entirely culturally defined?
I guess what I am hypothesizing is that while neuroscientists are
mucking around measuring the brain's activity and trying to correlate it
with behaviour (including reportage of subjective experiences), that
they might trip over new ways of thinking about consciousness. I am
asking if there are new models of consciousness (metaphysical issue)
which might have been inspired or tripped over whilst running lots of
people's brains through machines, looking for "the lost keys under the
streetlight". I don't expect them to find the keys under the
streetlight, but maybe while looking there (because the light is better)
they will think of other/better places to look (or more aptly, to
realize that there are no keys, or that they are not needed?).
You are safe from running into me in the street in Santa Fe until October.
Well that is a relief! Although I don't think I have *ever* run into
you on the streets of Santa Fe excepting when we were deliberately
trying to find eachother (and even then it was a crapshoot). Of
course, I spend *very* little time on the streets of Santa Fe. And not
because I fear running into you.
I will reaffirm my desire to join the St. John's crowd on Friday AMs but
so far I seem to fail at it nearly every week of every year. But knowing
you will be there adds to my interest in doing so.
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