All
This is becoming bloody interesting. Although I am not sure I agree with Phil's comments, the way in which they are posed sets the stage, I think, for huge advances in clarity. So let's hang in here and see where we can get. I am prepared to hang in either until we agree in detail or understand our differences in detail.
For reasons that will become clear, I am going to respond first to phil's message three, and then go back. I will use different type faces for my comments and his. For those of you who dont have your HTML turned on, this might be confusing.
PHIL'S MESSAGE THREE
Can we agree that trying to describe the characteristics of whole system
behavior, relating the simple to the complex, is a difficult challenge
that prompts each of us to stretch the meanings of words in ways others
feel uncomfortable with?
OH, Lordy Lordy yes..... We sure can.
I think the simplest property all ordinary
whole systems have, air currents to orangutans, is loops of organization
which give operational meaning to inside & outside. I know how to find
lots of them, but can't figure out what to call them.
(Italics mine!) If we can cash out the italicized words in a manner that others find comfortable and can adopt, we might get a nobel prize. I am serious. Nothing has been so tortured and confusing and misleading as the deployment of the terms "outside" and "inside" in psychology (let alone, biology). This conversation is very worth having. But let me highlight a problem with the project. Is a system definable except in sofar as it is a subsystem of a larger system? Are we in one of those "turtles all the way down" situations? I dont mind, if we are, but I think we need to know. If so, then inside and outside will refer to different levels in a multilevel system: i.e., what is inside when seen from "above" is outside when seen from "below". (Do I have that backwards?) To me the confusion of levels of organization is the Great Sin of psychological and biological talk, and if we can avoid it, we will be WAY AHEAD of in the game. .
PHIL'S MESSAGE TWO:
On the suggestion I went back to Nick & Pat [Derr]'s paper, but don't find the
departure from a normal sifting of categories (philosophical
conversation) that science broke from ages ago, and that Nick's own
sharp questions about things with homing trajectories represents
i think you have a point I should listen to here, but I am not sure I understand it. I think you are saying that what I have been saying about homing mechanisms (that they are intentional systems, etc.) is out of keeping from what Pat and I say in the paper. I obviously have to be concerned with such an inconsistency. Inconsistencies are usually growth points.
I'm a
designer, among other things, and while I understand the need to stretch
the meanings of common words to raise new issues, I think 'design' and
'intentionality' can't be done by systems that don't make 'images'.
Here, precisely is the nub of the issue. What a joy to get here so quickly and pointedly. My position is that EITHER (1) the thermostat's bimetalic thermocoil is an IMAGE of the room temperature OR (2) the statement that humans have internal working models (images) of the world is non-sense. I am happy with either view but to argue that there is anything special about humans in this regard seems just plain metaphysical. What IS demonstrably different about humans is their capacity to make material images and pass them around. To say that one cannot be a designer without having an actual physical plan would te an interesting assertion, but one which humans could not always meet on all the occasions when they are planning their worlds.
You might stretch it to say that natural systems and their behaviors ARE
images of their environments (though that's not what we mean when we
refer to the mental state the word refers to), but I don't think it's
right to say natural systems or their behaviors HAVE images [of? ], or designs
on, their environments. That just seems to take us back to teleology.
I have written on this to the point of obsession, but as you predict, have not had a lot of luck convincing people. I dont think extending the discriptors intentional and image-having lead to teleology (which is, after all, a form of circular reasoning) unless the descriptor is treated as an explainer of the property it explains. There is no harm in claiming that a rat looking for food looks like a man holding a map of the city and looking for a restaurant (if it is true); the crime comes in claiming that is a map that causes the mappish behavior. As with the golden goose, when we get inside and look around,we are likely to find only pink mush.
If 'intentionality' is to be read into complex systems that probably
don't have vast reflective worlds of projected imagery seated in a
central control structure, I think it'll disagree with the natural
meaning of the word and be confusing. We grope for how to describe how
things without brains can act as a whole, but I vote we not use
'intentionality'.
But dont we have exactly the same problem with "the brain as a whole". There is nothing there is that foresees the organization of the brain, is there? Nor anything that foresees what the brain is going to do.
To say that non-cognitive systems don't 'have designs on' other things
isn't to say that the 'designs of nature' aren't real. They seem to be
the main source of human 'invention'. Maybe the disconnect, that nature
has design, but doesn't do design, is telling though.
Is a farmer who sets about selecting the best pigeon a designer?
I think it's one
of the most widespread errors of thought, that we use the same words for
things in nature and in our minds, and don't distinguish...
We precisely disagree on this point. So precisely, in fact, that I think we are going to be able to work it out. Exciting.
To think
the world is in your mind does give you a peculiarly enthralling feeling
of power, no doubt, but as a lifestyle it actually leaves you quite
powerless.
What is the heuristic basis for maintaining a dualism apriori? Or if the dualism isnt a priori, what is its empirical base. Given, for instance, that human beings have ony twice as many genes as fruitflies and given that most of the most important gene sequences are nearly the same in fruitflies and humans (and , for all intents and purposes ARE thesame in chimps and humans), where does one stand to say that humans are FUNDAMENTALLY different?
Nicholas Thompson
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