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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11
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smcder
Paranormal Adept
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
A bit off topic but also vaguely on topic if we consider the question of animals intelligence and consciousness:
The stunning, devastating, weekslong journey of an orca and her dead calf
The thought seems to be that the mother is grieving for the dead baby. And that may absolutely be the case; I truly believe that animals experience positively and negatively valenced emotions just like human animals.
Apparently the baby's body is not decomposing because of the fridig water. I haven't been able to determine if the mother is a 1st time mother or not.
But isn't it possible that—if she is a first time mother, and the body is not decomposing—the mother doesn't know what caring for a living calf is like and thinks it's simply caring for a baby properly?
However, I suppose the thought is that the whales are intelligent enough to know the baby is indeed dead (is that too abstract of a concept for whales, who knows).
I don't know; even though I believe whales are capable of grief, I'm skeptical that grief is what is driving this behavior.
The stunning, devastating, weekslong journey of an orca and her dead calf
The thought seems to be that the mother is grieving for the dead baby. And that may absolutely be the case; I truly believe that animals experience positively and negatively valenced emotions just like human animals.
Apparently the baby's body is not decomposing because of the fridig water. I haven't been able to determine if the mother is a 1st time mother or not.
But isn't it possible that—if she is a first time mother, and the body is not decomposing—the mother doesn't know what caring for a living calf is like and thinks it's simply caring for a baby properly?
However, I suppose the thought is that the whales are intelligent enough to know the baby is indeed dead (is that too abstract of a concept for whales, who knows).
I don't know; even though I believe whales are capable of grief, I'm skeptical that grief is what is driving this behavior.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
I hesitate to post this bc I know I did in the past, and I really don't want is to be rehashing stuff we've already addressed. But maybe someone missed it first go round and it is a good read. Lots of great points in it.
Robert Epstein’s empty essay
"Why do I say “rightly controversial”? Because if one interprets it as above, the whole idea fails to make sense. Hypothesising “a direct interaction between organisms and their world” means that there would be nothing to learn in studying the mechanisms which mediate the interactions and happen to occur inside bodies (would count as indirect?). In other words, it declares the reductionist approach a dead-end a priori. Trouble is, nobody does this: we do study how sensory signals travel along nerves towards the central nervous system and also what happens within brains in similar ways. The only problem I have with Radical Embodiment is that it might superficially seem to espouse such a view, while I happen to think that it tries to do something which is much more important, and orders of magnitudes more useful.
Radical Embodiment is challenging our understanding of “representations” and showing how they are far less “information rich” than what our common intuitions would suggest. It is doing so by showing how much the interaction with the world is necessary for guiding and fine-tuning behaviour. It does challenge the idea that we hold detailed models of the world and interact with those (instead of interacting with the world), and does so for a lot of good reasons, but, as exemplified in this brief exchange, it does not challenge the IP metaphor, it is merely showing how to apply it better!"
Robert Epstein’s empty essay
"Why do I say “rightly controversial”? Because if one interprets it as above, the whole idea fails to make sense. Hypothesising “a direct interaction between organisms and their world” means that there would be nothing to learn in studying the mechanisms which mediate the interactions and happen to occur inside bodies (would count as indirect?). In other words, it declares the reductionist approach a dead-end a priori. Trouble is, nobody does this: we do study how sensory signals travel along nerves towards the central nervous system and also what happens within brains in similar ways. The only problem I have with Radical Embodiment is that it might superficially seem to espouse such a view, while I happen to think that it tries to do something which is much more important, and orders of magnitudes more useful.
Radical Embodiment is challenging our understanding of “representations” and showing how they are far less “information rich” than what our common intuitions would suggest. It is doing so by showing how much the interaction with the world is necessary for guiding and fine-tuning behaviour. It does challenge the idea that we hold detailed models of the world and interact with those (instead of interacting with the world), and does so for a lot of good reasons, but, as exemplified in this brief exchange, it does not challenge the IP metaphor, it is merely showing how to apply it better!"
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
As I mentioned earlier, we have to separate behavior and subjective experience.
1) So, the organism might not *need* to evoke phenomenal models in order to behave intelligently and complexly. It seems this could all happen mechanistically via stimulus-response, radical embodiement. The organism's body engages with the world subconsciously/sub-personally.
2) subjective experience *seems* to consist of models of the world. We seem to subjectively experience a baseball out there flying through the air. We know our perception of the baseball and the <BASEBALL> are distinct.
So, models/representations might not be necessary for complex behavior, but perceiving still seems to involve models/representations, right?
So maybe perception (at least conscious perception) isnt necessary for many/most complex behaviors.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
I think the emphasis is on the relative role and the amount of information in the model ... do you remember this cartoon character?
He is paired up with Foghorn Leghorn and, in the course of hilarious adventures, he epitomizes the brainiac approach - scribbling equations and then taking some Rube Goldberg action that results in total success, much to Foghorn's amazement. What's funny is we all know that baseball players don't compute complex equations and then run directly to a spot underneath ... this blog is taking this maybe to an extreme - but it makes the point that a lot of information is in the environment and its affordances and in the very structure of the body... remember this ...
Passive Dynamic Walking
no motors, no microprocessors ... the "model" is the structure ... now, when we do something very, very deliberate
from de- ‘down’ + librare ‘weigh’ (from libra ‘scales’)
we do, I think, use consciousness and models ... it seems very difficult to account for Moby Dick as an unconscious process, though a Martian anthropologist might see the behavior of making marks on paper as a complex of firing neurons and moving muscles ... as indeed some Martian anthropologists on earth (you know who you are!) do.
That said, it's also hard to see Moby Dick composed entirely in the head ... I'm no Melville, but I write a lot of stories in my head, write and see them in images and hear the dialogue ... but when I go to put them on paper, I realize there is a lot of work left in the details, my images are not complete ... some sentences are almost word for word straight out of my head and usually I repeat these over and over to fix them in memory but often they too come out to my surprise incomplete, so that only in the typing and seeing the words ... i.e. getting under the ball ... do I get them to where they are complete sentences and not some mash up of image in my head.
So I again I think what the ecological argument is, taken in moderation, is that there is a lot more of what we think of as being in our heads, that is literally out there in the world. Try this simple experiment, pick up an imaginary hammer, and hammer some "nails". Film this. Then get a real hammer and nails ... and then look how different the pantomime is ... unless you've done a lot of theater, I suspect the former is a broad caricature of the latter. Of course you don't simulate the weight of the hammer ... and that's a clue! ... so do this with something like writing a sentence ... how awful do those signature pads on electronic screens with a stylus look vs your "real" signature on paper? But the difference is in the ecology of the pencil and paper.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
That was a classic ( assuming I'm remembering it right that is ).I think the emphasis is on the relative role and the amount of information in the model ... do you remember this cartoon character?
Much for me to catch up with today, which I'll do tonight. In the meantime here are the first several pages from a paper I came across in my Word files today. The paper as a whole has much to offer. I haven't reached the bottom of the copied paper yet, so do not yet know if I kept the link. If not I'll find it.
RE-ENCHANTING THE WORLD: THE ROLE OF IMAGINATION IN PERCEPTION.
Kathleen Hull
Summary
"In this lecture I want to defend what the philosopher Merleau-Ponty coins ‘the imaginary texture of the real.’ I want to suggest that the imagination is at work in the everyday world which we perceive, the world as it is for us. In defending this view I shall be working with a concept of the imagination which has both similarities with and differences from, our everyday notion. The everyday notion contrasts the imaginary and the real. In this the imaginary is tied to the fictional or the illusory. I shall suggest, however, that there is a more fundamental working of the imagination, present in both perception and the constructions of fictions. The workings of the imagination within the perceived world, gives it, what I shall term, an affective logic. The domain of affect is that of emotions, feelings and desire, and to claim such an affective logic in the world we experience, is to point out that it has salience and significance for us, suggesting and demanding the desiring and sometimes fearful responses we make to it; the shape of the world echoed in the shapes our bodies take within it.
I The Disenchanted World
Max Weber, speaking in 1922 characterised the world which it was the job of the scientist to describe as a world in the' process of disenchantment'. In such a world 'there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play …one can . in principle master all things by calculation…One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master [it]'.[1] But for Weber it was not only magical and mysterious forces which have no place in such a scientific world, but also meaning and value. 'If these natural sciences lead to anything in this way, they are apt to make the belief that there is such a thing as the 'meaning' of the universe die out at its very roots'[2] This thought was also captured by Merleau Ponty when he said ' Scientific thinking treats everything as though it were an object -in –general, as though it meant nothing to us '[3] It is often claimed that it is characteristic of modernist thinking to yield such a disenchanted view of nature, and hand in hand with it to assume that everything in the world is in principle intelligible to us. In this talk I want to explore the role of imagination in perception to yield an, at least partially, re-enchanted world.
II The Expressive Body: Physiognomy not physiology.
I want to begin with a characterisation of the way in which we perceive other people. When we encounter the bodies of other people, we are not perceiving them according to their physiological characteristics. That is the job of science. Rather we are recognising what Wittgenstein calls a physiognomy, a form expressive of character. (Physiognomy : The face, especially, viewed as an index of…character. Also the contour of a country OED)
Wittgenstein: ‘Look into someone else’s face and see the consciousness in it, and also a particular shade of consciousness. You see on it, in it, joy, indifference, interest, excitement, dullness etc. The light in the face of another’ [4]
We perceive the joy or sadness in a face without being able to describe the position of its features as arrangements in objective space. We could not describe how much the mouth had gone up and down, or what were the position of the cheek bones, although we are often able to mimic the expression perceived, on our own, sometimes physiologically variable features.
‘We see emotion…we do not see facial contortions and make inferences from them…to joy , grief, boredom. We describe a face immediately as sad, radiant, bored, even when we are unable to give any other description of the features.-Grief one would like to say, is personified in the face.’[5] If asked what unites all joyful faces it becomes clear that it is not some physiological arrangement. It is that they express joy, a pattern in their materiality which we learn to detect. ‘It is possible to say “I read timidity in this face” … the timidity does not seem to be merely associated…with the face; but fear is there, alive, in the features. If the features change slightly, we can speak of a corresponding change in the fear’ [6]
What is recognised, says Wittgenstein, is ‘a unity, a certain physiognomy’[7]Such a physiognomy is evident also when we see people engaged in intentional acts. Again what we perceive are not sets of bodily movements as they would be detected by a physiologist. Instead we see people shopping or making tea, taking a rest or engaged in conversation. And again our perception of these activities is immediate. We don’t first see bodily movements and infer to what purposes they might promote. We perceive the activities and would, most commonly, be at a loss to characterise the movements by which they were done.
Reason Constituting Perception
Such perceptions of others are intimately tied to our responses to them. Pain or grief prompt responses of comfort and solicitude. Intentional acts prompt corresponding engagements. In each case the shape we have detected in the bodies of others provides us with reasons for making certain kinds of response. If asked to justify our smiling in response to someone entering a room we might reply, ‘look at her, she’s so full of life, doesn’t that deserve a smile in return?’ Or, if asked ‘Why have you gone so quiet ?’ we might say, ‘look at him, he is about to explode!’ Here what are being signalled are not simply relations of brute causation. It is not just that her joyfulness makes me joyful also. It is rather that our responses are justified , rendered appropriate, by what we directly perceive of the bodies of others. Consequently when we detect a physiognomy in the face of another, what we are detecting cannot be conveyed simply by a drawing. It can only be conveyed when someone recognises how that expression is woven into the pattern of inter-subjective life . ‘Pain has this position in our life; it has these connexions; …Only surrounded by certain normal manifestations of life is there such a thing as an expression of pain; only surrounded by an even more far reaching manifestation of life, such a thing as the expression of sorrow or affection. And so on’[8]
Recognition of character in the faces and bodies of others, is not then simply the detection of a particular kind of pattern, like a pattern on wall paper. The form detected is internally linked to the appropriateness of certain kind of responses to it. Recognition of bodily expressions is therefore a form of what John McDowell terms reason constituting perception.[9] There are internal relations between the shape perceived and our own body’s response to it. Our responses are rendered intelligible or appropriate by the physiognomy perceived.
III The Physiognomy of the World
When we turn away from the perception of persons and turn our attention to other parts of the world we perceive, it becomes clear that those also have a physiognomy, in both a parallel and interdependent way. As Merleau Ponty points out; ‘this disclosure of an immanent and incipient significance in the living body extends, as we shall see , to the whole sensible world, and our gaze …will discover in all other ‘objects’ the miracle of expression’ (PP197). The OED notes that the notion of physiognomy, used for the character of a face, can also be used for the contours, or character of a landscape. Nonetheless it may seem unsettling to accept Merleau Pontys claim that objects as well as people, can be expressive. But some examples might help give something of the flavour of what features of our relation to our surroundings he is drawing attention to here: . . . ."
[1] Max Weber Essays in Sociology, translated and edited by H.H.Gerth and C.Wright Mills, Routledge and Kegan Paul , London 1948, page 139
[2] ibid 142
[3] M.Merleau Ponty The Phenomenology of Perception trans Colin Smith Routledge 1962
[4] The Wittgenstein Reader, edited by Antony Kenny, page 221)
[5] Zettel 225
[6] Philosophical Investigations 537
[7] Zettel 379
[8] Zettel 533 and 534
[9] John McDowell Mind, Value and Reality Harvard University Press, Cambridge and London, 1998, p.86
RE-ENCHANTING THE WORLD: THE ROLE OF IMAGINATION IN PERCEPTION.
Kathleen Hull
Summary
"In this lecture I want to defend what the philosopher Merleau-Ponty coins ‘the imaginary texture of the real.’ I want to suggest that the imagination is at work in the everyday world which we perceive, the world as it is for us. In defending this view I shall be working with a concept of the imagination which has both similarities with and differences from, our everyday notion. The everyday notion contrasts the imaginary and the real. In this the imaginary is tied to the fictional or the illusory. I shall suggest, however, that there is a more fundamental working of the imagination, present in both perception and the constructions of fictions. The workings of the imagination within the perceived world, gives it, what I shall term, an affective logic. The domain of affect is that of emotions, feelings and desire, and to claim such an affective logic in the world we experience, is to point out that it has salience and significance for us, suggesting and demanding the desiring and sometimes fearful responses we make to it; the shape of the world echoed in the shapes our bodies take within it.
I The Disenchanted World
Max Weber, speaking in 1922 characterised the world which it was the job of the scientist to describe as a world in the' process of disenchantment'. In such a world 'there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play …one can . in principle master all things by calculation…One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master [it]'.[1] But for Weber it was not only magical and mysterious forces which have no place in such a scientific world, but also meaning and value. 'If these natural sciences lead to anything in this way, they are apt to make the belief that there is such a thing as the 'meaning' of the universe die out at its very roots'[2] This thought was also captured by Merleau Ponty when he said ' Scientific thinking treats everything as though it were an object -in –general, as though it meant nothing to us '[3] It is often claimed that it is characteristic of modernist thinking to yield such a disenchanted view of nature, and hand in hand with it to assume that everything in the world is in principle intelligible to us. In this talk I want to explore the role of imagination in perception to yield an, at least partially, re-enchanted world.
II The Expressive Body: Physiognomy not physiology.
I want to begin with a characterisation of the way in which we perceive other people. When we encounter the bodies of other people, we are not perceiving them according to their physiological characteristics. That is the job of science. Rather we are recognising what Wittgenstein calls a physiognomy, a form expressive of character. (Physiognomy : The face, especially, viewed as an index of…character. Also the contour of a country OED)
Wittgenstein: ‘Look into someone else’s face and see the consciousness in it, and also a particular shade of consciousness. You see on it, in it, joy, indifference, interest, excitement, dullness etc. The light in the face of another’ [4]
We perceive the joy or sadness in a face without being able to describe the position of its features as arrangements in objective space. We could not describe how much the mouth had gone up and down, or what were the position of the cheek bones, although we are often able to mimic the expression perceived, on our own, sometimes physiologically variable features.
‘We see emotion…we do not see facial contortions and make inferences from them…to joy , grief, boredom. We describe a face immediately as sad, radiant, bored, even when we are unable to give any other description of the features.-Grief one would like to say, is personified in the face.’[5] If asked what unites all joyful faces it becomes clear that it is not some physiological arrangement. It is that they express joy, a pattern in their materiality which we learn to detect. ‘It is possible to say “I read timidity in this face” … the timidity does not seem to be merely associated…with the face; but fear is there, alive, in the features. If the features change slightly, we can speak of a corresponding change in the fear’ [6]
What is recognised, says Wittgenstein, is ‘a unity, a certain physiognomy’[7]Such a physiognomy is evident also when we see people engaged in intentional acts. Again what we perceive are not sets of bodily movements as they would be detected by a physiologist. Instead we see people shopping or making tea, taking a rest or engaged in conversation. And again our perception of these activities is immediate. We don’t first see bodily movements and infer to what purposes they might promote. We perceive the activities and would, most commonly, be at a loss to characterise the movements by which they were done.
Reason Constituting Perception
Such perceptions of others are intimately tied to our responses to them. Pain or grief prompt responses of comfort and solicitude. Intentional acts prompt corresponding engagements. In each case the shape we have detected in the bodies of others provides us with reasons for making certain kinds of response. If asked to justify our smiling in response to someone entering a room we might reply, ‘look at her, she’s so full of life, doesn’t that deserve a smile in return?’ Or, if asked ‘Why have you gone so quiet ?’ we might say, ‘look at him, he is about to explode!’ Here what are being signalled are not simply relations of brute causation. It is not just that her joyfulness makes me joyful also. It is rather that our responses are justified , rendered appropriate, by what we directly perceive of the bodies of others. Consequently when we detect a physiognomy in the face of another, what we are detecting cannot be conveyed simply by a drawing. It can only be conveyed when someone recognises how that expression is woven into the pattern of inter-subjective life . ‘Pain has this position in our life; it has these connexions; …Only surrounded by certain normal manifestations of life is there such a thing as an expression of pain; only surrounded by an even more far reaching manifestation of life, such a thing as the expression of sorrow or affection. And so on’[8]
Recognition of character in the faces and bodies of others, is not then simply the detection of a particular kind of pattern, like a pattern on wall paper. The form detected is internally linked to the appropriateness of certain kind of responses to it. Recognition of bodily expressions is therefore a form of what John McDowell terms reason constituting perception.[9] There are internal relations between the shape perceived and our own body’s response to it. Our responses are rendered intelligible or appropriate by the physiognomy perceived.
III The Physiognomy of the World
When we turn away from the perception of persons and turn our attention to other parts of the world we perceive, it becomes clear that those also have a physiognomy, in both a parallel and interdependent way. As Merleau Ponty points out; ‘this disclosure of an immanent and incipient significance in the living body extends, as we shall see , to the whole sensible world, and our gaze …will discover in all other ‘objects’ the miracle of expression’ (PP197). The OED notes that the notion of physiognomy, used for the character of a face, can also be used for the contours, or character of a landscape. Nonetheless it may seem unsettling to accept Merleau Pontys claim that objects as well as people, can be expressive. But some examples might help give something of the flavour of what features of our relation to our surroundings he is drawing attention to here: . . . ."
[1] Max Weber Essays in Sociology, translated and edited by H.H.Gerth and C.Wright Mills, Routledge and Kegan Paul , London 1948, page 139
[2] ibid 142
[3] M.Merleau Ponty The Phenomenology of Perception trans Colin Smith Routledge 1962
[4] The Wittgenstein Reader, edited by Antony Kenny, page 221)
[5] Zettel 225
[6] Philosophical Investigations 537
[7] Zettel 379
[8] Zettel 533 and 534
[9] John McDowell Mind, Value and Reality Harvard University Press, Cambridge and London, 1998, p.86
Here too is the conclusion of the paper above, while I find a link to the whole online.
"X Re-enchantment
To present the world of perception as an imaginary world is to be engaged in a task that John McDowell terms 'partial re -enchantment'. And, of course, once we have recognised the workings of imagination in perception, then the scientific world, which was offered as an implied contrast, can be seen, not as lacking an imaginary, but as simply carrying imaginaries of its own. As Bruno Latour has argued 'modern attempts to disenchant nature...[ simply] recreate a new kind of enchantment' [1]. Science continually reshapes the image we have of the world we inhabit. And as many writers have pointed out ‘learning a scientific theory .. one acquires a repertoire …for seeing, imagining , and manipulating the world in new ways’[2]
I have argued that the imagination is at work in the perceived world, manifest in the shapes and forms in terms of which we experience it, in which present and absent are woven together, to make affective sense of the ways in which we tuck or hide ourselves into our surroundings. I hope to have persuaded you that, to adapt a quote of Merleau Ponty yet again, the imaginary is
‘not the contradictory of the perceived world , it is in the line of the perceptual, ‘inscribed within it (in filigree)’ [3],[4]"
[1] B.Latour We have never been Modern. trans. C.Porter, Harvester, 1993, p.23
[2] J.Rouse ‘ Merleau Ponty’s Existential Conception of Science’ in the Cambridge Companion to Merleau Ponty, ed T.Carman and M.Hansen, 2005, CUP p.280
[3] The Visible and the Invisible 215
[4] Filigree; Jewel work of a delicate kind made with threads and beads, usually of gold and silver. OED
"X Re-enchantment
To present the world of perception as an imaginary world is to be engaged in a task that John McDowell terms 'partial re -enchantment'. And, of course, once we have recognised the workings of imagination in perception, then the scientific world, which was offered as an implied contrast, can be seen, not as lacking an imaginary, but as simply carrying imaginaries of its own. As Bruno Latour has argued 'modern attempts to disenchant nature...[ simply] recreate a new kind of enchantment' [1]. Science continually reshapes the image we have of the world we inhabit. And as many writers have pointed out ‘learning a scientific theory .. one acquires a repertoire …for seeing, imagining , and manipulating the world in new ways’[2]
I have argued that the imagination is at work in the perceived world, manifest in the shapes and forms in terms of which we experience it, in which present and absent are woven together, to make affective sense of the ways in which we tuck or hide ourselves into our surroundings. I hope to have persuaded you that, to adapt a quote of Merleau Ponty yet again, the imaginary is
‘not the contradictory of the perceived world , it is in the line of the perceptual, ‘inscribed within it (in filigree)’ [3],[4]"
[1] B.Latour We have never been Modern. trans. C.Porter, Harvester, 1993, p.23
[2] J.Rouse ‘ Merleau Ponty’s Existential Conception of Science’ in the Cambridge Companion to Merleau Ponty, ed T.Carman and M.Hansen, 2005, CUP p.280
[3] The Visible and the Invisible 215
[4] Filigree; Jewel work of a delicate kind made with threads and beads, usually of gold and silver. OED
re above paper, still searching for it online, but in the meantime I've discovered an error in the author's name, which according to the following link is K. Lennon of the University of Hull. Most academic publications referenced and made available online are free of this kind of confusion.
Re-enchanting the World: The Role of Imagination in Perception | Philosophy | Cambridge Core
Re-enchanting the World: The Role of Imagination in Perception | Philosophy | Cambridge Core
Another paper by Shaun Gallagher I've come across in my Word files and for which I need to find the online link. Here's the opening:
Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science,
Shaun Gallagher
Several recently developed philosophical approaches to the self promise to enhance the exchange of ideas between the philosophy of the mind and the other cognitive sciences. This review examines two important concepts of self: the ‘minimal self’, a self devoid of temporal extension, and the ‘narrative self’, which involves personal identity and continuity across time. The notion of a minimal self is first clarified by drawing a distinction between the sense of self-agency and the sense of self-ownership for actions. This distinction is then explored within the neurological domain with specific reference to schizophrenia, in which the sense of self-agency may be disrupted. The convergence between the philosophical debate and empirical study is extended in a discussion of more primitive aspects of self and how these relate to neonatal experience and robotics. The second concept of self, the narrative self, is discussed in the light of Gazzaniga’s left-hemisphere ‘interpreter’ and episodic memory. Extensions of the idea of a narrative self that are consistent with neurological models are then considered. The review illustrates how the philosophical approach can inform cognitive science and suggests that a two-way collaboration may lead to a more fully developed account of the self.
Ever since William James1 categorized different senses of the self at the end of the 19th century, philosophers and psychologists have refined and expanded the possible variations of this concept. James’ inventory of physical self, mental self, spiritual self, and the ego has been variously supplemented. Neisser, for example, suggested important distinctions between ecological, interpersonal, extended, private and conceptual aspects of self2. More recently, when reviewing a contentious collection of essays from various disciplines, Strawson found an overabundance of delineations between cognitive, embodied, fictional and narrative selves, among others 3. It would be impossible to review all of these diverse notions of self in this short review. Instead, I have focused on several recently developed approaches that promise the best exchange of ideas between philosophy of mind and the other cognitive sciences and that convey the breadth of philosophical analysis on this topic. These approaches can be divided into two groups that are focused, respectively, on two important aspects of self – the ‘minimal’ self and the ‘narrative’ self (see Glossary). . . .
Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science,
Shaun Gallagher
Several recently developed philosophical approaches to the self promise to enhance the exchange of ideas between the philosophy of the mind and the other cognitive sciences. This review examines two important concepts of self: the ‘minimal self’, a self devoid of temporal extension, and the ‘narrative self’, which involves personal identity and continuity across time. The notion of a minimal self is first clarified by drawing a distinction between the sense of self-agency and the sense of self-ownership for actions. This distinction is then explored within the neurological domain with specific reference to schizophrenia, in which the sense of self-agency may be disrupted. The convergence between the philosophical debate and empirical study is extended in a discussion of more primitive aspects of self and how these relate to neonatal experience and robotics. The second concept of self, the narrative self, is discussed in the light of Gazzaniga’s left-hemisphere ‘interpreter’ and episodic memory. Extensions of the idea of a narrative self that are consistent with neurological models are then considered. The review illustrates how the philosophical approach can inform cognitive science and suggests that a two-way collaboration may lead to a more fully developed account of the self.
Ever since William James1 categorized different senses of the self at the end of the 19th century, philosophers and psychologists have refined and expanded the possible variations of this concept. James’ inventory of physical self, mental self, spiritual self, and the ego has been variously supplemented. Neisser, for example, suggested important distinctions between ecological, interpersonal, extended, private and conceptual aspects of self2. More recently, when reviewing a contentious collection of essays from various disciplines, Strawson found an overabundance of delineations between cognitive, embodied, fictional and narrative selves, among others 3. It would be impossible to review all of these diverse notions of self in this short review. Instead, I have focused on several recently developed approaches that promise the best exchange of ideas between philosophy of mind and the other cognitive sciences and that convey the breadth of philosophical analysis on this topic. These approaches can be divided into two groups that are focused, respectively, on two important aspects of self – the ‘minimal’ self and the ‘narrative’ self (see Glossary). . . .
Re the paper second last cited re perception, imagination, and affectivity, the author is not 'Kathleen Hull' [as printed on the pdf I copied from 'somewhere'] but rather 'Kathleen Lennon', as I discovered when searching for more of her work at PhilPapers.org. There I have found the abstract for an additional paper by Lennon titled "Imaginary Bodies and Worlds" and a review of her recent book Imagination and the Imaginary.
"Imaginary Bodies and Worlds" is available in pdf at academia.edu:
Abstract: In this paper I distil a concept of the imaginary with which to make good the claim that our mode of embodied subjectivity is an imaginary embodiment in an imaginary world. The concept of the imaginary employed is not one in which imaginary worlds are contrasted with the real, but one in which imagination is a condition of there being a real for us. The images and forms in terms of which our imagined bodies and worlds are constituted carry, in an interdependent way, cognition and affects. Imagined configurations have a resilience which makes their displacement more than a matter of appealing to considerations of truth or falsity. It involves encounters with alternative imagined configurations which can be recognized as making both cognitive and affective sense."
The academia.edu link: Imaginary Bodies and World
Here is the abstract for a review of Imagination and the Imaginary at philpapers:
"The concept of the imaginary is pervasive within contemporary thought, yet can be a baffling and often controversial term. In Imagination and the Imaginary, Kathleen Lennon explores the links between imagination - regarded as the faculty of creating images or forms - and the imaginary, which links such imagery with affect or emotion and captures the significance which the world carries for us. Beginning with an examination of contrasting theories of imagination proposed by Hume and Kant, Lennon argues that the imaginary is not something in opposition to the real, but the very faculty through which the world is made real to us. She then turns to the vexed relationship between perception and imagination and, drawing on Kant, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, explores some fundamental questions, such as whether there is a distinction between the perceived and the imagined; the relationship between imagination and creativity; and the role of the body in perception and imagination. Invoking also Spinoza and Coleridge, Lennon argues that, far from being a realm of illusion, the imaginary world is our most direct mode of perception. She then explores the role the imaginary plays in the formation of the self and the social world. A unique feature of the volume is that it compares and contrasts a philosophical tradition of thinking about the imagination - running from Kant and Hume to Strawson and John McDowell - with the work of phenomenological, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and feminist thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, Castoriadis, Irigaray, Gatens, and Lloyd. This makes Imagination and the Imaginary essential reading for students and scholars working in phenomenology, philosophy of perception, social theory, cultural studies and aesthetics."
Here is a link to the text sample of this book at amazon, going to the table of contents:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415430925/?tag=rockoids-20
Costly, but it is available as an ebook perhaps for less than amazon charges at this link:
Imagination and the Imaginary eBook de Kathleen Lennon - 9781317548812 | Rakuten Kobo
"Imaginary Bodies and Worlds" is available in pdf at academia.edu:
Abstract: In this paper I distil a concept of the imaginary with which to make good the claim that our mode of embodied subjectivity is an imaginary embodiment in an imaginary world. The concept of the imaginary employed is not one in which imaginary worlds are contrasted with the real, but one in which imagination is a condition of there being a real for us. The images and forms in terms of which our imagined bodies and worlds are constituted carry, in an interdependent way, cognition and affects. Imagined configurations have a resilience which makes their displacement more than a matter of appealing to considerations of truth or falsity. It involves encounters with alternative imagined configurations which can be recognized as making both cognitive and affective sense."
The academia.edu link: Imaginary Bodies and World
Here is the abstract for a review of Imagination and the Imaginary at philpapers:
"The concept of the imaginary is pervasive within contemporary thought, yet can be a baffling and often controversial term. In Imagination and the Imaginary, Kathleen Lennon explores the links between imagination - regarded as the faculty of creating images or forms - and the imaginary, which links such imagery with affect or emotion and captures the significance which the world carries for us. Beginning with an examination of contrasting theories of imagination proposed by Hume and Kant, Lennon argues that the imaginary is not something in opposition to the real, but the very faculty through which the world is made real to us. She then turns to the vexed relationship between perception and imagination and, drawing on Kant, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, explores some fundamental questions, such as whether there is a distinction between the perceived and the imagined; the relationship between imagination and creativity; and the role of the body in perception and imagination. Invoking also Spinoza and Coleridge, Lennon argues that, far from being a realm of illusion, the imaginary world is our most direct mode of perception. She then explores the role the imaginary plays in the formation of the self and the social world. A unique feature of the volume is that it compares and contrasts a philosophical tradition of thinking about the imagination - running from Kant and Hume to Strawson and John McDowell - with the work of phenomenological, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and feminist thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, Castoriadis, Irigaray, Gatens, and Lloyd. This makes Imagination and the Imaginary essential reading for students and scholars working in phenomenology, philosophy of perception, social theory, cultural studies and aesthetics."
Here is a link to the text sample of this book at amazon, going to the table of contents:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415430925/?tag=rockoids-20
Costly, but it is available as an ebook perhaps for less than amazon charges at this link:
Imagination and the Imaginary eBook de Kathleen Lennon - 9781317548812 | Rakuten Kobo
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
A little more info about the mother. Seems this was not her first calf and she is 20 years old. The grief hypothesis makes sense with this details.
After 17 days and 1,000 miles, mother orca Tahlequah drops her dead calf
smcder
Paranormal Adept
ReaCog, a Minimal Cognitive Controller Based on Recruitment of Reactive Systems
"Reactive systems, by definition, do not belong to the field of cognition. However, many authors (e.g., Newell, 1994; Anderson, 2010; Glenberg and Gallese, 2012) argue that cognition in all known systems is strongly based on and is intimately connected with a functional reactive system. Even more, as proposed by Barsalou (2008) and others, reactive (or behavior-based) systems having internal states (as introduced in the second section, Reactive Walker) plus being embodied are basic requirements for a system to become a cognitive one. As already noted briefly above, there is indeed strong support showing that neuronal elements forming cognitive properties are tightly intertwined with the reactive system itself and a functional separation is not possible."
"Reactive systems, by definition, do not belong to the field of cognition. However, many authors (e.g., Newell, 1994; Anderson, 2010; Glenberg and Gallese, 2012) argue that cognition in all known systems is strongly based on and is intimately connected with a functional reactive system. Even more, as proposed by Barsalou (2008) and others, reactive (or behavior-based) systems having internal states (as introduced in the second section, Reactive Walker) plus being embodied are basic requirements for a system to become a cognitive one. As already noted briefly above, there is indeed strong support showing that neuronal elements forming cognitive properties are tightly intertwined with the reactive system itself and a functional separation is not possible."
The Five Marks of the Mental
Tuomas K. Pernu 1,2*
1 Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom,
2 Division of Physiology and Neuroscience, Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
The mental realm seems different to the physical realm; the mental is thought to be dependent on, yet distinct from the physical. But how, exactly, are the two realms supposed to be different, and what, exactly, creates the seemingly insurmountable juxtaposition between the mental and the physical? This review identifies and discusses five marks of the mental, features that set characteristically mental phenomena apart from the characteristically physical phenomena. These five marks (intentionality, consciousness, freewill, teleology, and normativity) are not presented as a set of features that define mentality. Rather, each of them is something we seem to associate with phenomena we consider mental, and each of them seems to be in tension with the physical view of reality in its own particular way. It is thus suggested how there is no single mind-body problem, but a set of distinct but interconnected problems. Each of these separate problems is analyzed, and their differences, similarities and connections are identified. This provides a useful basis for future theoretical work on psychology and philosophy of mind, that until now has too often suffered from unclarities, inadequacies, and conflations.
Keywords: access consciousness, folk psychology, free will, mind-body problem, intentionality, normativity, phenomenal consciousness, teleology
philsci-archive.pitt.edu/14935/1/The%20Five%20Marks%20of%20the%20Mental.pdf
Tuomas K. Pernu 1,2*
1 Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom,
2 Division of Physiology and Neuroscience, Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
The mental realm seems different to the physical realm; the mental is thought to be dependent on, yet distinct from the physical. But how, exactly, are the two realms supposed to be different, and what, exactly, creates the seemingly insurmountable juxtaposition between the mental and the physical? This review identifies and discusses five marks of the mental, features that set characteristically mental phenomena apart from the characteristically physical phenomena. These five marks (intentionality, consciousness, freewill, teleology, and normativity) are not presented as a set of features that define mentality. Rather, each of them is something we seem to associate with phenomena we consider mental, and each of them seems to be in tension with the physical view of reality in its own particular way. It is thus suggested how there is no single mind-body problem, but a set of distinct but interconnected problems. Each of these separate problems is analyzed, and their differences, similarities and connections are identified. This provides a useful basis for future theoretical work on psychology and philosophy of mind, that until now has too often suffered from unclarities, inadequacies, and conflations.
Keywords: access consciousness, folk psychology, free will, mind-body problem, intentionality, normativity, phenomenal consciousness, teleology
philsci-archive.pitt.edu/14935/1/The%20Five%20Marks%20of%20the%20Mental.pdf
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
If we think of minds as the part of us that has cognitive experiences, then I wouldn't say that the Watt governor is a good metaphor for the embodied mind. I would say however that it is a good metaphor for the regulation of perceptual stimuli. For example the iris response as a regulator for the amount of light entering the eye, and the other sensor-motor feedback loops that regulate appropriate exposure to environmental stimuli. These are much more like the Watt regulator. The resulting experiential phenomena are however entirely different despite being dependent upon stimuli. As simply as I can put it. The volume control is not the music. Then again maybe the metaphor was intended to be interpreted differently than the way I am.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
As posted above:
Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists: Brains Don't Have to be Computers (A Purple Peril)
"The Polar Planimeter
I'd like to illustrate with the example of the polar planimeter. My favourite perceptual psychophysicist, Sverker Runeson, wrote a paper in 1976 called 'On the possibility of "smart" perceptual mechanisms'. In it, he described the idea of a smart device and used the planimeter as an example.I blogged about "smartness" and this device in one of my first posts on this blog because it's one of the standard examples in the field of how to get behaviour without computation; the other, of course, is the Watt's Steam Governor."
T. Van Gelder's paper:
"What might cognition be, if not computation?" can be found here:
http://people.bu.edu/pbokulic/class/vanGelder-reading.pdf
Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists: Brains Don't Have to be Computers (A Purple Peril)
"The Polar Planimeter
I'd like to illustrate with the example of the polar planimeter. My favourite perceptual psychophysicist, Sverker Runeson, wrote a paper in 1976 called 'On the possibility of "smart" perceptual mechanisms'. In it, he described the idea of a smart device and used the planimeter as an example.I blogged about "smartness" and this device in one of my first posts on this blog because it's one of the standard examples in the field of how to get behaviour without computation; the other, of course, is the Watt's Steam Governor."
T. Van Gelder's paper:
"What might cognition be, if not computation?" can be found here:
http://people.bu.edu/pbokulic/class/vanGelder-reading.pdf
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