What if a loved one was a P-Zombie?
Scientists make an astonishing discovery: a certain microstructure in the brain, previously believed to be vestigial, is in fact responsible for consciousness. Moreover, this structure is absent in part of the population.
Behaviorally, its absence makes little difference, apart for a few subtle impairments. But internally, the consequences are profound: those who lack this structure have no internal lives at all. They are P-Zombies. There is striking scientific consensus to this fact, comparable to that for anthropogenic climate change.
A quick test is developed for the presence of this structure. You take it, and of course, you are positive. Unfortunately, your loved one is negative: They are a P Zombie.
How would you respond?
Would you lie to yourself, cling to the <1% of dissenting experts, and carry on the relationship as if they were not a P-Zombie?
Would you continue the relationship with full knowledge of their zombiehood, as ultimately it doesn't matter?
Would you abandon the relationship?
Would you continue the relationship, and treat this finding as permission to give full vent to your most sadistic, narcissistic fantasies? (Polls are anonymous)
Behaviorally, its absence makes little difference, apart for a few subtle impairments. But internally, the consequences are profound: those who lack this structure have no internal lives at all. They are P-Zombies. There is striking scientific consensus to this fact, comparable to that for anthropogenic climate change.
A quick test is developed for the presence of this structure. You take it, and of course, you are positive. Unfortunately, your loved one is negative: They are a P Zombie.
How would you respond?
Would you lie to yourself, cling to the <1% of dissenting experts, and carry on the relationship as if they were not a P-Zombie?
Would you continue the relationship with full knowledge of their zombiehood, as ultimately it doesn't matter?
Would you abandon the relationship?
Would you continue the relationship, and treat this finding as permission to give full vent to your most sadistic, narcissistic fantasies? (Polls are anonymous)
Comments (96)
If you discovered that your house, which up to now you had thought was made of wood and plaster, was actually made of brandy snaps and icing sugar, would you a) start eating it; b) move out; c) sell up; d) start thinking you were living in a children's story; e) go and sit in your chocolate cake sofa and watch a box set?
But if this is a bot reply would you a) bake a cake; b) make another reply that makes no sense and reveals the sloppy nature of your own thinking; c) start another thread asking philosophically uninteresting questions about a curious scenario?
Yet, p zombies are thoughtless, as are you.
Agree.
No, p-zombies are a thought experiment, not the kind of thing that keeps most people up at night.
If I had to put my "philosophy question" baldly, it would be: "are relationships, especially loving ones, contingent on the sentience of the other party?"
I know what it is.
Scientists have discovered that your loved one is genetically a cat, even though they are in every other way indistinguishable from another human. Do you a) have her put down; b) insist she eat from a dish on the floor and stay off the furniture; c) rethink the visit to the bird sanctuary; d)continue as normal and watch a box set?
Doesn't love require connection? How can you connect with someone you know isn't there?
Why the scare quotes?
We love people we do not have a "connection" with e.g. celebrities, authors, leaders, the dead, etc. We also love inanimate or abstract objects e.g. stuffed animals, our country / city, our sports team, vehicles, cultural objects, power, wealth, etc. Love is a highly emotional attachment to someone/thing with or without "connection".
"Sentience" may be epiphenomenal and serve no more of a function than color-sightedness.
If this practice of skepticism was followed through thoroughly and logically and truly, then you'd need to put every word in quotes whatever you write.
I think you'd do better by following the language convention according to the unwritten rules of the convention, instead of making maverick exceptions with select words, that are illogically unconnected to the context of your selection.
To wit: function is an epiphenomenon.
Wit is an epiphenomenon.
Be is an epiphenomenon.
I have more and more respect for you as the time goes by and the more I read of your posts, but you actually ANGER :death: :naughty: :rage: :fire: :vomit: me with your illogical writing style.
It does not work that way. A true sadist never finds true satisfaction, because he or she does not feel the pain of the victim. This is why sadism / masochism is oft a flip-flop switch. If s/he does not feel his/her victim's pain, then s/he does not feel s/he is inflicting pain. If the subject is a zombie, then the sadist is even farther removed from his/her goal, which is inflicting pain.
This is why trying to inflict pain in bartricks is a losing endeavour. S/he is truly a troll; a rock-eating, heave-ho mountain troll. She has no feelings, she is a badly written A/I program that went loose cannon. To shut her up is impossible by holding a mirror to her; to shut her up you need to not respond to her.
I would retain my relationships in the belief that greater minds will supersede these views with their own.
Try telling your partner you love them like you love your teddy bear or your sports team. These are not the same relationships, even if the word "love" can be used for all of them.
Quoting 180 Proof
This possibility is what the p zombie thought experiment suggests. I've never heard the suggestion that color sightedness serves no function.
That does not make it false.
I am stipulating that p zombies are real in this scenario, and you still won't accept it. This is lying to yourself, just as "dissenting" from overwhelming scientific consensus, unless you truly have the expertise to do so. You should have chosen 'a'.
Imagine a really good actor was paid without your knowledge to pretend to fall in love with you and start a romantic relationship. The relationship goes well, but then you discover the truth. Do you go on with the lie? I suspect not.
There have been con artists and sociopaths who have fooled people into relationships, but of course their behavior eventually outs the truth. The p-zombie wouldn't.
Other kinds of relationships my have obligations and rewards that don't require a belief in someone's experience of love. Maybe you just enjoy being around that person enough that it doesn't matter? I think it would at least hurt to find out some relationships had no reciprocal feelings. But a romantic one is most likely a deal breaker, unless you're hopelessly in love. Or you've been married long enough, lol.
That doesnt make it true, either. Your stipulation is just that, a stipulation, like they stipulated phlogiston or a pantheon of gods. A dissenting view isnt a lie. You ought to have had an option for dissenting from the prevailing view.
What difference? Or do you mean to say "no difference"?
I neither claimed nor implied that color-signedness "serves no function". Also, what you say about "love" is a non sequitur with respect to the question posed in the OP.
In my imaginary scenario I have the power to stipulate whatever I wish. But please, "dissent" away. Is that you I see with the tin foil hat and cardboard sign?
You do. But I do not have the power to make sense of the philosophical zombie stipulations. It seems to me that the concept relies on a confusion of awareness with identity. Take an alzheimer's sufferer for example who might be your spouse. They may have forgotten your relationship and treat you as a stranger, but you have not, and do not. The relationship has become one-sided in this sense of identity sharing, but the person still feels joy and suffers fear and pain, just as animals do. That basic awareness should be absent while memory and identification is fully functional simply makes no sense to me.
"Alexa, what would you like for supper?"
You mean qualia? Because "awareness" or "self reports" are not considered consciousness by philosophers like chalmers, since they can be defined in purely functional terms, and implemented in robots or code. It's the sensations of colors, pains, emotions that make up consciousness. And those aren't functional.
I can't make sense of quaila either. Never knowingly had one. Am I a zombie?
You've never experienced red or pain or love? Sorry to heart that!
You are familiar with the ambiguity of 'experience'? Notice the tenses - I have or have not had an experience. It seems odd to say I am having or not having an experience. The case of alzheimers is instructive. Awareness as I call it, qualia as you want to call it or 'experiences' but no past tense experience to speak of. Your question repeats the confusion, from my point of view, of narrative self, as an identification in thought, and awareness as visceral presence in the world.
You never imagine or dream red stuff? At any rate, I'm sure you've experienced pain.
Quoting unenlightened
You probably don't have experiences for some of the time you're asleep. I take it to mean it would seem odd to say you don't have experiences while you're aware of something. I agree that is odd for a human being, although there are some conditions like blind sightedness in which partial awareness is missing. But is it odd to say that my phone has no awareness of feeling cold when it tells me it's cold outside? I don't think so, because phones don't have sensations.
Ned Block wrote a paper on the harder problem of consciousness about the android Data, and how we would have difficulty deciding on what basis Data was conscious. Data, like my phone, could tell us that it is cold outside. But this doesn't mean Data would feel cold.
Honey traps!
Despite all the outwardly expressions of love, there is no love!
That said, speaking for myself, I would fall in love with a p-zombie despite the fact that in movies you shoot zombies in the head; even children kill zombies without raising eyebrows! :chin:
He's the real question. Would Jesus die for p-zombies?
[quote=Ms. Marple]Most interesting.[/quote]
If p-zombies exist, physicalism would be false. Quite a riddle, this!
God is to humans as humans are to stones! And yet...
Well, what if the only universe that existed was the p-zombie one? Then physicalism would have to be true! I swear that sometimes Dennett and friends come awful close to arguing for that universe.
Quoting Marchesk
How does your phone know what it tells you? I imagine it does not know at all whether it is telling you it is cold outside or that happiness is a warm gun... because phones don't have sensations. But humans do, and they have arranged sensors compute and relay a weather report to you via your phone. Again the confusion between thought as the manipulation of information and awareness as presence in the world.
That possibility is moot as even in a world where p-zombies are ~?, we would be mere stones, not even p-zombies, relative to divine consciousness.
Alright, so a p-zombie would be the functional equivalent of the first since it lacks awareness.
At least p-zombie Jesus wouldn't feel pain on the cross. In fact, there were Docetists who argued that Jesus didn't suffer.
Yes. A p-zombie would be like a phone, not like a partner.
Why? He wasn't a p-zombie!, Post-crucifixion, all bets are off. I recall reading someone calling Jesus a zombie! :snicker:
You did stipulate what you wished, and it ended up implying dissent is lies and consensus is truth. I would wear a tinfoil hat and cardboard sign if it meant I didnt have to agree with such absurdities.
Well, that's sad. I was writing about your writing style, and pointed out some fundamental mistakes in it.
But since you did not get it, there must be some fundamental problems in my writing style, too.
Not necessarily lies, I apologize. I left out other possibilities.
"Dissent" from universal expert consensus, i.e. climate deniers (are you one?), is either lies, or Dunning-Kreuger idiocy. Of course there is always the theoretical possibility of "Maverick Genius", but for our purposes we can ignore that one.
However, you have taken it one step further. I say, "Let X be true...", and you immediately raise your finger and say "I dissent! This contradicts my experiences and intuitions!". I don't know what to say, other than you must have been a joy to teach.
How else can I interpret
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
My OP was about "Loved Ones", so really it was your talk of loving teddy bears and sports teams that was a non sequitor.
It was a natural interpretation of your words.
You can never know that anyway. It's why revenge is such a drag.
People tend to treat others like zombies anyway: "You are whatever I say that you are. You feel whatever I say that you feel. Your intentions are whatever I say that your intentions are." People tend to treat others as if those others don't really exist, as if they are merely shells with no inner life, other than the one stipulated by other people.
For which you bear partial responsibility
There is no evidence or compelling argument for the existence of p-zombies in your scenario. Unfortunately the assertion that something is true is not enough to convince me or many others. If you had some evidence or reasonable arguments it would be a different story.
Computers have memory, and they identify themselves, but they have no awareness. Think of a p zombie as a perfect computer simulation of how a human behaves, without any of the internal stuff.
Are you a sociopath then?
Quoting baker
I do not. Is this projection?
Oh, I don't know. Maybe, but I was joking I think. I started off not joking thinking it would be fun, then realised it might not be fun at all, then further realised that what fun was to be had would likely be in the suffering of another, and then I decided to stop thinking about it.
A teddy bear is a "loved one" to a child (and some teens / adults). And try telling a group of "Cheese-heads" tailgating out at Lambeau Field with windchill @ -20° F that they doesn't really love the Green Bay Packers. :sweat:
Quoting hypericin
Exactly what evidence was collected to suggest this conclusion? Your implications are that the lack of this kind of consciousness would make no external difference, which leaves little to nothing for the scientists to measure.
I've stated elsewhere that I am one of those lacking in this "consciousnes" (yes, scary air quotes), since I've never been able to figure out what people have that a machine cannot. Sure, I see red, but only by processing the data coming from my red receptors, and any computer with a camera can do that.
1. To physicalists/nonphysicalists, to make your case prove p-zombies are impossible/possible (respectively).
2. The catch: P-zombies and normal people are indistinguishable.
Possible/impossible, to make the distinction, we must resort to a reductio ad absurdum i.e. the premises must entail a contradiction. Does this contradiction require an observation? If it does then such a proof is ~? (vide 2). In other words, the proof hasta be a priori (independent of experience). What's the nature of a priori proofs? Definitions? Play around with definitions? Pathetic!?
Even though behaviorally it makes no difference, subjects might report a difference who have this structure temporarily knocked out. Perhaps there is a lapse of phenomenal memory. This is not really the point of the OP however.
Quoting noAxioms
It's always weird to me when someone makes this claim. A digital camera sees red, and processes the data coming from it's red sensors. But it has no experience. A computer is no different.
Yes. There are two possibilities if such a simulation becomes possible; either they are zombies, or they have awareness. It seems to me at the moment, that although it is easy enough to mimic human behaviour in many ways, it is not really possible to mimic awareness without awareness, and that awareness is not an epiphenomenon of information processing. There is a stillness and emptiness to awareness quite different from the business of thought, that I don't think anyone has much considered trying to simulate in a computer, because it seems to have no function. Perhaps that is the secret that it has no function, but is just an epiphenomenon, but I think it has a vital function, which is to impart freedom. Zombies have no freedom.
This is self contradictory. Are you making this up or did the scientists in question actually say this? Did they actually say this structure is responsible for the kind of consciousness that the dualists are talking about?
If the subjects reported noticing a difference, then there's a behavioral difference. If it rendered them 'thoughtless' (your words from your 3rd post), they'd not be able to respond at all.
If it rendered them not sentient, they'd not be able to hear the question asked of them. Even a simple mechanical device is sentient since it can perceive its environment. But you're probably using a loaded definition of sentience.
If it disabled one's entire 'inner experience', you'd think the subject would notice the sudden total lack of experience.
All I see from your reply above (I didn't see any quotes from the article) is that the subject noticed the difference, which indicates that the structure is not entirely vestigial. That's all. Your description of having it disabled does not match that of a subject who suddenly is reft of experience and feelings.
What is phenomenal memory? Memory of a phenomenon? All memory is phenomenal by that definition, except I suppose memory of conclusions reached by thought, such Fermat working out his last theorem.
Were the subjects asked about memory of past experiences? I still have zero quotes from them.
You suggest that some people are zombies, but balk when I suggest I'm probably one of them since I don't see the problem that others do so clearly. Ah, but I'm behaving differently, and true zombies apparently must lie about this sort of thing. I don't do that, so somebody must be wrong.
It does not, no more than does an eyeball. A human with an eye sees red. A device with a camera sees red if it in any way reacts to the data instead of just storing it like a camera does. OK, a smart camera with red-eye editing sees red. I'll buy that.
By what definition? It's not human, sure, and that's the usual definition. You have a better one that doesn't so much beg your conclusion?
Quoting hypericinOf course? What if it isn't?
The Nazi's had similar tests, used to justify treating a segment of the population like cattle. The MAGA crowd would love this.
Interesting question.
As humans we want for our love to be returned. I imagine that it would completely ruin the relationship.
You completely misunderstood, this is all just background I made up for my hypothetical question. No scientists in question, no such structure has been discovered.
Quoting noAxioms
In reality I would be very surprised if zombies existed. I think it is much more likely that there is a cognitive difference which makes this concept more difficult for some people.
Quoting noAxioms
A digital camera doesn't just store it, there are a multitude of processes which must occur before the light can be stored digitally. Correcting for red eye is just another transformation.
Quoting noAxioms
That is not the usual definition. The usual is something more like "private internal perception". A camera or a computer can respond behaviorally to it's red sensors in essentially the same way you can to yours. But (we presume) only you have an accompanying subjective experience of red.
Try to describe what it is like to experience red to a blind person. You can use adjectives like "warm", "excitable", etc, but that is about as far as you can go. The internal experience is completely private, and completely incommunicable.
If indeed you lack this, this must sound like gibberish.
Quoting noAxioms
People cite this "no behavioral difference" as if it were some kind of iron law of p zombies, instead of a completely arbitrary stipulation in Chalmers's own thought experiment. In reality, if p zombies did exist, you would expect a behavioral difference of some sort, even if it were the kind of impairment that would only reveal itself in testing.
I suppose you can thus make up any answer you like.
I've had people ask what would happen if the sun suddenly wasn't there, and how long it would take for the Earth's orbit to change. The question has no answer since the posited scenario isn't possible. In a different universe with different rules, sure, you can ask such a question.
I'd be very surprised if somebody wasn't one, so go figure.
I don't see the difference. Sorry, I just don't. I notice you didn't hazzard a line between what likely has it (a dog? frog? jellyfish? non-gloppy-interior alien?). How could such a thing evolve? At some point a non-dualistic parent needs to breed a dualistic offspring, totally discarding all the beneficial functionality of the parents, offloading the task to this presumably more capable external entity. It makes no sense outside of religious creationism, a total denial of science.
The self-contained AI robot has all of it. It's internal perception. Where else is it going to go on? It is first person. Again, nothing else is doing the perception for it.
On the other hand, the perception proposed by the woo folks is
1) external: a sort of remote control of an avatar by the external entity
2) second person, since the avatar is not doing its own perception, sort of like a go-pro on a remote-controlled drone transmitting the images to the controller, and
3) not free willed since unlike the AI robot, the avatar cannot make any of its own choices. That doesn't sound like something making the physical entity more fit.
Sorry for the rant.
ALso how could you prove a lack of an internal life? You can't really measure that.
Quoting hypericin
I am truly, genuinely curious as to what is going on here. Is there a conceptual difference, so that we are talking past each other? Some kind of difference in cognitive style? Do you enjoy an intuitive clarity about consciousness most of us lack? Are you a p zombie?
Let's proceed in the spirit of inquiry, rather than rancorous debate.
A few questions:
Are you able to visualize? Can you create a picture of something, say a beach, on command in your head? Some people lack this ability entirely. I can do it, but the quality is poor.
Can you imagine sounds? I can do this quite well, with great clarity.
Can you imagine touch and other body sensations? I can do this, but here the imagination is easily confused with the real thing, this had lead to very serious psychosomatic problems when I was younger.
What about taste and smell? I actually cannot imagine these, at all.
How do you think? I think primarily by talking to myself. I "hear" my voice in constant dialogue with myself. This dialogue is supplemented with flickery images of poor quality, which are nonetheless a huge help. I was surprised to learn that this is not at all universal. Some people think exclusively with speech or images, some with emotions, some apparently do not use sensory media at all, and think in pure concepts. I think there are more ways I cannot remember.
Even then it doesn't matter either way.
If your definition involves being distinct from somebody who has a fuller experience that I don't, then probably not. My only argument for it is that I don't see any hard problem, and others seem to see one so clearly. That's evidence of a distinction, not just a different opinion.
Mind you (pun intended), I don't take the intuitive view on almost anything. Our deepest instinctual beliefs are a load of lies, but lies that serve a purpose. I don't think time is something that flows despite all my everyday actions being based on such an assumption. My preferred quantum interpretation is utterly incompatible with a classical human identity. I know my physics well enough to use it to pick a consistent philosophy. I started with the physics and worked to a consistent conclusion, not start with a conclusion and dismiss any physics that gets in the way.
You should pick something that a computer can't do. Can you think of one? These questions seem irrelevant.
None of my imaginings are particularly good enough to mistake from external input, but I occasionally take a while to realize some dream events did not occur. This is because they've already been filed in memory, not because my dreams are particularly real at the time. Most dreams are not thus filed since long term memory is for the most part disabled except in fairly shallow sleep.
I do best literally talking out loud to myself, which is why I work out hard problems while walking/biking away from others. As a kid I would shoot baskets for hours, talking about anything except the activity itself. I think best when I move.
The voices in my head are often of others, sometimes for a whole day. Craig Furguson is a fave.
I suspect my youngest son thinks sans language. Images mostly. I have a hard time recalling things before the age of three because those memories are stored in a different non-verbal language than the ones since.
I suspect the computer would be more consistent than an aging person, but perhaps it might think in new ways as it learns them just like we do.
To honestly answer yes, it seems to me that one would have to examine one's interiority and experience and find nothing there. Not the nothing that one finds in one's empty pocket, but the nothing one finds in not having pockets at all. If the answer 'yes' comes to mind, it must, in all honesty, be rejected.
This description is not that far removed from how enactivist cognitive science understands consciousness.
That is, they dispense with the internal-external, subjective-objective divide and argue that awareness is embodied , which means that it is an interaction , either with other persons or other aspects of ones environment, which can include ones bodily( affective) environment.
In this view consciousness is not some mysterious inner substance or module, it is an elaboration of organizational and functional characteristics of all living systems.
Look at the way people usually talk. They typically use you-language.
I don't see how dreams fit with this approach. Your body is normally paralyzed during dreams, and your dream content is usually imaginary. You're not typically perceiving the world. How is that not internal to the brain? There's quite a lot to consciousness which is more than just perceiving or interacting with the world. Like imagination, memory and inner dialog. Even perception carries some anticipation of what one is going to perceive. And when we interact with others, we do a sort of simulation or estimation of their internal states. We guess at what they're thinking and feeling.
The problem any sort of behaviorism has had is that it simply can't capture everything that goes on inside people's heads. That's why there's no accurate lie detector test, and no mind reading device. Someone's behavior and their language clues us in, but it doesn't tell the full story.
What is a p-zombie?
Double trouble! Both are huge topics, with lotsa unexplored territory, and information on them is exasperatingly sketchy. What could go wrong, will in such circumstances! Bonam fortunam brave explorers, you'll need it!
This path ends in the absurdity of the conscious paramecium or Roomba, and furthermore cannot account for the fact that our own conscious awareness is just the tip of the iceberg of unconscious processes.
The question is whether we should
look at such experiences as imagination
and dreaming as merely a re-arrangement of what was already there, the accessing of inert memories in place of contact with fresh, external novelty. Why not look at such experiences as forms of self-transformation? To do this would be to re-think the meaning of internal vs external.
As far as simulating others states of mind, simulation theory is o w of three competing f approaches in cognitive science, along with theory theory and interaction theory. Theory theory says that when we try to understand others we consult an internal script.
Theory theory (TT) and simulation theory (ST), the standard and dominant approaches to social cognition, share the important supposition that when we attempt to understand the actions of others, we do so by making sense of them in terms of their mental processes to which we have no direct access. That is, we attempt to mind read their beliefs, desires, and intentions, and such mind reading or mentalizing is our primary and pervasive way of understanding their behavior. Furthermore, both TT and ST characterize social cognition as a process of explaining or predicting what another person has done or will do. TT claims that we explain another person's behavior by appealing to an either innate or acquired theory of how people behave in general; a theory that is framed in terms of mental states (e.g., beliefs and desires) causing or motivating behavior. ST claims that we have no need for a theory like this, because we have a model, namely, our own mind, that we can use to simulate the other person's mental states. We model others' beliefs and desires as if we were in their situation.
In most intersubjective situations, that is, in situations of social interaction, we have a direct perceptual understanding of another person's intentions because their intentions are explicitly expressed in their embodied actions and their expressive behaviors. This understanding does not require us to postulate or infer a belief or a desire hidden away in the other person's mind.(Shaun Gallagher)
So how does this account for lying and manipulation? Or someone putting on a front to appear acceptable? How about all the times we wonder to ourselves what someone is really feeling or whether they're telling us the truth? If beliefs and desires are never hidden away in people's minds, then how come we have no accurate way to always tell when someone is lying or what they're feeling?
Regardless of how you look at it, you're still experience an environment that is not in the external world and is not publically available to others. You may not wish to call it subjective or internal, but it sure has the same hallmarks of being subjective/internal.
Think of a number, any number. Where does that thought exist if not in the brain? How would anyone know what number you thought of without telling us?
Good questions. I agree that the way the interactionist position is articulated here gives the impression that we simply read off others intentions and thoughts from
their observable behavior. My reading of it is that cognitive processes do not consist of internal representations of an external world. Rather than matching inner with outer, the two are blended in each perception. In other words, while i always bring a history of expectations to my interpretation of a perceptual or conceptual events, those expectations interact with something novel in the event, such that the expectations themselves are adjusted to accommodate the object in very act of perceiving. Ones cognitive system is engaged in a holistic way with the world, and changes itself as a whole( including its stored memories) with every experience. This is true even in dreaming and imagination. How else could solitary thought lead to legitimately new insight? Certainly not from a recycling or re-combination of stored representations.
When we attempt to understand others , we neither consult an inner canned script , nor veridically read off their inner thoughts from their behavior. Instead , our expectations are exposed to what we observe in interaction with others, and as a result we directly perceive ( without simulation) a version of the others intentions , which subsequent experience with the other may validate or invalidate.
How does this account for autism, or "mind-blindness"? Or how humans tend to anthropomorphize the world around us? How we find cartoon characters, puppets and animals to have beliefs and desires like us? Or the belief that natures if full of spirts and gods?
Quoting Marchesk
It is true that whether I watch another dreaming , or listen to them speak , I cannot say that I can accurately anticipate how they will behave next. If I put to the test my expectations concerning what they are dreaming about or their motives and intentions in speaking to me I will sometimes be validated and sometimes not. This tells me that the other person changing in ways to that go beyond my ability to construe in tightly predictive terms. But does this make their functioning private?
If I am attempting to understand an ecosystem are the features of this system that I fail to model well private?
What makes something private? If we believe that brains make use of stored representations it would seem that we could call such entities private. They are protected from direct expose to an outside world as well as from other representations. But embodied enactivist accounts of cognition see the brain as part of an ecosystem which includes the body and the world. And even when world seems to be minimally involved in cognitive
activity ( deep thought) , we are still dealing with a total system that is in the business of making changes in itself.
That means that even my own thinking isnt strictly private , given that my mind is subtly reinventing itself and its past every moment of its functioning. It is already out in the world every moment , coming back to itself
from an outside.
A lot of work has been done on autism within the enactivist community.
Take a look at these articles:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3607806/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236792668_Understanding_Interpersonal_Problems_in_Autism_Interaction_Theory_as_An_Alternative_to_Theory_of_Mind
ABSTRACT: I argue that theory theory approaches to autism offer a wholly inadequate explanation of au- tistic symptoms because they offer a wholly inade- quate account of the non-autistic understanding of others. As an alternative I outline interaction theory, which incorporates evidence from both developmen- tal and phenomenological studies to show that hu- mans are endowed with important capacities for in- tersubjective understanding from birth or early infancy. As part of a neurophenomenological analysis of au- tism, interaction theory offers an account of interper- sonal problems that is fully consistent with the variety of social and nonsocial symptoms found in autism.
Im not at all denying that humans understand the world by reference to a system of constructs , channels
of meaning by which we interpret, organize and anticipate events. What I am arguing against is the idea any element of this system is unchanged by moment to moment events. The whole system is in motion at all times like an interwoven tapestry.
That's all true and I'm not arguing for radical privacy such that's in principle impossible to figure out what someone is thinking or dreaming. But practically speaking, we can't tell what someone is dreaming unless they tell us. We sometimes know what they're thinking from context, but sometimes we have no clue.
So the subjective/objective split can't be absolute. It's true we're part of the world. But to deny there is a subjective/objective split seems to me to go too far in the other direction. I'm currently listening a Sean Carrol/Mindscape podcast where's he's discussing a book on animal sensation with the author, and there are many examples of how animal senses differ enough from ours such that it's difficult to imagine what sort of experience those animals are having.
This is the part of your account I find objectionable. We cannot directly perceive someone else's internal state. There is a layer of indirection between the other's state and our perceptions.
Facial expressions are not emotions, they are configurations of facial muscles. They are alsosymbols that point to emotions. A sneer is a symbol which has an emotive meaning, and is the English symbol "contempt" in another medium.
We can only "read" another's expressions and body language and spoken language, it is all reading. The fact that it seems immediate does not negate that it is an interpretive act. This interpretive facility must exist for it's failure as Autism to also exist.
Yes , it is both immediate and interpretive, as is all perception. What I directly perceive of your feelings and intentions is a version of them, just as you who are experiencing them are also interpreting them
for yourself , and as a result you may also not recognize or understand them, and as they change you will need to reinterpret them. If I experienced your states exactly as you do we would be the same person. My point was that this interpretive act is not the consulting of an inner script.
But this is the opposite process. My emotions are immediate to me, what you call interpreting is encoding them symbolically into language. This encoding is a necessary step to use the emotion in symbolic thought. If I can't encode then I can't think about them. In the same way, without my conscious intervention my body encodes my emotions into the symbology of expression and body language.
Whereas you immediately perceive only symbols of my inner state: my face, body, and words.
You see the symbols of my emotions, I encode my emotions into symbols.
Quoting hypericin
Youre using a cognitive science vocabulary that differs somewhat from the psychological approaches to affectivity that I identify with. Your model tends to rely on a computer metaphor: We input a stimulus, encode it symbolically and process and store it. Emotions are meanings that attach to and color cognitions.
The enactive approaches I follow see affectivity as that aspect of sense-making that deals with the relative fit between events and my expectations of them. They are forms of situational assessment. All of my experiences have this affective aspect to them, since all perception is evaluative. This is the basis of language as well. Language isnt merely the encoding of meanings by linking them to arbitrary symbols. Language doesnt passively refer, it actively construes. Feeling and perception is already proto-language in that it formulates fresh meaning.
When we encode emotions , we articulate them expressively. The expression doesnt just convey something already formed , it also changes what it invokes by giving it expression. What I am doing when I see your affective expression isnt simply reading a code. I am inventing a construction that comes neither from me nor from your behavior , but from a mesh between the two. This mesh is what I immediately construe , just as your feelings and heir elaboration are what you immediately construct from your situation.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/andy-warhol-films-1387729
Or for a DIY version, take a long look in the mirror, and see if you can work out how you are feeling from the expression on your face.
[quote=Pretty Vacant - Sex Pistols]There's no point in asking
You'll get no reply
Oh just remember I don't decide
I got no reason it's all too much
You'll always find us
Out to lunch
Oh we're so pretty
Oh so pretty
We're vacant
Oh we're so pretty
Oh so pretty
Vacant.
and we don't care.[/quote]
There's always an extravagance to zombies, don't you think? They always over-act.
Marry me! :heart: