Ach! My point was I don't think you need organisms, or minds, or any of the "hard" stuff, to run into the logical problems entailed in moving between levels of organization. Perhaps I am just too old, too slow, too HOT, too uninformed, to be in this argument, right now. Or ever? Not without some help in language mediation, anyway, from some of my trusties, who are absent from the conversation. So, I bow out. But I love you all.
N Nick Thompson thompnicks...@gmail.com https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$ Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2021 2:08 PM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions Choosing a particular emotion misses the point, confuses the noise for the signal. The polyphenism, alone, demonstrates that starting with a particular emotion and working inversely from that phenotype to the generators is guaranteed to be a difficult problem ... you're guaranteeing that we stay stuck in this argument forever. Instead, work on the forward map from generator to phenomenon. The article Roger posted goes a long way to helping us understand how to get from molecules (or tissue, at least) to either glucose regulation or storage/retrieval. And we're not talking about billiard balls. We're talking about ion channels, neuron firing, collections of neurons firing, anatomical tissue and patterns of firing correlated with such tissue, and finally spectral analyses of such firing patterns. That carries us along a forward map from molecules to consciousness (or, at least, perception). And I don't think we're going to get to EricS' question without that compositional stack, because we're going to have to talk about which parts are Markovian and which parts are not (or are high-order Markovian). On 8/26/21 9:34 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: > I guess I think in levels of organization, and my rants are always of > the form, Grant Each Level Its Due and Do Not Confuse Them. So you can > discuss the amygdala all you want, but you still have not described, or > identified, fear. > > > > So, you ask, how would a person of my persuasion go about explaining > the relation between the molecules in my skin and the excitation of those > elections that produce on my screen, what I am writing. Never mind the > socalled hard problem (the problem of the soul). Let’s figure out a way to > talk about that. > > > > Or for that matter, let’s make it even simpler: Let’s talk about the > relation between the molecules of a cue ball that result in the motion of > the eightball into a pocket and the loss of the game. Let’s even do some > spherical cowing here and assume that one, and only one molecule of the cue > ball touches one and only one molecule of the eightball. Is this a good > model? Have I understood the question right? > > > > I don’t think Nick should say “I am my fear.” I think he should say > “I am the sum total of all the things that I do and that fear is one of the > things I do”. Or, perhaps, to put it in terms of experience-monism, “I am > all that I experience and when I experience my flight behavior in relation to > my experience of my circumstances I experience my fear.” > > > > > > I have to get back to that message from EricS that I bungled my response to. -- ☤>$ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
