Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: The Psychology Of Yogurt

[Jochen Fromm]

Well formulated Glen. The raw desire for a frozen blueberry Yogurt seems to 
have little to do with the mind, and the abstract thought of a Calabi-Yau 
manifold in 6 dimensions seems to have little to do with the body. An 
example where we feel this perplexing sense would be a situation where body 
and mind contradict each other: for instance my body may say I should eat a 
frozen blueberry Yogurt now, but my mind says I should not because it 
contains too much sugar. Or my body says I should have sex with that 
beautiful woman, but my mind says I should not because I am married.


The desire to eat comes from my body, and I can feel it comes from the 
inside (in the last instance it comes from the genes who have built a system 
which craves for our building blocks sugar and fat). The rule to avoid too 
much sugar is clearly learnt. I can feel it comes from the outside if I 
recall the rule or listen to the "Super-ego". As you know, Freud called the 
representation of the body which is responsible for the desire "id" ("das 
Es"), the representation of culture and mind "Super-ego" ("das Über-Ich"), 
and the mediator between both the ego ("das Ich"). Each of us has developed 
a complex personality which determines how Id and Super-ego interact to form 
the Ego. The sinner eats every Yogurt he can, the saint eats none at all and 
gives them away to the poor. The Tiger Woods or Bill Clinton type eats every 
Yogurt he can while pretending he has eaten only one.


Until we can explain this perplexing sense that there are parts of the body 
that seem to have little or nothing to do with the mind (and vice versa) the 
mind-body problem is not completely solved. It remains also unsolved as long 
as we can not explain how the mind emerges from the body, i.e. from the 
interactions of billions of knowledge molecules ("ideas") and Yogurt cells. 
In the end, the interactions of course lead to a vast network of neurons 
which incorporate all available knowledge and which are made from Yogurt 
cells. The devil is in the details. I think the trick here is to consider 
the body and the environment, i.e. the adaptive body embedded in a certain 
environment. A human being is a complex object living in multiple worlds, it 
is as a biological organism a certain instance of nature which meets a 
certain instance of culture during development, and both instances come 
together to form a unique connection between both worlds.


-J.

- Original Message - 
From: "glen e. p. ropella" 

To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" 
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 2:35 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: The Psychology Of Yogurt


Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 11-09-19 05:19 PM:
I realize that you didn't start this thread, so you may be as perplexed as 
I

am, but, what exactly IS the mind-body problem?


As I understand it, it's the perplexing sense that there are parts
(extended to processes by me if not others) of the body that seem to
have little or nothing to do with the mind.  And vice versa: there seem
to be thoughts that have little or nothing to do with the body.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com





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Re: [FRIAM] Eddie Rosenstein: Tom Hanks Narrates 'BOATLIFT, ' Honors Untold 9/11 Story Of Mariner Heroes (VIDEO)

[Alfredo Covaleda]

CAS should work for job creation and economic recovery.



2011/9/20 Tom Johnson 

> A nice example of complex adaptive systems at work.
> -tj
>
> Tom Hanks Narrates 'BOATLIFT,' Honors Untold 9/11 Story Of Mariner Heroes
> (VIDEO)
>
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eddie-rosenstein/tom-hanks-narrates-boatlift_b_956529.html
>
>
>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>



-- 
Alfredo

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[FRIAM] ** reminder tomorrow ** Wedtech Lecture: Robert Geist - "Real-Time Modeling and Rendering of Natural Phenomena"

[Stephen Guerin]

This should be good tomorrow...folks may be interested in how lattice
boltzmann methods may apply to their system.
*
*
*--*
*
*
*"Real-Time Modeling and Rendering of Natural Phenomena"*
*Robert Geist*
Professor, School of Computing
Clemson University

WedTech @ Santa Fe Complex
Wed Sep 21, noon (bring a brownbag lunch)

*ABSTRACT*: Modeling and rendering natural phenomena, which includes all
components of biophysical ecology, atmospherics, photon transport, and air
and water flow, remains a challenging area for computer graphics research.
 Whether models are physically-based or procedural, model processing is
almost always characterized by substantial computational demands which have
almost always precluded  real-time performance.  Nevertheless, the recent
development of new, highly  parallel computational models, coupled with
dramatic performance improvements  in GPU-based execution platforms, has
brought real-time modeling and rendering within reach.  The talk will focus
on the natural synergy between GPU-based computing and the so-called
lattice-Boltzmann methods for solutions to PDEs. Examples will include
photon transport for global illumination and modeling and rendering of
atmospheric clouds, forest ecosystems, and ocean waves.

*BIO*:  Robert Geist is a Professor in the School of Computing at Clemson
University. He served as Interim Director of the School in 2007-2008, and he
is co-founder of Clemson's Digital Production Arts Program. He received an
M.A. in computer science from Duke University and a Ph.D. in mathematics
from the University of Notre Dame. He was an Associate Professor of
Mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and an Associate
Professor of Computer Science at Duke University before joining the faculty
at Clemson University. He is a member of IFIP WG 7.3, a recipient of the
Günther Enderle Award (Best Paper, Eurographics), and a Distinguished
Educator of the ACM.

http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~geist/homepage.html

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Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

[Nicholas Thompson]

Do we all remember that 19th century guy who took an eight-foot tamping rod
through his frontal lobes and lived to tell the tale.  He was not the same
person, by any psychological standard.  He was, though, probably the same
legal entity.  We confuse the two, I think 

N

-Original Message-
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of glen e. p. ropella
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 12:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)


Well, you've gone _way_ beyond what I'm using as my operational definition.
I'd like to stick with _humans_, meaning not only the genome but also the
morphology.  It's not that I don't care about other animals or organisms ...
or the definition of life.  I like _talking_ about that stuff and I enjoy
some of the biology I end up studying as a result of my job.  But overall,
I'm mostly concerned with me, my family, my friends, etc.  I.e. humans.

When my grandfather had his stroke, he changed in _fundamental_ ways.
His inability to use his right hand is what lead me (even as a kid) to start
experimenting with using my "weak" hand to do tasks only my strong hand was
competent to do.  Everyone around me asserted quite strongly things like
"He's still very intelligent!" and "He's still in there."  I have my doubts.
I think he was an entirely different person, despite some similarities pre-
and post- stroke.

Issues like this are practical, important, and immediate, unlike defining
"life" and whatnot.

Steve Smith wrote circa 11-09-20 11:04 AM:
> I think this is well stated and on point.  However... to ask these 
> questions properly we must have a clearer notion of what we mean by mind
> and/or thought and/or identity.   I am using as my working definition of
> mind, the subjective (recursive?) experience "I" have of
> "self-awareness" or "self-consciousness" as a key part of *my* mind.   
> This may differ radically from other's definition here?
> 
> Many grant all living creatures to have minds, certainly all mammals, 
> probably birds, possibly all vertebrates, maybe anything with more than
> some modest number of neurons...  or maybe anything *with* neurons.   Or
> maybe...
> 
> Others extend the notion of life, of consciousness, even of "mind" and 
> "awareness" on to what others (myself usually included) to all matter
> (and energy).   Not just the trees and lichen, but the stones and the
> earth, the wind and the interstellar gasses, the electromagnetic and
> gravitational flux of the universe.   But by that time, I'm not sure
> what we are talking about anymore...
> 
> I don't want to presume to set the definitions but I propose the
following.
> 
> We cannot talk about mind without life.
> We cannot talk about life without some kind of self-organized, 
> coherent systems.
> 
> I'm game that life (and by extension mind) needn't exist only in a 
> matrix of cells, or even in protein or carbon chemistry.
> 
> I may be chauvinistic in wanting life to depend on a self-other
> boundary, on identity, on self-awareness.I know that nature (bio as
> well as non-bio) blurs these boundaries.   What is an individual
> Lichen?   What do a grove of genetically identical poplars know from one
> another?   Where is the boundary of a star, of a swirling bathtub
> vortex?   When is a planet not a planet (Pluto anyone?).
> 
> I may be only digging this hole deeper...   but without more definition,
> I think we are blind men fondling the elephant?   Perhaps only infinite
> regress awaits us in this.


--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org



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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

[glen e. p. ropella]

Steve Smith wrote circa 11-09-20 12:18 PM:
> So breaking out of this strange anecdote... I guess I should just ask..
> Is this what you are calling key to mind?  Identity?

Sort of.  I am interested in the robustness of the subjective identity.
 But I'm also, and much more, interested in objective continuity ...
e.g. whether your family members will notice a significant change in
your personality after you start taking drug X.

Jochen Fromm wrote circa 11-09-20 11:30 AM:
> For me, one of the big questions in Philosophy and Psychology seems
> to be how the mind emerges from the collision of "knowledge
> molecules" and "biochemical molecules" (aka Yoghurt), from the
> continuous interplay of memes and genes or nature and nurture.

Yes, me too.  However, I'm more focused on (inter)personal impact. But
along your lines, I began reading this book: "Rhythms of the Brain" by
Gyoergy Buzsaki.  It's too dense for me to explicitly extract "knowledge
molecules".  But it does seem to make progress toward the case that
patterns of firing and collective action form the components of the mind.

-- 
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com



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Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

[ERIC P. CHARLES]

Glen,
You covered a lot of ground in this email, and I'm struggling to figure out how
to respond. I can't address everything, but I can make a few points. 

A) The point of the analogy with the 'solveability' of computers was merely to
point out that people often assert there are big mysteries in sciences they do
not know very well. In some (but certainly not all) of those situations, people
embedded in that science insist NOT that the mystery has been 'solved', but
rather that the science has moved beyond dealing with the issue in a way that
is at all mysterious. Maybe I did not express the idea well enough, or maybe I
am off base with my understanding of computer science. Admittedly, I had only
one graduate-level theory of computation class, and that was quite a few years
ago. Perhaps Nick is correct that his inquiries about vortexes are a better
example. For many people vortexes remain a classic example of a 'natural
Mystery', for some so remain rainbows. 

B) The best I muster to those who insist upon a 'mind-body problem' is NOT just
that the question is poorly posed, but that there is quite a bit of evidence to
against their being a problem. If you are arguing against induction, by
asserting that even an infinite array of evidence cannot justify the inductive
conclusion that 'all' mental processes are things that bodies do... well, you
win. But that is a shallow victory, and if it is applicable here, it is only
applicable to the same extent that arguments against induction are applicable
as a criticism of all science. Empirical psychologists, at least when they are
acting as such, are not interested in truth by definition, but in studying
identified phenomenon in a systematic manner. 

C) I'm not sure what to do with your talk of 'qualia', nor what you mean when
you say I can make very few claims about 'the mind'. All I can say is that if
the subject matter as defined as being mysteriously-not-tractable, well, then
you will always see it as mysterious. Not to pick on your particular example
too much, but quite a few researchers in my area (the study of
perception-action linkages) focus narrowly on motor control and coordination of
locomotive behavior. I have never done such research. However, I have seen
SEVERAL talks measuring how perception of the world is affected by things like
hip injuries. Hip stability effects (yes, effects) what people see as a
climb-up-able step, what they see as a cross-able gap, their experience of
safety vs. danger, their feelings of comfort vs. anxiety, etc. All these ARE
changed by altering their hip. If 'seeing the stairs as dangerous' and 'feeling
anxious' are not examples of 'qualia', then I really have no clue what you are
asking me about. 

D) We know a lot about brains and nervous systems and how they work. We are far
from knowing everything. We also know an awful lot about how the rest of the
body works. Again, we are far from knowing everything. However, to act like we
are still in the 1700's regarding our understanding of mind-brain relations is
just odd. When Descartes wrote, there was in fact a Mystery with a capitol 'M'.
Now, not so much. I suppose I must accept your criticism that this is a
statement of 'faith' on my part, it is. However, I do not see how it is more a
statement of faith than the one a physicist makes when he tells his class that
matter is made up of atoms. There are still things about the atomic structure
of materials that we don't understand, and the existence or non-existence of
atoms was also once a Big Question. 

Eric
 


On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 01:32 PM, "glen e. p. ropella" 
wrote:
>
Well, needless to say, I completely disagree.  First, the analogy with
>computers and "solveability" is so completely fallacious it boggles my
>mind.  My head just about exploded when I read that. ;-)  We have a
>formalism (more than one, actually) and a set of theorems regarding
>the
>universality of some Turing machines.  We're not even close to having
>even a single formalism, let alone a body of theorems, showing that the
>mind is generated solely from the body. (An operational closure.)
>
>But, more importantly, the best criticism you'll be able to muster
>against those who see a categorical difference between mind and body is
>that the problem is ill-posed.  You can't say that all thoughts are
>generated from the body with anything coming close to credibility.  The
>first, but not the least, objection to such a claim is the quantifier
>"all".  You can't even estimate the cardinality of thought.  You can't
>say whether language is required for thought.  You can't account for
>qualia.  You can _barely_ demonstrate neural correlates between bodily
>actions (like speaking or looking) and activity in the brain.  In fact
>there is very little you can claim about the mind.  And yet you can
>miraculously claim you know, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that all mind
>is generated by the body?  Wow.  Talk about an article of faith.
>
>Now, I'm not suggesting that

Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

[Steve Smith]

Nick (from a private conversation with you, hereby taken public) -

The subject is, Is there anything about the emergence of any higher 
order property, behavior, etc., that is a Mystery … a question not 
likely to be dissipated by the stubborn advance of ordinary science.


Ah... this is a well-put question I think.


I don’t think so: you do (right?)

I am not sure.  I think "Mystery" may be an illusion, but a compelling 
one.  I don't need to pretend not to experience "Mystery" in the face of 
overwhelming "mystery".


But similarly, I'm not sure I need to invoke Mystery as an alternative 
to my ignorance or limited perspective.   I strongly suspect that 
Mystery is a receding horizon...  that we can pursue answers to 
questions posed by our skyline by approaching it, only to find each 
summit a false one.I don't expect we will ever finish the journey, 
complete the quest, grasp the grail.  We will merely take the journeys, 
experience the Mystery while we solve the mysteries, some crudely, some 
eloquently.



and Glen -


 Well, you've gone_way_  beyond what I'm using as my operational
 definition.  I'd like to stick with_humans_, meaning not only the
 genome but also the morphology.



I agree that there is a very interesting conversation about the human 
mind to be had.  I actually *limited* my own working definition even 
more, to be my centered around the only thing I think I know much at all 
about which is, in fact, my own subjective experience of my own mind(s) 
juxtaposed with the many projections I have of that "mind" onto other 
(usually only human's) behaviour.


The other stuff was just my covering the bases and avoiding overly 
constraining too early.


So I *think* you are speaking as much about identity as mind, which I 
suppose I do not separate much myself.


I too have direct experience with the vagaries of aging and it's effect 
on the mind.   I helped my wife "walk her father to death" over 7 years 
of Alzheimers' and then more recently have been engaged with my own 
Father's walk down a similar path of aphasia and memory (but not 
identity) loss.   I also have the experience of someone very close to me 
who believes she is walking the path of memory and identity loss unto 
nonexistence... the jury is still out, but there are signs for sure.  My 
own aging process has lead me to leave behind "selves" which appear to 
no longer exist, mostly around physical ability, but also mental, memory 
and attention at the forefront.


I believe that this is a modern plague brought to us by having learned 
to avoid many of the heart/brain maladies of the last generations...  my 
motto is "what doesn't kill you leaves you open to something worse".


I have huge experiences around what might be diagnoseable as multiple 
personality disorder.  I do not need blood sugar swings nor the singing 
of yoghurt biochemistry in my gut (though I don't dismiss that these can 
cause such experiences) to rotor through a wide range of internal 
personality states.   This list is subject to but one or two of my 
personalities, and those who know me in person probably apprehend at 
least a couple of others.   Aside from the possibility that I also have 
episodes I'm totally unaware of (what mean's "I"?), all of my distinct 
(but blurred) identities/selves/personalities/modes are fully aware of 
eachother.  For example, as "I" write this there is a voice in my head 
rolling his eyes and muttering "there he goes again, maybe one of us 
should just hit ?".  And just for the fun of it, you should know 
that the eye-rolling one (or another) actually does get the  key 
pressed as often as not here.


I do not know (sure, maybe I should seek professional help) why 
this is my experience or why it does not disturb me (the me's that are 
me?) more...  I feel not like a cacophany of strangers but a clan of 
brothers (and a couple of sisters?), all of a single body and memory but 
of many different minds.  Many differing minds/personalities joined in a 
weak telepathy, sharing a common memory, but having wildly different 
opinions and conclusions about the shared experience.   It all sounds a 
bit psychotic when I say it here, but except (perhaps?) for my missives 
here, I am apparently pretty functional in society despite this.


So breaking out of this strange anecdote... I guess I should just ask.. 
Is this what you are calling key to mind?  Identity?


- Sieve




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[FRIAM] Eddie Rosenstein: Tom Hanks Narrates 'BOATLIFT, ' Honors Untold 9/11 Story Of Mariner Heroes (VIDEO)

[Tom Johnson]

A nice example of complex adaptive systems at work.
-tj

Tom Hanks Narrates 'BOATLIFT,' Honors Untold 9/11 Story Of Mariner Heroes
(VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eddie-rosenstein/tom-hanks-narrates-boatlift_b_956529.html

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Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

[Jochen Fromm]

I think the emergence of the mind - including the emergence of consciousness 
and self-awareness - is the most complex and most interesting form of 
emergence, and until we can explain it, we can hardly claim that the 
mind-body problem is solved. Likewise the biologists can not claim they have 
understood the genes until they can say how the body emerges from the 
instructions of the genes (how genes like the hox genes build the body, 
consecutively, in every detail).


The Chinese know that the mind is made of many "knowledge molecules". I have 
read recently in a book that the Chinese word for intellectual is zhi shi 
fen zi (知识分子 or  知識分子). zhi shi (知识) means knowledge, and fen zi (分子) means 
molecule. Thus intellectuals are people with many knowledge molecules.


For me, one of the big questions in Philosophy and Psychology seems to be 
how the mind emerges from the collision of "knowledge molecules" and 
"biochemical molecules" (aka Yoghurt), from the continuous interplay of 
memes and genes or nature and nurture.


-J.

- Original Message - 
From: "glen e. p. ropella" 

To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" 
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 7:32 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)


[...]

Medically, this Big Question flows down into questions like:

1) Does a person's identity change after a stroke?  Or the onset of
Alzheimer's?  Parkinson's?  Cancer?  A bunion?
2) How is a schizophrenic person different from a "healthy" person and
what changes can/should we make to "heal" such a person?
3) What is the personhood status of a fetus?  A comatose patient?  A
brain-dead patient?

These aren't just "little mysteries", as you so belittle them.  They are
instances of the mind-body problem with very practical and often
heartbreaking contexts.





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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

[Steve Smith]

Glen -

Now, I'm not suggesting that the mind is generated by something other
than the body.  All I'm doing is avoiding conviction within a particular
conclusion[*].  I believe that the body is a medium for the mind (there
may be other media).  In that, we agree.  But I am not so arrogant to
say that the mind is solely a behavior of the body.  (And I'm especially
not so arrogant as to claim we've proven that.)  The difference is
subtle.  All we've done so far is demonstrate that there is an absence
of evidence for the mind without the (a) body.  But absence of evidence
is NOT evidence of absence.
I think this is well stated and on point.  However... to ask these 
questions properly we must have a clearer notion of what we mean by mind 
and/or thought and/or identity.   I am using as my working definition of 
mind, the subjective (recursive?) experience "I" have of 
"self-awareness" or "self-consciousness" as a key part of *my* mind.
This may differ radically from other's definition here?


Many grant all living creatures to have minds, certainly all mammals, 
probably birds, possibly all vertebrates, maybe anything with more than 
some modest number of neurons...  or maybe anything *with* neurons.   Or 
maybe...


Others extend the notion of life, of consciousness, even of "mind" and 
"awareness" on to what others (myself usually included) to all matter 
(and energy).   Not just the trees and lichen, but the stones and the 
earth, the wind and the interstellar gasses, the electromagnetic and 
gravitational flux of the universe.   But by that time, I'm not sure 
what we are talking about anymore...


I don't want to presume to set the definitions but I propose the following.

We cannot talk about mind without life.
We cannot talk about life without some kind of self-organized, coherent 
systems.


I'm game that life (and by extension mind) needn't exist only in a 
matrix of cells, or even in protein or carbon chemistry.


I may be chauvinistic in wanting life to depend on a self-other 
boundary, on identity, on self-awareness.I know that nature (bio as 
well as non-bio) blurs these boundaries.   What is an individual 
Lichen?   What do a grove of genetically identical poplars know from one 
another?   Where is the boundary of a star, of a swirling bathtub 
vortex?   When is a planet not a planet (Pluto anyone?).


I may be only digging this hole deeper...   but without more definition, 
I think we are blind men fondling the elephant?   Perhaps only infinite 
regress awaits us in this.


- Steve


There is clearly a Big Question.  And that is: What changes can we make
to the body without categorically changing the mind?  Or, vice versa:
What changes can we make to the mind without categorically changing the
body?  We already know many of the changes.  You can change out
someone's hip, for example, without fundamentally altering their mind.

Medically, this Big Question flows down into questions like:

1) Does a person's identity change after a stroke?  Or the onset of
Alzheimer's?  Parkinson's?  Cancer?  A bunion?
2) How is a schizophrenic person different from a "healthy" person and
what changes can/should we make to "heal" such a person?
3) What is the personhood status of a fetus?  A comatose patient?  A
brain-dead patient?

These aren't just "little mysteries", as you so belittle them.  They are
instances of the mind-body problem with very practical and often
heartbreaking contexts.

[*] We do have a significant non-whacko population of people who believe
in things like memes, social construction/regulation of the mind,
evo-devo, multi-level selection, extended physiology, etc.  To say the
mind-body problem is solved is to dismiss all these positions and their
backers.

ERIC P. CHARLES wrote circa 11-09-20 07:48 AM:

Well... yes and no.

To keep my metaphor in the 'P.S.' going, we also can't say exactly how a
computer could solve every solvable problem... but that doesn't mean
there is a Big Question 'solveability' mystery still around. Instead
there are many little mysteries: How would this particular problem be
solved?

For example, the point I was trying to make was that mind and body do
not differ in the manner the Big Question version of the 'mind-body'
problem assumes. Mental things are one of the many things that bodies
do, nothing more. If you accept that (which I am fairly certain you do),
then you have already moved beyond thinking there is mystery of how mind
and body are related. What you (and I) are left with is a bunch of
little, normal science questions. What is the exact mechanism of X? How
does Y develop? etc. Such questions represent scientific unknowns, just
as do questions about how to synthesize a particular compound. There has
been much success in solving many of the little mysteries. Many, many,
brilliant experiments illuminating the mechanisms by which bodies do
mental things, and explaining how such mechanisms develop. I could
recommend several large books if desired.

W

Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

[glen e. p. ropella]

Well, needless to say, I completely disagree.  First, the analogy with
computers and "solveability" is so completely fallacious it boggles my
mind.  My head just about exploded when I read that. ;-)  We have a
formalism (more than one, actually) and a set of theorems regarding the
universality of some Turing machines.  We're not even close to having
even a single formalism, let alone a body of theorems, showing that the
mind is generated solely from the body. (An operational closure.)

But, more importantly, the best criticism you'll be able to muster
against those who see a categorical difference between mind and body is
that the problem is ill-posed.  You can't say that all thoughts are
generated from the body with anything coming close to credibility.  The
first, but not the least, objection to such a claim is the quantifier
"all".  You can't even estimate the cardinality of thought.  You can't
say whether language is required for thought.  You can't account for
qualia.  You can _barely_ demonstrate neural correlates between bodily
actions (like speaking or looking) and activity in the brain.  In fact
there is very little you can claim about the mind.  And yet you can
miraculously claim you know, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that all mind
is generated by the body?  Wow.  Talk about an article of faith.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the mind is generated by something other
than the body.  All I'm doing is avoiding conviction within a particular
conclusion[*].  I believe that the body is a medium for the mind (there
may be other media).  In that, we agree.  But I am not so arrogant to
say that the mind is solely a behavior of the body.  (And I'm especially
not so arrogant as to claim we've proven that.)  The difference is
subtle.  All we've done so far is demonstrate that there is an absence
of evidence for the mind without the (a) body.  But absence of evidence
is NOT evidence of absence.

There is clearly a Big Question.  And that is: What changes can we make
to the body without categorically changing the mind?  Or, vice versa:
What changes can we make to the mind without categorically changing the
body?  We already know many of the changes.  You can change out
someone's hip, for example, without fundamentally altering their mind.

Medically, this Big Question flows down into questions like:

1) Does a person's identity change after a stroke?  Or the onset of
Alzheimer's?  Parkinson's?  Cancer?  A bunion?
2) How is a schizophrenic person different from a "healthy" person and
what changes can/should we make to "heal" such a person?
3) What is the personhood status of a fetus?  A comatose patient?  A
brain-dead patient?

These aren't just "little mysteries", as you so belittle them.  They are
instances of the mind-body problem with very practical and often
heartbreaking contexts.

[*] We do have a significant non-whacko population of people who believe
in things like memes, social construction/regulation of the mind,
evo-devo, multi-level selection, extended physiology, etc.  To say the
mind-body problem is solved is to dismiss all these positions and their
backers.

ERIC P. CHARLES wrote circa 11-09-20 07:48 AM:
> Well... yes and no.
> 
> To keep my metaphor in the 'P.S.' going, we also can't say exactly how a
> computer could solve every solvable problem... but that doesn't mean
> there is a Big Question 'solveability' mystery still around. Instead
> there are many little mysteries: How would this particular problem be
> solved?
> 
> For example, the point I was trying to make was that mind and body do
> not differ in the manner the Big Question version of the 'mind-body'
> problem assumes. Mental things are one of the many things that bodies
> do, nothing more. If you accept that (which I am fairly certain you do),
> then you have already moved beyond thinking there is mystery of how mind
> and body are related. What you (and I) are left with is a bunch of
> little, normal science questions. What is the exact mechanism of X? How
> does Y develop? etc. Such questions represent scientific unknowns, just
> as do questions about how to synthesize a particular compound. There has
> been much success in solving many of the little mysteries. Many, many,
> brilliant experiments illuminating the mechanisms by which bodies do
> mental things, and explaining how such mechanisms develop. I could
> recommend several large books if desired.
> 
> When people talk about a 'mind-body' problem, they are convinced there
> is still a Big Question. Something like the question of where and how
> the soul enters the body, or the question about how the ethereal mind
> connects with our corporeal mere-matter. Robert's link showed this
> nicely. Though some of that language has been rejected (souls are not
> mentioned much anymore), any sense of Big Question 'mysteriousness'
> indicates that people are still thinking along those lines.


-- 
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com


==

Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

[Nicholas Thompson]

Steve, 

 

I suspect that your dislike for the triangle example is that it isn’t 
Mysterious enough.  In the classical literature on Emergence, the chemical 
properties of water are the salient example. (I.e., why combining Hydrogen and 
Oxygen, gets you something like water.)  Elemental as that question might seem 
to be, it is still, I gather, a mystery, although not a Mystery. (Water is 
apparently a wildly aberrant compound whose maximum density, for instance, is 
reached a few degrees before it freezes.  Hence ice floats.)

 

When trying to understand a class of phenomena, a strategy might be to find an 
example that is stripped of all but the ESSENTIAL complexities of the class of 
things one is curious about.  Do you agree that’s sometimes a useful strategy? 
If so, then you apparently believe that the triangle example is TOO simple.  

 

If so, what would you offer as the SIMPLEST example of the phenomenon of 
emergence?  

 

Nick 

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of 
Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 10:56 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

 

Good Fellow Friamers, Nick, Jochen, Glen, Eric, and everyone who ever ate 
Joghurt/Yogurt/Kefir (spoilt milk by any other name) -

I am perhaps too lazy to go back and reread this entire thread carefully to see 
precisely what has been asked and answered, what has been swept under the 
carpet, and what has been tossed over the fence into the neighbor's yard to 
deal with and what has been waxed up eloquently for a totally tubular ride 
inside the curl of the crashing wave of insight and understanding.

BUT... the mind-body problem as I *experience* it is the subjective mystery 
(which if I were more spiritual/religious, might actually be a Mystery as well) 
of why my consciousness seems to disembodied, why it, at best, depending on my 
mood and circumstance seems to hover inside my head, just behind my eyes, a 
little above and usually to the right?  Other times it expands and fills the 
general region I am inhabiting physically, often floating about my head, but 
sometime centered more near my chest, my heart I suspect... or other times my 
spleen or large colon (after ingesting spoilt milk).   

But most of this (if not simple rhetoric and imagry to dazzle my  faithful 
readers (all three of you)) is some kind of metaphorical projection.   The 
head-centering thing might be about my primary sensory organs being located 
there, the heart centering might be about the center of my more autonomic 
systems (heartbeat breathing, digestion, elimination) and a cultural metaphor 
or metonym (heart for the entire collection of viscera), the more expansive 
thing (filling the room, the glade, the entire mountainside or valley)  as some 
kind of projection of self onto all that I apprehend directly in the moment.  
And perhaps when I unroll a map or pick up a globe (bwahahaha!) in my hands, 
this also accounts for my feeling of grandiosity that almost always rolls in 
(bwaha!).

I would say that by no means is the mind-body problem solved.  It is at best 
well ignored or well sublimated or well explained-away.  I think the 
logical-positivists (of which there appear to be no small number here) cannot 
even apprehend the question, much less the possibility of an answer in our 
lifetimes?

If there is ANY Mystery in the world (for me), it is the collective mysteries 
of emergent phenomena.   At least for me.  And among the mysteries of human 
experience, the mind-body problem is one of the fundamental ones for me. That I 
am not given much to invoking Mystery, could be my deep sense of rational 
athiestic humanism that I am blessed/cursed/saddled/riddled with.

I take task with Nick for his use of emergent to describe the properties of 3 
sticks fastened well at their corners and their triangleness.  I 
agree/understand that a qualitatively *new* property exists in the triangle 
that did not exist in the individual sticks... and perhaps it is mere semantics 
that separates the emergent nature of vortex from the water molecules and the 
(I won't call it emergent) *collective* nature of triangle from sticks.   

Perhaps it is my training/experience in the Proto-Artificial Life work of the 
early/mid 80's.   I think I need to reserve the world emergent for systems 
which are not merely qualitatively different in the whole than they are in the 
parts, but which achieve this through some self-organizing process.   
Autocatalytic networks, sand dunes, gliders and guns for gliders in ConwayLife, 
etc.   I suppose if Nick were to throw 1000 sticks  and 1000 blobs of glue into 
a hopper and stir them about for a few 1000 seconds and then shake them out 
onto the ground noticing that *some* of the sticks managed to connect up with 
blobs of glue end to end such that they formed various arrangements of linear 
chains, and some of th

Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

[Steve Smith]

Good Fellow Friamers, Nick, Jochen, Glen, Eric, and everyone who ever 
ate Joghurt/Yogurt/Kefir (spoilt milk by any other name) -


I am perhaps too lazy to go back and reread this entire thread carefully 
to see precisely what has been asked and answered, what has been swept 
under the carpet, and what has been tossed over the fence into the 
neighbor's yard to deal with and what has been waxed up eloquently for a 
totally tubular ride inside the curl of the crashing wave of insight and 
understanding.


BUT... the mind-body problem as I *experience* it is the subjective 
mystery (which if I were more spiritual/religious, might actually be a 
Mystery as well) of why my consciousness seems to disembodied, why it, 
at best, depending on my mood and circumstance seems to hover inside my 
head, just behind my eyes, a little above and usually to the right?  
Other times it expands and fills the general region I am inhabiting 
physically, often floating about my head, but sometime centered more 
near my chest, my heart I suspect... or other times my spleen or large 
colon (after ingesting spoilt milk).


But most of this (if not simple rhetoric and imagry to dazzle my  
faithful readers (all three of you)) is some kind of metaphorical 
projection.   The head-centering thing might be about my primary sensory 
organs being located there, the heart centering might be about the 
center of my more autonomic systems (heartbeat breathing, digestion, 
elimination) and a cultural metaphor or metonym (heart for the entire 
collection of viscera), the more expansive thing (filling the room, the 
glade, the entire mountainside or valley)  as some kind of projection of 
self onto all that I apprehend directly in the moment.  And perhaps when 
I unroll a map or pick up a globe (bwahahaha!) in my hands, this also 
accounts for my feeling of grandiosity that almost always rolls in (bwaha!).


I would say that by no means is the mind-body problem solved.  It is at 
best well ignored or well sublimated or well explained-away.  I think 
the logical-positivists (of which there appear to be no small number 
here) cannot even apprehend the question, much less the possibility of 
an answer in our lifetimes?


If there is ANY /Mystery/ in the world (for me), it is the collective 
/mysteries/ of emergent phenomena.   At least for me.  And among the 
mysteries of human experience, the mind-body problem is one of the 
fundamental ones for me. That I am not given much to invoking Mystery, 
could be my deep sense of rational athiestic humanism that I am 
blessed/cursed/saddled/riddled with.


I take task with Nick for his use of /emergent/ to describe the 
properties of 3 sticks fastened well at their corners and their 
/triangleness/.  I agree/understand that a qualitatively *new* property 
exists in the triangle that did not exist in the individual sticks... 
and perhaps it is mere semantics that separates the /emergent nature/ of 
vortex from the water molecules and the (I won't call it /emergent/) 
*collective* nature of triangle from sticks.


Perhaps it is my training/experience in the Proto-Artificial Life work 
of the early/mid 80's.   I think I need to reserve the world /emergent/ 
for systems which are not merely qualitatively different in the whole 
than they are in the parts, but which achieve this through some 
self-organizing process.   Autocatalytic networks, sand dunes, gliders 
and guns for gliders in ConwayLife, etc.   I suppose if Nick were to 
throw 1000 sticks  and 1000 blobs of glue into a hopper and stir them 
about for a few 1000 seconds and then shake them out onto the ground 
noticing that *some* of the sticks managed to connect up with blobs of 
glue end to end such that they formed various arrangements of linear 
chains, and some of them  were to form various n-gons, and even perhaps 
that statistically the triangle pattern was more common than the 
n-length chain or the n-gons where n > 3, then I'd be inclined to say 
/emergence!/   The glueballs "stickiness" might be calibrated such that 
they only adhere to "ends" (and not eachother), and the minimum angles 
might preclude sticks lining up in parallel and the agitation might be 
just great enough to shake off appendages from n-gons with extra 
'whiskers'...   Triangles (and tetrahedra) would be the most likely  
structures to be "accidentally" created and the most stable (fewest 
remaining degrees of freedom once joined up).   By explaining it this 
way, I may undermine the mystery in the emergence (and thereby the 
emergence itself?)


I know I'm like returning to 2008 when Nick was leading a study group on 
/emergence/ and this may all be quite remedial, but I'd say along with 
the mind-body question, the emergence question has not been answered.   
One may be a special case of the other?


Directly responsive to Nick's challenge about the "problem" of mind-body 
vs vortex-water... I think it WAS stated but as a special case of 
"self-organizing system" sty

Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

[Douglas Roberts]

Actually, NIck, you were "castigated" for refusing to accept that the answer
to your vortex scenario was not a simple one, and for having elected to to
claim that those of us who had ever worked on that type of hydrodynamics
problem were either too lazy to be bothered to explain the solution
properly, or had forgotten the answer to your (simple) question.

Let's not engage in revisionist history, now...

--Doug


-- 
Doug Roberts
drobe...@rti.org
d...@parrot-farm.net
http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 9:27 AM, Nicholas Thompson <
nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote:

> Jochen, 
>
> ** **
>
> This is starting to remind me of the vortex-drain-water discussion.  You
> recall that I was castigated by experts on the list for trivializing fluid
> dynamics by asking a naïve question about wash-basin drainage.  Explaining
> vortices in washbasins was beyond my understanding.  The complexity was just
> too great.  The devil was in the details, and I was not well-trained enough
> to know them, let alone to build a theory of wash-basin drainage.  
>
> ** **
>
> Critical as they were for my asking the question, NONE of them asserted
> that there was a vortex/water  problem in the same sense (I suspect) that
> some would like to assert that there is a mind/body problem. 
>
> ** **
>
> Emergence can always seem mysterious, if one is the right frame of mind.
> How mysterious are the structural properties of a triangle, as I hold in my
> hands three unconnected sticks of wood!  The British Emergentist
> Philosophers (Mill?) liked to say that we should approach any instance of
> emergence with *Natural Piety*.  Well, bugger that!  
>
> ** **
>
> To channel Eric, here.  Yes there are mysteries, but there is no Mystery.
> 
>
> ** **
>
> Best, 
>
> ** **
>
> Nick  
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On
> Behalf Of *Jochen Fromm
> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 20, 2011 2:20 AM
> *To:* friam@redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)
>
> ** **
>
> If the mind-body problem is solved, we can say how the mind emerges from
> the body, i.e. from the interactions of billions of neurons and joghurt
> cells. Can we? 
>
> ** **
>
> -J.
>
> Sent from Android 
>
>
>
>
> "ERIC P. CHARLES"  wrote:
>
> 
>
> Nick,
> In his last paper, "William James as a Psychologist," Holt tells us that
> the William James was never one to shun contradictions, and that the one
> outstanding contradiction in psychology is: The mind seems dependent upon
> the body, while the mind also seems independent of the body.
>
> Traditionally psychology and philosophy try to somehow divide up the turf,
> but James insisted the problems of the mind and of the body cannot be solved
> independent of each other. Another way to phrase this would be to say that
> the problems of knowledge are ultimately identical to the problems of
> physiological psychology.
>
> I wager that you no longer understand the problem, because you are familiar
> with the century worth of work supporting James's position. A century of
> research showing that mind and body are not different in such a way as to
> allow for a 'mind-body' problem. People who don't know about this work still
> think it is mysterious.
>
> Eric
>
> P.S. My hunch is that all scientific fields have complaints about things
> that were solved long ago, but that people still insist are mysterious.
> Since there are lots of computer people on the list. Imagine that you were
> stuck in a room with people debating whether there were any problems that
> computers couldn't solve. You keep trying to convince them that there are
> well known classes of problems computers cannot solve, and much of the work
> on this problem was solved long ago, and that there is no 'can computers
> solve everything' mysterious. However, no matter how much you protest, they
> are so vested in the mysteriousness that they don't believe you.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 08:19 PM, *"Nicholas Thompson" <
> nickthomp...@earthlink.net>* wrote:
>
> 
>
> Glen, 
>
> ** **
>
> I realize that you didn't start this thread, so you may be as perplexed as 
> I
>
> am, but, what exactly IS the mind-body problem?  
>
> ** **
>
> Also, not that it's essential, but could you DISAMBIGUATE? I, of course,
>
> instantly assumed you were referring to number eleven.  
>
> ** **
>
> Flying Spaghetti Monster, the deity of Pastafarianism, a parody 
> religion
>
> FIFA Soccer Manager, a video game about football management
>
> Fighting Spirit magazine, a professional wrestling periodical
>
> Film Score Monthly, a record label and online magazine
>
> Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a motion picture
>
> Free Software Magazine, a computing periodical/website
>
> Free software movement,

Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

[Nicholas Thompson]

Jochen, 

 

This is starting to remind me of the vortex-drain-water discussion.  You recall 
that I was castigated by experts on the list for trivializing fluid dynamics by 
asking a naïve question about wash-basin drainage.  Explaining vortices in 
washbasins was beyond my understanding.  The complexity was just too great.  
The devil was in the details, and I was not well-trained enough to know them, 
let alone to build a theory of wash-basin drainage.  

 

Critical as they were for my asking the question, NONE of them asserted that 
there was a vortex/water  problem in the same sense (I suspect) that some would 
like to assert that there is a mind/body problem. 

 

Emergence can always seem mysterious, if one is the right frame of mind.  How 
mysterious are the structural properties of a triangle, as I hold in my hands 
three unconnected sticks of wood!  The British Emergentist Philosophers (Mill?) 
liked to say that we should approach any instance of emergence with Natural 
Piety.  Well, bugger that!  

 

To channel Eric, here.  Yes there are mysteries, but there is no Mystery. 

 

Best, 

 

Nick  

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of 
Jochen Fromm
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 2:20 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

 

If the mind-body problem is solved, we can say how the mind emerges from the 
body, i.e. from the interactions of billions of neurons and joghurt cells. Can 
we? 

 

-J.

Sent from Android 




"ERIC P. CHARLES"  wrote: 



Nick,
In his last paper, "William James as a Psychologist," Holt tells us that the 
William James was never one to shun contradictions, and that the one 
outstanding contradiction in psychology is: The mind seems dependent upon the 
body, while the mind also seems independent of the body. 

Traditionally psychology and philosophy try to somehow divide up the turf, but 
James insisted the problems of the mind and of the body cannot be solved 
independent of each other. Another way to phrase this would be to say that the 
problems of knowledge are ultimately identical to the problems of physiological 
psychology. 

I wager that you no longer understand the problem, because you are familiar 
with the century worth of work supporting James's position. A century of 
research showing that mind and body are not different in such a way as to allow 
for a 'mind-body' problem. People who don't know about this work still think it 
is mysterious. 

Eric

P.S. My hunch is that all scientific fields have complaints about things that 
were solved long ago, but that people still insist are mysterious. Since there 
are lots of computer people on the list. Imagine that you were stuck in a room 
with people debating whether there were any problems that computers couldn't 
solve. You keep trying to convince them that there are well known classes of 
problems computers cannot solve, and much of the work on this problem was 
solved long ago, and that there is no 'can computers solve everything' 
mysterious. However, no matter how much you protest, they are so vested in the 
mysteriousness that they don't believe you. 



On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 08:19 PM, "Nicholas Thompson"  
wrote:



Glen, 
 
I realize that you didn't start this thread, so you may be as perplexed as I
am, but, what exactly IS the mind-body problem?  
 
Also, not that it's essential, but could you DISAMBIGUATE? I, of course,
instantly assumed you were referring to number eleven.  
 
Flying Spaghetti Monster, the deity of Pastafarianism, a parody religion
FIFA Soccer Manager, a video game about football management
Fighting Spirit magazine, a professional wrestling periodical
Film Score Monthly, a record label and online magazine
Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a motion picture
Free Software Magazine, a computing periodical/website
Free software movement, a sociopolitical movement in computing
Fiji School of Medicine, the central medical school of the University of
the South Pacific
Fixed Survey Meter, an instrument used by the British Royal Observer
Corps during the Cold War to detect nuclear fallout
Folded spectrum method, a Solver for Eigenvalue problems
Free Speech Movement, at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964
Finite-state machine, a model of computation
Field service management, optimization of the field operations of
technicians
Fatih Sultan Mehmet (as Mehmed II), 7th sultan of the Ottoman
Empire
Fabryka Samochodów Małolitrażowych Polish car factory
Federated States of Micronesia, an Oceanic island nation
Fort Smith Regional Airport (IATA code: FSM) in Arkansas, United
States
Mauritian Solidarity Front, in French Front Solidarité Mauricien
(FSM)
 
THANKS, 
 
Nick 
 
-Original Message-
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of glen e. p. ropella
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2011 5:46 PM

Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

[ERIC P. CHARLES]

Well... yes and no.

To keep my metaphor in the 'P.S.' going, we
also can't say exactly how a computer could solve every solvable problem... but
that doesn't mean there is a Big Question 'solveability' mystery still around.
Instead there
are many little mysteries: How would this particular problem be solved?

For example, the point I was trying to make
was that mind and body do not differ in the manner the Big Question version of
the 'mind-body' problem assumes. Mental things are one of the many things that
bodies do, nothing more. If you accept that (which I am fairly certain you do),
then you have already moved beyond thinking there is mystery of how mind and
body are related. What you (and I) are left with is a bunch of little, normal
science questions. What is the exact mechanism of X? How does Y develop? etc.
Such questions represent scientific unknowns, just as do questions about how to
synthesize a particular compound. There has been much success in solving many
of the little mysteries. Many, many, brilliant experiments illuminating the
mechanisms by which bodies do mental things, and explaining how such mechanisms
develop. I could recommend several large books if desired. 

When people
talk about a 'mind-body' problem, they are convinced there is still a Big
Question. Something like the question of where and how the soul enters the
body, or the question about how the ethereal mind connects with our corporeal
mere-matter. Robert's link showed this nicely. Though some of that language has
been rejected (souls are not mentioned much anymore), any sense of Big Question
'mysteriousness' indicates that people are still thinking along those lines.


Eric


On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 04:19 AM, Jochen Fromm  wrote:
>
>If the mind-body problem is solved, we can say how the mind emerges from the
body, i.e. from the interactions of billions of neurons and joghurt cells. Can
we? >
>
>>-J.
>
>Sent from Android 
>
>
>
> "ERIC P. CHARLES"  wrote: 
>
>
>>Nick,
>In his last paper, "William James as a Psychologist," Holt tells
>us that the William James was never one to shun contradictions, and that the
>one outstanding contradiction in psychology is: The mind seems dependent upon
>the body, while the mind also seems independent of the body.
>
>
>Traditionally psychology and philosophy try to somehow divide up the
>turf, but James insisted the problems of the mind and of the body cannot be
>solved independent of each other. Another way to phrase this would be to say
>that the problems of knowledge are ultimately identical to the problems of
>physiological psychology. 
>
>I wager that you no longer understand the
>problem, because you are familiar with the century worth of work supporting
>James's position. A century of research showing that mind and body are not
>different in such a way as to allow for a 'mind-body' problem. People who don't
>know about this work still think it is mysterious. 
>
>Eric
>
>P.S. My
>hunch is that all scientific fields have complaints about things that were
>solved long ago, but that people still insist are mysterious. Since there are
>lots of computer people on the list. Imagine that you were stuck in a room with
>people debating whether there were any problems that computers couldn't solve.
>You keep trying to convince them that there are well known classes of problems
>computers cannot solve, and much of the work on this problem was solved long
>ago, and that there is no 'can computers solve everything' mysterious. However,
>no matter how much you protest, they are so vested in the mysteriousness that
>they don't believe you. 
>
>
>
>On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 08:19 PM,
>"Nicholas  Thompson" 
>wrote:
>
>
Glen, 
>
>I realize that you didn't start this thread, so you may be as perplexed as I
>am, but, what exactly IS the mind-body problem?  
>
>Also, not that it's essential, but could you DISAMBIGUATE? I, of course,
>instantly assumed you were referring to number eleven.  
>
>Flying Spaghetti Monster, the deity of Pastafarianism, a parody religion
>FIFA Soccer Manager, a video game about football management
>Fighting Spirit magazine, a professional wrestling periodical
>Film Score Monthly, a record label and online magazine
>Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a motion picture
>Free Software Magazine, a computing periodical/website
>Free software movement, a sociopolitical movement in computing
>Fiji School of Medicine, the central medical school of the University of
>the South Pacific
>Fixed Survey Meter, an instrument used by the British Royal Observer
>Corps during the Cold War to detect nuclear fallout
>Folded spectrum method, a Solver for Eigenvalue problems
>Free Speech Movement, at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964
>Finite-state machine, a model of computation
>Field service management, optimization of the field operations of
>technicians
>Fatih Sultan Mehmet (as Mehmed II), 7th sultan of the Ottoman
>Empire
>Fabryka Samochodów

Re: [FRIAM] Mind-Body (was: The Psychology Of Yogurt)

[Jochen Fromm]

If the mind-body problem is solved, we can say how the mind emerges from the 
body, i.e. from the interactions of billions of neurons and joghurt cells. Can 
we? 

-J.

Sent from Android

 "ERIC P. CHARLES"  wrote: 

Nick,
In his last paper, "William James as a Psychologist," Holt tells us that the 
William James was never one to shun contradictions, and that the one 
outstanding contradiction in psychology is: The mind seems dependent upon the 
body, while the mind also seems independent of the body. 

Traditionally psychology and philosophy try to somehow divide up the turf, but 
James insisted the problems of the mind and of the body cannot be solved 
independent of each other. Another way to phrase this would be to say that the 
problems of knowledge are ultimately identical to the problems of physiological 
psychology. 

I wager that you no longer understand the problem, because you are familiar 
with the century worth of work supporting James's position. A century of 
research showing that mind and body are not different in such a way as to allow 
for a 'mind-body' problem. People who don't know about this work still think it 
is mysterious. 

Eric

P.S. My hunch is that all scientific fields have complaints about things that 
were solved long ago, but that people still insist are mysterious. Since there 
are lots of computer people on the list. Imagine that you were stuck in a room 
with people debating whether there were any problems that computers couldn't 
solve. You keep trying to convince them that there are well known classes of 
problems computers cannot solve, and much of the work on this problem was 
solved long ago, and that there is no 'can computers solve everything' 
mysterious. However, no matter how much you protest, they are so vested in the 
mysteriousness that they don't believe you. 



On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 08:19 PM, "Nicholas Thompson"  
wrote:
Glen, 

I realize that you didn't start this thread, so you may be as perplexed as I
am, but, what exactly IS the mind-body problem?  

Also, not that it's essential, but could you DISAMBIGUATE? I, of course,
instantly assumed you were referring to number eleven.  

Flying Spaghetti Monster, the deity of Pastafarianism, a parody religion
FIFA Soccer Manager, a video game about football management
Fighting Spirit magazine, a professional wrestling periodical
Film Score Monthly, a record label and online magazine
Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a motion picture
Free Software Magazine, a computing periodical/website
Free software movement, a sociopolitical movement in computing
Fiji School of Medicine, the central medical school of the University of
the South Pacific
Fixed Survey Meter, an instrument used by the British Royal Observer
Corps during the Cold War to detect nuclear fallout
Folded spectrum method, a Solver for Eigenvalue problems
Free Speech Movement, at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964
Finite-state machine, a model of computation
Field service management, optimization of the field operations of
technicians
Fatih Sultan Mehmet (as Mehmed II), 7th sultan of the Ottoman
Empire
Fabryka Samochodów Małolitrażowych Polish car factory
Federated States of Micronesia, an Oceanic island nation
Fort Smith Regional Airport (IATA code: FSM) in Arkansas, United
States
Mauritian Solidarity Front, in French Front Solidarité Mauricien
(FSM)

THANKS, 

Nick 

-Original Message-
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of glen e. p. ropella
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2011 5:46 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: The Psychology Of Yogurt

glen e. p. ropella wrote circa 11-09-19 03:30 PM:
> Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 11-09-19 01:07 PM:
> You are talking to a man with an insulin pump.  I start to think VERY 
> BADLY if anything goes wrong with it.
> 
> Yeah, I don't know either.  But part of my fascination with this topic 
> lies in the use of psychedelic drugs (not _my_ use of such, of course 
> ... the FSM knows I would never touch such stuff).  We (humans
and 
> some animals, it seems) purposefully make worse some specific body 
> processes in order to "think badly".
> 
> It seems to me that a little "bad thinking" now and again can be
a 
> Good Thing(TM).

Oh, I forgot to mention that I think this issue (mind-body problem) is
intimately related to the old adage "the dose is the poison". 
Whether an
alteration in a physiological process is "bad", "good",
"better", or
"worse", depends a very great deal on just how altered the process is.
It seems reasonable that a little of the poisonous ethanol on a regular
basis is "good" and a debilitating inhibition of dopamine production
is
"bad".  But there is a large swatch of gray in between where
"bad" and
"good" are too oversimplifying to be useful.

In any case, it's pretty easy for me to see a mind-body problem and to see
it as a fundamental, immediate, medical i