Re: [FRIAM] (no subject)

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 10:10:30 -0700

Title: Message
Phil,
 
Answering your post will require some heavy thinking.  I have a garden that is in danger of dying of the heat and a brain, likewise, so it may be a few days.  Probably most of the problems you are having with me are because I am by instinct (if not ideology) a behaviorist.  For me, mind talk, and even talk like "my" brain has to be justified in terms of patterns in what we can see, feel, and touch.   Let me pick on the "my" brain notion.  Perhaps this is one of the problems with computer analogies, BUT ... would we ever say that a program "has" the hardware it runs on?   We would be morelikely to say, I should think, that the computer has the software.  Why, then, do we say that I have a brain?  MY BODY has a brain for sure, but I am not my body.  Who is the I that has my brain?  Is "I" a proper loop? 
 
Any way, I said I wasnt going to and then I did.  Sorry.
 
NIck
 
Nicholas Thompson
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Phil Henshaw
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED];friam@redfish.com
Sent: 7/16/2006 11:21:20 AM
Subject: RE:

[ph] great questions!  tried to keep short & as html...
isn't it weird how html 'fixed' the old email discussion thread format?!
 
Nick wrote:
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? 
[PH] there's a problem with the word 'definable' since the category of systems which we're trying to describe are real and all real things can be defined only by a form of pointing...  The frequent problem is separating the discussion of one thing being inside another as a mental category, from discussion of those which may refer to things inside others as links in their process.   
 
 Are we in one of those "turtles all the way down" situations? 
[PH] I'm not sure where the question of systems needing to be subsystems comes up.   I think systems and levels can be organizationally independent in large part.   There is always going to be layer upon layer patterns and structures, disappearing into the distance up and down I suppose.    I see no necessity that all that works as a whole, though.  To me the simple model is that anything that acts as a whole 'treats' the rest of the universe as a junk yard for making pick-ups and drop-offs.   That there's lots of independence seems to be a reliable general observation, though you do need to push back and forth to find out what 'lots' means there.
 
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.  
[PH] I only meant the in-out distinction as inside the loop or not, as internal & external to an ostensibly circular process.   It might be much the same as some corresponding physical boundary, or not.    It's a stretch but maybe there are things physically inside the boundary of your skin, but not inside the process loops of your biology.   I recently heard one of those "isn't science amazing" observations, that there may be 10-20 times the number of independent organisms living inside each of us as we have cells.    I don't think they're necessarily all there for some essential purpose to us.   Some may be purely freeloaders.    I also think Stan Salthe's idea (I think that's where I got the word for it) that independent systems interpenetrate seems to fit well with observation.   Things, say a street corner, can participate in multiple systems on multiple levels at the same time.   Things in one hierarchy may also participate in other hierarchies, like all the different personal, social and intellectual hierarchies each of us belong to.   Maybe my notion that whole systems are independent is a wishful choice to make the overwhelming complexity go away, maybe it's the only way things could possibly work, maybe it's a somewhat testable observation using a system's growth process as the implicit map of its interior...
 
 
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. 
[PH] a little different, I'm just saying I got a charge out of the idea of 'homing' as a system phenomenon to be accounted for, which to me is good raw science concerning a physical observable.   For any number of possible reasons I didn't see the connection to observables in the other piece.   The biggest problem I've had in systems theory is getting people to talk about observables as the subjects and tests of their theories...  I don't think you can do 'virtual science'.   There's plenty of solid work to be done figuring out how to refer to confusing undefined things more reliably.
 
 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. 
[PH] hmmm, why draw that conclusion?    To me images are found in version 1.0 (some kind of physical imprint), up to 3.0 (mental projections of rules, like my mental pictures of George Washington mapped onto the surfaces of electrons...).    The latter are made by physical processes but are not physical things.    A thermostat is a type 1.0 image of room temperature but I'd ask for a little more to go on before looking for whether it has type 3.0 images somewhere.   I don't see how our choice of descriptors for thermostats restricts humans, though.    Taking a middle ground, a mouse with version 2.0 images (heading for a mouse hole with a clear intent where to go), apparently has a mental map that he can detour from and return to in adapting the process getting to safety.  Mouse thinking seems sort of one dimensional though.    I tend to think there's a long stepwise continuum, with maybe ants working on version 1.2 and maybe chimps and bonobos working on version 2.9, though observation and discussion might change that.
 
I am happy with either view but to argue that there is anything special about humans in this regard seems just plain metaphysical. 
[PH] why?   People have brains, and enjoy having multiple virtual experiences at the same time occasionally.  Thermostats don't do that.  Even if there's a little logical window through which one can find a thermostat more intelligent than things that are entirely unresponsive there are many great differences of both degree and kind.   I'd be happier including thermostats among things having some technical aspect of intelligence if they evolved on their own, though.   I don't think much of anything man made (in the usual sense) is responsive and behaves as whole the way natural systems do.
 
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. 
[PH] right, 'being a designer' wouldn't seem to always require a picture in the brain of some desired future paired with a method of changing the world to approximate that image, but I think that's the baseline meaning of 'design'.   The other interesting version is how a craftsperson works, organically discovering the work in the process of responding to his or her materials, sort of a collaborative thing where the designer blurs the lines of the roles and the finished design is discovered in the construction rather than pre-conceived.
 
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. 
[PH] I'm not sure if the problem with teleology is its circularity, like the problem with 'fitness' in evolution theory.    Isn't the question of teleology whether systems have maps of some kind that tell them or are what their purpose is?   It's something more than having a kind of programmed 'destiny'.    I think there are properties of systems that might make people want to go out on that limb, but without identifying corresponding physical structures of control some other explanation is probably better.
 
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'.
[PH] maybe the natural meaning of the word can be a little broader than restricting it to human intent (v 1.0 to 3.0 as above), but I still think there are lots of associations with the word that just don't fit a general description of systems.
 
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.
[PH] Not for me.  It's true we can't explain how brains work, or what our next thoughts will be.   Still, we have lots of perfectly good words that are defined only by reference to recognizable patterns and things we don't understand very well.  My observation is that most such definitions are properly attached to specific natural forms and though language needs a lot of flexibility it's better to keep meanings sorted by what they refer to, their natural structures, and choose not to find 'apples' on 'bushes', for example.    For me no general explanation of 'brain' is needed to differentiate it from 'thermostat', just the evidence of the natural word associations we use.
 
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?
[PH] In the normal sense sure, if he's following his own design.   If he's selecting a pigeon for reproduction (assuming that's what you meant) but according to his cousin's design, or for some reason other than to influence the next generation  then I think not. 
 
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. 
[PH] ??    But don't languages need both internal structure and references to things outside their structure?
 
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? 
[PH] every change of state is a fundamental difference, and there seem to have been long chains of interesting ones in the successions of species over time, including ours.   That's how I read the evidence of punctuated equilibrium, that speciation is a change of state in a stepwise development process.   The big changes in kind that humans went through in the past 4 million years are clearly remarkable.   What I find most intriguing is that they occurred for some reason other than facilitating verbal language, culture and arts.    Those things definitely came later I think.    I think maybe the reason we care about whether humans are fundamentally different is that we feel guilty about building ourselves up so much when there's no one to disagree with us, along with perhaps a deep suspicion that it's just a handicap that keeps us from seeing what is fundamentally different about everything else.
 
Given some of the major misunderstandings of modern man, (our global economic plan, for example, to make ever more complicated changes to the earth at ever more rapid rates, forever)  I think it's possible that we have a lot of other things mixed up too.   This conversation is where I'm first beginning to wonder if perhaps some of the most primitive traits of living systems are among those we think exist for us alone, for example.    That remark I made about when your mind goes blank in a kiss was about a common shared moment when we are intensely conscious and alert but often briefly stop thinking.   Which can you say is the higher state of being at that moment, maintaining conscious thought or letting it go?     The example occurred to me in thinking of all those many times when we're acting competently without conscious perception at all, and my puzzling over why we still tend to credit all our behavior to thought.   
 
I think the big difference with humans is our virtual worlds, these amazing projected things that are so much more persuasive, entertaining and self-sufficient than our tenuous grip on the messy realities around us, that I expect we'll continue to have some use for.
 
Cheers!
 
 
Nicholas Thompson
 

Phil Henshaw 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
www.synapse9.com 

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