[dmb] It is culture and language that allows us to think in the first place, the point being that mind is not just a matter of perceptual processes and cycling neurons.
[Krimel] As I said: "I am saying that experience is the a synthesis of an enormous number of infinitely complex processes that as far as we can tell now begin in subatomic physics and end in "Inception" and "Avatar"." [dmb] You literally cannot think without language. [Krimel] Philosophical position or not, I think that statement is factually false in empirically testable ways. I think the onus is on you to support such a claim. [dmb] It's the vital missing link between brains and minds, see? That's what you're overlooking and this is causing a lot of the confusion. [Krimel] I definitely see language and conceptualization as vital to healthy humans. I see them as evolutionary developments whose origins can be traced phylogenetically and ontogenetically. I agree that language is perhaps the defining characteristic of the "consciousness." But I think you are dramatically overstating its role. It plays a very small part in your daily life but the part it plays is magnified by your consciousness because it is the one telling the story. [dmb] SEe, this is the thing that really killed old-school empiricism, like the positivist project for example. In philosophy they call this the linguistic turn. Rorty is real big on this and wrote a book by that title. That why contextualism is so widely accepted now, because language and culture has everything to do with our conceptualizations. Let me explain in terms you can relate to. [Krimel] Language is how culture is transmitted. Language is a social feature with social functions. Culture isn't just suspended in language. It is language. It is something that we do with our thoughts. You gave an example of an experiment to demonstrate your point which was nice but if you could name the researchers or provide something to locate the study that would be helpful. Don't get me wrong it was a good effort but hardly conclusive. And I could give you dozens of experiments where preverbal children and nonhumans solved all kinds of problems without the aid of language. In fact the experiment you detailed sounded a bit more like evidence of a point I made somewhere recently, that what seems to set humans apart is the number of things we can consider at once; the size and speed of that seven plus or minus two window of awareness and conscious focus. The argument there seems to me to be that language is a byproduct of this capacity and not the other way around. [dmb] Language is what creates concepts, it adds something more to the otherwise incoherent jumble of perceptions such that conceptualization becomes possible. See, so the mind is not just what the brain does and its not just the result of complex perceptual processes. It's cultural. The brain and the sense organs simply are not capable of thought without also adding language. [Krimel] Humans develop through interactions with their environments. Culture is as much a part of the human environment as earth, air, fire and water. But I don't think you will find much support for the idea that perception is ever an incoherent jumble. Babies are born into a social world as social agents. They are tuned to their environment from the very moment of birth. They are most assuredly not, as James would have it, surround by a blooming buzzing confusion. Much of what you say about language acquisition is true as far as it goes but it hardly makes the point that thought is impossible without language. In making the point that consciousness is what the mind does I was not claiming that it or any of its incarnation is THEE answer to the problem. But I would say that good cases can be made for that line of thinking. The matter is hardly settled one way or the other but for purposes of our ongoing feud, I think the real point is that it is not a problem that will ultimate yield to rationalist speculative argument but to empirical testing and observation. It seems to me the problem for you is that you are hanging a lot of metaphysical weight on an empirical problem. [dmb] Quality or pure experience or the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum seems quite comparable to the qualitative phenomenal experience that Chalmers says cannot be explained by materialistic conceptions of functions and mechanisms. He is also saying that minds are not just what brains do. He is going to be opposed to eliminative materialists like Rorty, the latter probably being a better match for your intellectual tastes. [Krimel] Actually I think "Quality or pure experience or the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" as you want to use them have almost nothing to do with "consciousness" but rather the unconscious or the non-conscious or the non-verbal aspects of what the brain does. Which I keep saying is darn near all of what the brain does. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
