Category Archives: CSP

The Hard Problem? Really?

control, CSP, Language, Memes, Newton, resonance, Time

The Hard Problem? Really?

There is no “hard problem”. The language used to set up the hard problem repeats all the known and fatal errors that arise when dealing with experience.

The supposed qualia are experiential, not observable. As used in standard discussion within the field of cognitive science and its philosophy, they are an attempt to take the domain of experience and treat it as a thing – as something to be found in the world. Worse, they partition experience, until all that is left is the poverty of the notion of “redness” or “sweetness”. Experience does not reduce in this fashion. This is the persistent problem: treating of mind, or consciousness, or qualia, as something to be found in the world.

My preferred term, because it helps to get things straight, is experience. Mind, consciousness and qualia are all just confused ways of acknowledging the reality of experience in the first person. And experience is not to be found in the world. Experience is what gives us a world in the first place.

Let us digress, before this becomes bitter, and go back to a fictional Isaac Newton, sitting under an apple tree in rural England, looking at apples, perhaps picking one or two up, feeling them, hefting them, throwing one up in the air and catching it, then biting into one.

Bring it on, Crick!

control, CSP, Madness, Meaning, P-worlds, pink monkey farm, resonance, Self, Time

Crick’s amazing hypothesis states:

“You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Who you are is nothing but a pack of neurons.

How might we demur? My suggestion is to question the simplistic use of the personal pronoun, “you”, to refer to the antics of a bag of meat. If you (jake) believe that this word (you) refers to the carry on of your body, then Crick is probably right. However, if, as seems clear to me, the use of the personal pronoun is anything but simple, and refers to stuff that is both individual and collective, then it unravels.

On Observables and Subjectivity

control, CSP, neuroscience, P-worlds, pink monkey farm, resonance, Time

On Observables and Subjectivity

Paris, CDG Airport, 16th Oct

Geertz quotes Ryle as objecting to the view that a golfer cannot at once conform to the laws of ballistics, obey the rules of golf, and play with elegance. (Isn’t Ryle wonderful!).

The first constraint pertains, of course, to the familiar notion of physical law, in a Newtonian framework. The latter two speak of human interpretation and even experience. It is worth considering just what the limits of that which may be expressed within the Newtonian framework are, and how my present approach may help to shed more light than hitherto on the relation between that and the latter two observations.

A Newtonian account ought firstly to be separated from modern physical accounts. The former speaks of physics as we observe it at the human scale. Its regularities and concepts work well at everday spatial and temporal scales: they describe the movements of things as big as oranges and as fast as dogs. Happily, they continue to bear predictive fruit at some remove from the human reference point1. That we now have a physics that supplants the entire Newtonian framework need be of no concern, for those observations one can make that speak of an understanding at variance with the classical approach are all, without exception, to be made at removes impossibly distant from the familiar time and spatial scales of phenomenal experience. For our purposes here, Newtonian physics is, in fact, a human centered physics. The supposedly objective framework is none such, for it has a human center.

On my account, we are beginning to have a story to tell about what it is to come at the world from a specific point of view, with an understanding that is anchored in a specific spatial and temporal scale. We get this from the observation of the relation between perception and action as they generate the encountered world of an active organism. The essence of this relation can be seen already in observing the relation between a single cell and its environment, and the fundamental link between perception and action in generating immediate experience of a world does not change from the bacterium to the human. In observing the lawfulness of the relation between perception and action, we also see why the encountered world has the specific scales it has, and thus why all organisms meet the world from a specific perspective. No organism encounters a pre-made world.

What we see in this framework is the regularity in the relation between specific forms of energetic gradients that impinge on the sensory surfaces of an organism, and the attendant (not consequent!) motion, or action, of the same. In this picture, the very best physical account we may come up with of nervous system activity is limited to the observation that brains move muscles. There is not, and never will be, a Newtonian account of goals, plans, the rules of golf, or the elegance of the golfer. The Newtonian account is, of course, deterministic, but it is not, nor should it aspire to be, exhaustive.

It may be less destructive to our innate sense of agency, if we look at a cell instead, for there we can already see the strengths and limitations of a Newtonian account. We can imagine, I believe, a more-or-less fully “mechanistic” description of the processes of metabolism. We can describe in exhaustive detail the dynamics that capture the lawful processes of change, distinguishing those that are proper to the cell itself (endogenous dynamics) and those that arise from interaction between the cell and its environment. But the fullest account we may obtain in this fashion is incomplete. Therein lies one limit of empirical science as it pertains to human experience. We cannot observe the agency of the cell. Philosophers have guessed wildly here. What I refer to as agency has been called Will, Vital force, Soul, Spirit, and numerous other things. No observation will reveal this. There is a mystery here, in the emergence of a temporally extended form of organization that is self-sustaining. We need new mathematics to describe it. But it does not appear insurmountable, once we locate the mystery in the right place!

For many people, a Newtonian approach to understanding observables is co-extensive with a scientific approach. Science is larger that that, and the Newtonian account is by no means an objective account that trumps all others, for it does not make reference to experience.

[1] It is worth considering how the concepts and methods of Newtonian physics work beyond the domain they arose in: that of everyday experience. We can generate a magnification of the head of a mite. Enlarged a thousand-fold, we see a monster, but an interpretable monster, with parts that are solid, built of ratchets, hooks, armour plates, hairs. We then have a paradoxical reaction. The thing is ugly and if it were to be encountered at a human scale it would terrify us, yet we find it only curious. It is no more troubling than an artistic representation of an anaethema, as in a horror film. Some may lose sleep over it, but we can all see that our emotional reaction needs to be tempered, for we recognize that we have gone beyond the bounds of possible experience.

The Koan and the Pharisee

CSP, Future projects, P-worlds, pink monkey farm, resonance, Self

From The Full Story:

The cell, and the world encountered by the cell, form a unity. The encounter between them is described by the perception/action relation. In that encounter, they are not separable. They are one.

and earlier, the Koan:

The wind was flapping a temple flag, and two monks were arguing about the flag. One said, “The flag is moving.” The other said, “the wind is moving.” They could not agree, no matter how hard they debated. The sixth patriarch, Eno, happened to come by and said, “Not the wind, not the flag. It is the mind that is moving!” The two monks were struck with awe.

This notion of a unity, that comprises subject and object, unifies the CSP view with that of Maturana. I think.

Content and Vehicle

CSP, Film, Memes, P-worlds

There is a long-standing discussion among some consciousness philosophers, about the need to distinguish between the content of consciousness and the vehicle that enables that content. You look at a two-dimensional illuminated glass panel, but you see through the TV screen to the content beneath. Bollox. This may surprise, but there are only vehicles to be seen. All we can talk about are media, the surface, the vehicles. The content is subjective experience, and we can not refer to that. Language has limits.

Overcoming Dualisms

CSP, Madness, Meaning, Memes, neuroscience, P-worlds, Self

Sometimes, we increase our understanding by introducing distinctions. If you look at a lump and can’t figure out its structure, you might make a distinction, and notice that the lump is a composite of two distinct things, and suddenly you understand its structure much better. We do this all the time, as when we identify two kinds of diabetes, with similar symptoms (the lump) but distinct etiologies (juvenile and acquired). Or when we learn the name of a new flower.

At other times, we learn by reconciling apparently distinct things. In this case, we see two entities turning out to be but different images of the same underlying structure. We do this often also, as when reading a story, the plot falls into place and you can reconcile previously incongruous sub-plots, or when we recognize the mother in the child.

Should we consider these to be distinct enterprises? Is the first Science and the second Religion? Hardly. Yet the knowledge offered by the contemplative traditions seems to be that obtained by following the second course exclusively, while the first is a caricature of purely reductionistic science.

But I think in bringing experience under the fold of collective inquiry, or in finding ways of discussing experience that, at least, do not offend scientists too much, we are making progress in the second way, and science, or our common stock of understanding, improves as a result. Here are some that merit our attention:

In talking about minds, we habitually use the terms “inner” and “outer”. This is a strange linguistic habit, and we should be taken somewhat aback if asked about the spatial referents of these terms. There are none, although convention locates the “inner” space within the head. However, if we look inside, we see only brains. Unifying these two is a huge hurdle, and possibly one of the resolutions of opposites that may be said to accompany enlightenment. The extended mind thesis testifies to the possibility of unifying the language in which we discuss these two, though it stops short of recognizing that they are not distinct realms, going for the cheap gag of making you imagine your mind somehow leaking out into the world.

Another pair that admit of unification is rather surprising: perception and action are not separate things. We have been thinking of them as input and output to something, and have identified with the middle bit, and called it mind. However, the cellular example (described elsewhere) perfectly illustrates the relation between perception and action, whereby we can see that they are co-determining, and not in a relation as cause and effect. This is true for a single cell, and it is true for humans. We can see the direct relationship only sometimes: the swaying room in which the optic flow at the retina allows the coupling of room and torso motion nicely illustrates the coupling between perception and action which is so tight that they become indistinguishable. Nervous systems mediate this relationship, making it harder for us to see, but the lawfulness of the relation still obtains. The mediation is what ultimately gives rise to phenomenal worlds. So if perception/action are unified, that places us in a bit of a bind. It presents with the puzzle of interpreting present experience, which now seems to be deterministic or at least sufficiently lawful that it will not support our notions of volition and agency. If the perception/action relation is invertible, present experience does not consist of cause and effect.

One way out of this bind is to recognize the P-world as distinct from the self. The P-world is present experience, and in recognizing it, we can learn to overcome several dualities. In present experience, the P-world, the subject/object divide is no more. There is no distinction between the perciever and the percept. Attention/Salience is another dualism that is hereby overcome. Salience is the “outer” form of attention. Attention the “inner” form of salience. Damasio does this nicely in his work when he distinguishes between emotion and feeling (if I am correct here, I need to check), one of which is the phenomenological concept, the other the observable counterpart.

The experience of a sound in Brighton

CSP, Meaning, Memes, P-worlds

Brighton, 7/8/08

I was hungover today. I’m at a cognitive linguistics conference. I just came to have a wee look. I’m not from this territory. But they put on a bit of a show, with George Lakoff and Lera Boroditsky and Michael Tomasello, and that seemed to be worthwhile, and I had funding and Jack is away in Portugal, so I came.

Last night was the banquet, and true to form I got drunk. Had a swim on the way home, talked too loudly at dinner about drugs. The usual. This morning, I intended going to talks. Its the last day of the conference, and there was a big session on Gesture, and my grad student, Tom, was there and under some obligation to attend. I skipped the first big talk, and made a leisurely entrance about 11 o’clock. The first speaker got up and managed to alienate me within about 3 sentences. She talked about language. Ok. I’m down with language. She talked about embodiment. I’m well down with embodiment, so that’s cool. Then she talked about mental representation and the propositional vs imagistic debate. I couldn’t even stay in the room. I left. Sent Tom a text telling him that cognitive science is fucked. and left.

I walked today. I walked and walked. East three miles, back, west three miles, back, inland, up and down. Mainly looking at pretty girls. Sun shining. Bikinis at the beach. Brain wasted. Very much enjoying living in the moment, attending to experience. And wondering what that was, attending to experience. If there is no subject and no object in experience, there is no one to attend. But not taking it too seriously, and looking for nice women to look at.

Then I kicked a limpet. One of the ubiquitous slipper limpets. The sex changers. I heard the sound. I was trying to see the experience as it is, without the subject/object split. I was, briefly the experience. Which is fine. But where was the experience? It was out there. About a metre in front of my toe. The experience was out in the world. There is confusion about experience. This brought it home. I almost puked. I knew experience. It was nowhere near my head. My head, at most, provided the origin of a coordinate system. Other than that, there was only brains, wet brains, in my head, and I had no perception of them. The sound, or the experience of the sound, was a metre in front of my toe.

Then I started trying to distinguish between the sounds, all the sounds, around me, and the experience of those sounds. I failed completely. In every attempt. The sounds, and the experience of the sounds, were indistinguishable. And lovely. I relished the experience, and the experience was a distance away from me. I tried it with vision. I nearly fell over. I looked at a car. I can see the car. Easy. The experience of the car was in the location of the car. Nowhere near my head. You can talk about the car I was seeing, but all I had available to me was the seeing of the car. It was well off in the distance.

It was the most worthwhile hangover I have ever had. I own my own P-world. I feel it. The “where” question is just funny. I want to scream it. Look. Here. Now.

Addendum, a year later:

I came across Wolfgang Göethe’s notion of “Gegenständliches Denken”, and recognized it as being about the same relationship to the phenomenal:

Gagenstaendliches Denken

Hat tip to Bill Sharpe for pointing out the account of Göethe’s  scientific method.  Here’s the whole document: Goethe’s Delicate Empiricism

Synchronous Speech

control, CSP, Dance, Future projects, Meaning, P-worlds, resonance, Self, Sex

I just retraced some rather faded handwriting on the white board. To do so, I had to entrain my movement (and all is movement, when we look at it), to a past series, as I thought those thoughts and wrote them on the board.

This is just like synchronous speech, where two people try to match their motor control. Remember, all we see is that brains move muscles. So when we ask about shared experience, that must mean shared movement. Is movement all muscle? Is it just shared dynamic?

Can you find a few people to do exercises in shared movement with? It’s not quite dance, but it is also. But its not about expression, but resonance. Neither alone nor together, but resonance.