Other Titles > Neuropath
Countering the Argument with Thorsten
Thorsten:
--- Quote ---We're primarily invoking language games, which I'd like to avoid as much as possible but you tend to hit on those meriting distinction.
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No, I don't want to do that at all.
I think the issue is simpler and more fundamental. You have (presumably) been socialized with science, and learned to apply and accept scientific reasoning.
Imagine for a moment you meet someone from a hunter-gatherer culture and talk to him about your mode of truth-finding. When you start talking about statistical analysis, he will tell you something like 'Why should it matter for me if something happens for these other people I don't even know?' If you talk about brain scans, he will tell you 'Why do you trust this machine more than your own senses?' He will look at you strangely and ask 'Can't you feel the spirits of nature?' In short, he comes from a completely different system of thought.
You, being born into science and reasoning from within science, will find it obvious that he goes astray. But he, being born into a spirit-world, will find you equally mentally deficient and regard your inability to feel the spirits as some kind of insanity. For him, science makes no sense whatsoever, he will regard it as some dysfunction of the mind.
Science as seen from within science is self-justifying - but that's just circular reasoning, albeit a bit hard to spot. So is animism from within animism. What you really need to do in order to justify science is to step out of it, try seeing the world from different perspectives, understand how it is conceptualized from different perspectives, and then see where science wins out.
(As a side note, Moenghus the elder is a fictional example of that trap of never leaving one's own perspective. He is in essence a scientist (rational reasoner), finds his own set of rational beliefs quite justified from within his perspective of science, but then completely misses out on the fact that the Gods of Earwa appear to be completely real rather than a figment of people's imagination and that he will be damned as a result. Kellhus, in contrast, does leave his own perspective (or probably rather is pushed beyond it by the circumfixion).)
--- Quote ---What happens in cases of understanding or, even, imagination? Neural accounts seem to deal with embodied cognition, embodied simulation, or some account of neurons.
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Well, I was sort of using 'making sense' in reference to 'truth' - I readily agree that there is the additional complication that the feeling of 'making sense' as experienced by a mind may or may not correlate with any truth.
--- Quote ---What about language? In the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis (which was primarily asserted by a student of Wharf's), it's suggested that we can't account for the existence of phenomenon for which we do not experience or interact with linguistically (describing) in some way.
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I don't buy Sapir-Whorf. I can talk with colleagues all over the world (who come from completely different cultural context) just fine about Quantum Field Theory (which can't really be put in words) and all of this should not work. Poking holes into Sapir-Whorf is not really difficult.
--- Quote ---How about the ways in which language warp our very perception of our environments (seeing more colours or feeling more or less emotions in relation to words in your language, cognition of time and space, or an example Wilshire brought up in chat the other day - which I will find as I'm starting to remember - about language and orientation,
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There are lots of urban legends floating around, for instance you may have heard of the alleged timelessness of the Hopi language or the way the Piraha language contradicts universal grammar. I have bothered to read up in detail several of these cases, and it always boiled down to bad research. I am not aware of good evidence that languages would really warp the perception of the physical environment in a significant way. The social environment is a different beast.
--- Quote ---Regardless, your disdain for many of these results seems to come down to inapplicable discussion on the part of the authors
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Yes, I think that's what I said previously - I don't doubt that if one does these things, one gets the results quoted, I just doubt that the interpretation attached to them is correct.
--- Quote ---Illusory correlation is almost the quintessential human problem, if we are to be understood in terms of pattern-recognizing machines - we see correlation where there is in fact none.
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That's easy to say - how do you know where there is in fact none? How many correlations do you miss which are in fact there? All you have is a discrepancy between two systems of reasoning where one claims a correlation and the other doesn't. For you, it seem obvious that one of these systems (science) must be correct for the problem at hand, but I don't see this as obvious at all.
Science isn't a fact-producing machinery. There are very, very few scientific results which have survived even 100 years without revision. It used to be 'fact' that the influence of the environment can't possibly inherited by the offspring. Well, now there's epigenetics - turns out that it can after all. It used to be 'fact' that there's an ether in which light propagates. Now we have Quantum Electrodynamics for the job.
Science is a description and predictive-model producing machinery - it does deal with better descriptions and more predictive models, but it doesn't ever deal with facts - assuming something fact may be a pretty dangerous error for a scientist because it means you will never be ready to revise it.
Let me ask a very simple question - can you name anything which you would consider 'real' and compare it with a different thing which you would call 'illusion'? So maybe we can get the definitions from there.
What Came Before:
I have a feeling we're coming to limits of mutually beneficial communication.
--- Quote from: Thorsten on May 18, 2013, 02:55:05 pm ---You, being born into science and reasoning from within science, will find it obvious that he goes astray. But he, being born into a spirit-world, will find you equally mentally deficient and regard your inability to feel the spirits as some kind of insanity. For him, science makes no sense whatsoever, he will regard it as some dysfunction of the mind.
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Science is a tool, right? I don't ultimately ascribe to any tool, for any reason, really. But sooner or later, s/he and I are going to be ignorant of something - perhaps, we'll have the luxury of understanding whether that something coherently satisfies our worldview or it is something we cannot digest/interpret. It seems that worldviews (synonymously languages, perhaps) expressed in smaller, ecological niches, maybe where they've enjoyed a longer pedigree of living, understand those specific environments with a greater degree of accuracy than I do with "science!" but other worldview's (functional explanation for environmental phenomenon?) might not tolerate such digression as "I with science" am able to.
Either way, it misses the point. In both cases, the brain intakes sensory information, that is beyond the sufficient experiences of those sensation - "s/he and I" get enough information to do... A Bestiary of Consciousnesses?... what exactly? Who knows.
--- Quote from: Thorsten on May 18, 2013, 02:55:05 pm ---Science as seen from within science is self-justifying - but that's just circular reasoning, albeit a bit hard to spot. So is animism from within animism. What you really need to do in order to justify science is to step out of it, try seeing the world from different perspectives, understand how it is conceptualized from different perspectives, and then see where science wins out.
--- End quote ---
I never invoked "science!"? I offered examples (albeit, without retrieving specific studies and defending those results, in specific) yet you summarily dismissed by suggesting that because you can point out fallacious results in the studies you've been exposed to, and, perhaps, therefore in any other you may encounter.
I attempted a half-assed expression of "science!'s" justification, as concerned by psychology - mathematics (usually, through statistical description) and language (valid linguistic statements) - or neuroscience - imaging studies.
--- Quote from: Thorsten on May 18, 2013, 02:55:05 pm ---(As a side note, Moenghus the elder is a fictional example of that trap of never leaving one's own perspective. He is in essence a scientist (rational reasoner), finds his own set of rational beliefs quite justified from within his perspective of science, but then completely misses out on the fact that the Gods of Earwa appear to be completely real rather than a figment of people's imagination and that he will be damned as a result. Kellhus, in contrast, does leave his own perspective (or probably rather is pushed beyond it by the circumfixion).)
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Segue noted: In one of the rare instances that Moenghus speaks to affirm knowing more because he is Cishaurim, he readily admits to experiencing their visual revelations, yet that "what lies Outside, Kellhus, is no more than a fractured and distroed reflection of what lies within" (TTT, p460).
I don't think this helps our understanding of BBH.
--- Quote from: Thorsten on May 18, 2013, 02:55:05 pm ---Well, I was sort of using 'making sense' in reference to 'truth' - I readily agree that there is the additional complication that the feeling of 'making sense' as experienced by a mind may or may not correlate with any truth.
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The philosophic pressure remains your own, Thorsten. I've done what little I could to define "Truth," for our discussion. I asked you before to hazard a distinction when mine felt incomplete and I express that request again.
--- Quote ---I don't buy Sapir-Whorf. I can talk with colleagues all over the world (who come from completely different cultural context) just fine about Quantum Field Theory (which can't really be put in words) and all of this should not work. Poking holes into Sapir-Whorf is not really difficult.
--- End quote ---
Math could be it's own language (Count Alfred Korzybski, Dr. Richard Bandler, etc)?
--- Quote from: Thorsten on May 18, 2013, 02:55:05 pm ---There are lots of urban legends floating around, for instance you may have heard of the alleged timelessness of the Hopi language or the way the Piraha language contradicts universal grammar. I have bothered to read up in detail several of these cases, and it always boiled down to bad research. I am not aware of good evidence that languages would really warp the perception of the physical environment in a significant way. The social environment is a different beast.
--- End quote ---
I could set your sights on decently readable books and research but I've been decried for dropping titles.
I'm here to tease from your rebuttal of the Argument (and your participation in our discussion), a finer, more comprehensible BBH. Nothing more, nothing less.
--- Quote from: Thorsten on May 18, 2013, 02:55:05 pm ---That's easy to say - how do you know where there is in fact none? How many correlations do you miss which are in fact there? All you have is a discrepancy between two systems of reasoning where one claims a correlation and the other doesn't. For you, it seem obvious that one of these systems (science) must be correct for the problem at hand, but I don't see this as obvious at all.
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Again, not quite sure where you have the idea that I'm thumping "science!". I've offered averages (studies) concerning human behavior in an average of cases and data concerning only a few humans, in regards to neurological dysfunction or degeneration - we've both conceded the fallibility and generalities of statistical description: I wouldn't be immediately talented trying my hand at computation neuroscience, for instance, so I can't offer any better evidence for you.
--- Quote from: Thorsten on May 18, 2013, 02:55:05 pm ---Let me ask a very simple question - can you name anything which you would consider 'real' and compare it with a different thing which you would call 'illusion'? So maybe we can get the definitions from there.
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This an interesting crux because I have basically no interest in nor is it even a necessity that I justify these terms for the sake of our discussion. And it would be a disservice to it, that you tease statements out of my offering an explanation of those distinctions. If you have readily available definitions, by all means, share them.
However, attempting a BBH worldview (which I am certainly not meditatively inclined or interested in attempting to embody):
Let's start from illusion because I'm never sure that real applies.
We experience illusory correlation, indiscriminately, insofar as we are either/both ignorant of their occurrence or where the hard wall of experience doesn't immediately contradict our, otherwise simple, cognitive dissonance.
However, in terms of how our languages, our philosophies, even math to an extent, describe "reality as it exists, necessarily consequent of us, or without us antecedent as it is," we might say those descriptions (which we experience more or less immediately visceral than other articulate abstractions) are an illusion, a misconception, because we don't know what kind of information BB interacts with before our conscious, sufficient, experience. Even in cases of expertise, of conscious learning and practice, individuals render behaviors and their cognitive tools, unconscious, implicit, and part of a system that functions beyond our ability to experience it.
That information could well be redundant - but it might well as shatter the box as we push its thresholds as it may well push the boundaries of scientific falsification.
I apologize again for the instances of perceptible "science!" thumping. It is simply one of likely many possible methodologies, science isn't it's own thing, it's applicable to all these different disciplines, all these different, converging arenas of description, neh?
Again, not sure what's happened in the communicative breakdown here... I appreciate the time you've spent dialoging and look forward to other moments of understanding and clarity?
Callan S.:
It's weird how when science does something like drop a watermelon and a marble in order to show they both fall at the same speed, were all 'okay, we'll just accept that'. But somewhat like they say, the more complicated science gets, the more it seems just another form of magic. And then the questions become 'Why does your magic trump my magic?'
Thorsten:
--- Quote ---I have a feeling we're coming to limits of mutually beneficial communication.
--- End quote ---
Well, we do seem to get lost somewhere. Admittedly I have a hard time understanding what your position actually is, even re-reading your words I still get contradictory information. In return, I feel quite misunderstood.
--- Quote ---I never invoked "science!"?
--- End quote ---
But Neil (and hence Bakker) does - that's what all this is about, right?
--- Quote ---I offered examples (albeit, without retrieving specific studies and defending those results, in specific) yet you summarily dismissed by suggesting that because you can point out fallacious results in the studies you've been exposed to, and, perhaps, therefore in any other you may encounter.
--- End quote ---
I can't recall you posting any specific studies as example here. I gave four examples of studies I dismissed, citing my reason for doing so. You offered interpreted results without telling me how the underlying studies were done, thus denying me any possibility to make up my mind about the study. I apologize, but I don't take such interpretations on faith - I want to be able to judge the full methodology. I will certainly dismiss any other study with similar reasoning errors which I may encounter. I would be happy to discuss with you about any concrete example rather than be forced to make blanket statements.
It occurred to me in the course of the weekend that Akka in the 'White Luck Warrior' actually spells out what is done in Neuropath.
Neil in essence pulls off a conjuring trick. What he can demonstrate in the end is that you can artificially induce alternate states of consciousness. People licking toads, eating mushrooms and inhaling holy smoke have known this for millenia though. If Neil would be a shaman, claiming that alternate states of consciousness are proof of the gods, then everyone would dismiss his results out of hand. But he's a scientist.
By framing all this in science and writing to readers which are socialized within science, Bakker manages something remarkable. By appealing to prior knowledge of the readers, he creates a frame of established fact and illuminates everything in knowledge - and this in turn hides the boundaries of said knowledge and leads to the absence of questions.
In particular, the whole setup distracts from the fact that science has boundaries. For instance, questions like 'Free will' or 'The supernatural' are quite outside of science for the simple reason that it's not possible to formulate a testable hypothesis to prove or disprove the notions. There are no concepts to formulate these properly (I invite you to try if you think differently). It also hides the fact that science is justified from somewhere.
And since the reader has the notion that he knows so much, he fails to realize his ignorance and fails to ask further. Like 'What is actually going on here?'
Suppose for a moment Neil would investigate something we do know properly. Say real-time 3d rendering (because it's a hobby of mine). What we see is the output - we see for instance rainbow reflections on light passing through dew drops rendered on-screen, which prompts the question 'How does this work?'
Now here's Neil investigating 3d rendering. He shows you an IR image of the mainboard where the graphics card is lit up brightly when the rendering runs 'Look, we can identify the centers where it is done!' He asks you to look at the screen, then says: 'Look what I can do!' and waves a magnet in front of the screen - and because it is an old cathode ray screen, the rendered image swirls with the magnet. 'Look what I can do!' - and pulls the red color channel cable from the monitor - and as a result, the image gets a strange yellow-green hue. 'Look what I can do' - and he puts some current to the graphics chip, short-circuiting parts of the fragment-rendering pipeline, and as a result rainbow-colored static fluctuates across the screen. 'I can make you see all these things. It's all the hardware, see!'
But as anyone doing 3d rendering knows, he would completely miss the point. The question is after the algorithm - we're asking the few hundred lines which describe how light interacts with a dew drop in terms of vertices, light vectors, textures, specular highlights and so on. The algorithm is high-level information, it works independent of the realization on GLSL or direct-X, or on an Intel, NVIDIA or ATI chipset. The algorithm is not dependent on a particular low-level realization on a particular graphics card, and you have about zero chance of reverse-engineering from Neil's techniques. The best chance to re-engineer it is to look at the output and try to understand it on the high conceptual level.
Which is to say, I think Neil obtains information, but the information he obtains is completely disconnected from the question he proposes to address. And this would be completely obvious if he wouldn't be a scientist but a shaman so that the applicability boundaries of what he was doing wouldn't be hidden so well.
Which is also to say, I don't think neuroscience claims to 'illusionary I' or 'no free will' will change society in any way. If anything, they will discredit neuroscience, or even worse science in general. People ascribe a high degree of credibilty to science, but not to the point that they'd accept something which contradicts their good and direct experience.
--- Quote ---It's weird how when science does something like drop a watermelon and a marble in order to show they both fall at the same speed, were all 'okay, we'll just accept that'. But somewhat like they say, the more complicated science gets, the more it seems just another form of magic. And then the questions become 'Why does your magic trump my magic?'
--- End quote ---
No, that's not so weird if you accept science as a tool.
An ax is a very good tool if you want to cut branches from a trunk. So you might think to apply it further. It still works decently to cut down a small tree. So you might apply it further. It barely works to cut down a large tree. It certainly doesn't work well enough to cut down a whole forest - so at some place, you take a chainsaw or even a harvester vehicle.
But of course, taking the harvester to cut branches from a single tree is extremely cumbersome.
So science is a very good tool (the best, I think) to get your mind around falling watermelons - but as you expand its region of application, it doesn't necessarily stay a good tool (although this is usually assumed).
Consider for instance statistical analysis. If you look into what it actually is, it is a tool to manage your lack of knowledge (if in a medical study the result is that a drug helped 55% of the probands this is equivalent of saying that the researchers have no idea of the causal relationship between the drug and the body, because otherwise they would know in each case - when I drop water melons, I don't answer in 55% of melons will do that, I give you a number when it will reach the ground). So statistics is only useful if you have a controlled lack of knowledge (i.e. an idea of what you do not know) - if you don't, you can still go through all the same motions and get answers, but your results cease to mean anything (apart from 'I don't know'). For instance, it is statistically completely true that a bit less than 50% of all parents who plan on having children will get pregnant. Of course, if you happen to be a man, the implication is not that you should have a fair chance of getting pregnant... so the 50% are mathematically true, but completely miss the point. In this case you can spot it easily, but there are way more subtle cases. And the formalism simply doesn't tell you when it becomes meaningless - so there's no warning from inside statistics.
So if you frame it like 'Why do you think your tool is better for the purpose than my tool?', it is no longer such a mystery, it becomes a valid question.
Callan S.:
I think your treating non rigorous/half assed applications of the tool as a fair representation of the tool.
If you don't think analysis could be conducted any more rigorously than what you know of, okay.
But if you do think it could be conducted more rigorously...why attribute the half assed effort as being science?
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