The problem for me is that the model is very bad at explaining the constraints -especially intersubjective constraints - on how the pathe can form, of itself, worlds and processes. — csalisbury
My approach has beena faux-naif attempt to ask questions that draw out these limitations. And the response is generally a host of qualifications that actually contradict this model. But when I try to highlight that this is happening you assume I must not understand your basic framework and reiterate it using exactly the same language your qualifications would forbid. — csalisbury
To take just one example: you stated admantly that pathe do *not* generate objects. & now, in your language, both identity and the world 'grow out' out of the pathe. — csalisbury
I agree. I also think it's good to hypothesize and say 'maybe it's like this' and then see how well the hypothesis stands up to scrutiny. But I sometimes feel like you take the more severe approach of suggesting not only that you don't know, but that we can't, in principle know - and that it any case it doesn't matter.I don't think it's a shortcoming of an account to say 'I don't know how it works' if that is the correct thing to say. The purpose of good epistemology is not to make up stories about what we know, but to give an accurate account of what and how we know [...] But that doesn't mean we just don't talk about it. It's important to enrich and flesh out these new metaphors. — tgw
I suppose that's fair. I thought it would be better to try to work things out according to the immanent logic of your account, because you tend to be immediately dismissive of anything else.Well if your questions are allowed to be naif why can't my answers be? I can only give back what I get. If you have things you really want to ask, really ask them then. — tgw
no no no, of course the picture makes it intelligible. It was intelligible before the picture. What I'm objecting to is what appears to me a reluctance to apply your model to concrete examples in good faith by arbitrarily precluding certain language and metaphors that you yourself have recourse to.Does the picture not make that intelligible?
But I sometimes feel like you take the more severe approach of suggesting not only that you don't know, but that we can't, in principle know - and that it any case it doesn't matter. — csalisbury
I suppose that's fair. I thought it would be better to try to work things out according to the immanent logic of your account, because you tend to be immediately dismissive of anything else. — csalisbury
It was intelligible before the picture. What I'm objecting to is what appears to me a reluctance to apply your model to concrete examples in good faith by arbitrarily precluding certain language and metaphors that you yourself have recourse to. — csalisbury
What's the blind fountain? — csalisbury
A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles[...] A rhizome has neither subject nor object, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing in nature[...] Puppet strings, as a rhizome or multiplicity, are tied not to the supposed will of an artist or puppeteer but to a multiplicity of nerve fibers, which form another puppet in other dimensions connected to the first: "Call the strings or rods that move the puppet the weave. It might be objected that its multiplicity resides in the person of the actor, who projects it into the text. Granted; but the actor’s nerve fibers in turn form a weave. And they fall through the gray matter, the grid, into the undifferentiated [...]The wisdom of the plants: even when they have roots, there is always an outside where they form a rhizome with something else-with the wind, an animal, human beings[...]a rhizome is not amenable to any structural or generative model. It is a stranger to any idea of genetic axis or deep structure[...]A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo[...]The tree imposes the verb "to be," but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, "and . . . and . . . and. . ."[...]American literature, and already English literature, manifest this rhizomatic direction to an even greater extent; they know how to move between things, establish a logic of the AND, overthrow ontology, do away with foundations, nullify endings and beginnings. They know how to practice pragmatics. The middle is by no means an average; on the contrary, it is where things pick up speed. Between things does not designate a localizable relation going from one thing to the other and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps one and the other away, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle.- A Thousand Plateaus — Deleuze
I don't think we're born alone. Or at least - we're born always looking toward someone else. Usually Mom takes the role. It's true that there may be no one to fill the role. But then the baby dies. Being able to be alone comes much later, if we survive infancy. And even then the way we're alone always involves someone else. — csalisbury
Anyway this is what I was getting at with the 'transitional object.' The model as presented in your picture is utterly solipsistic. But the actual human infant depends on the pre-existing projections of someone else in order to project. And so forth all the way down. — csalisbury
Probably not. Babies (even newborns, even hours-old newborns) seem to need (expressive) faces. I think that suggests the baby needs something they experience as an emotional source, a bestower, not just a touch or soundwaves. I think you can have a sense of a source without quite having a theory of mind.Could you maturate a child appropriately in a simulacrum of the appropriate heat and sound?
Right, but my sense is that this model begins to disintegrate as soon as you try to try to apply it to intersubjective situations, especially cooperative ones. So, for instance, could you give a sketch of how to extend your model to account for a professional basketball game (two teams playing and an audience)?As I said, the model just reflects one person.
Probably not. Babies (even newborns, even hours-old newborns) seem to need (expressive) faces. I think that suggests the baby needs something they experience as an emotional source, a bestower, not just a touch or soundwaves. I think you can have a sense of a source without quite having a theory of mind. — csalisbury
In a similar vein, the 'test' of a turning test is precisely whether it gives you the sense of someone 'there.' — csalisbury
Right, but my sense is that this model begins to disintegrate as soon as you try to try to apply it to intersubjective situations, especially cooperative ones. So, for instance, could you give a sketch of how to extend your model to account for a professional basketball game (two teams playing and an audience)? — csalisbury
Actually, yes. There's a famous study by Rene Spitz, following infants raised in orphanages, who had their basic needs met, but had minimal human contact. Nearly all of them were severely developmentally disabled.do you think all babies that grow up without being loved are developmentally disabled? Perhaps it makes life harder not to be loved from an early age, but this strikes me as an implausibly strong claim.
By practical solipsists, then, you mean people who neither think about the vast complexity and deep humanity nor form deep connections with the people they interact with in passing?I think for the most part people live as practical solipsists in day to day life, and only attribute to others the bare minimum they need to interact with them
Again there's a question of whether you need a common model to show how interactions work. For example, does a symbiotic creature act any differently from a lone one? Probably not -- most have no idea that they interact with another organism or depend on it for survival at all, yet the symbiotic relationship works just fine. There is no transcendental 'glue' holding these things together. It's not that it works because of some commonality, but rather that on observation we see a commonality because it works.
Actually, yes. There's a famous study by Rene Spitz, following infants raised in orphanages, who had their basic needs met, but who had minimal human contact. Nearly all of them were severely developmentally disabled. — csalisbury
By practical solipsists, then, you mean people who neither think about the vast complexity and deep humanity nor form deep connections with the people they interact with in passing? — csalisbury
It seems to me that organisms who have no idea they're interacting with other organism is a poor metaphor for what goes on in a basketball game. — csalisbury
Am I exquisitely attuned to the depths of any of those besides some friends and family? Not really. I think there's a substantial difference between that and practical solipsism. This is a move you make a lot. Either people are super-empaths deeply emotionally attuned to the plumbless depths of everyone or they're practical solipsists. Psychoanalysts call this way of thinking "splitting." — csalisbury
I don't understand the point you're trying yo make about RTS AIs being hard to distinguish from human players. I'm asking you to explain, using your blob-model, how a basketball game works, which you still haven't done. — csalisbury
For the players to play, they have to be in sync. — csalisbury
People's projections all seem incredibly tied to each other's in this case. For the players to play, they have to be in sync. For the audience to watch and understand, they all have to project something similar (they can talk to each other about this or that play) and be constrained by the actions and projections of those playing. — csalisbury
Do you think people can play a basketball game without awareness of each other?Don't symbiotic creatures have to be in sync? Yet they do what they do alone, without awareness of the other.
How do people affect each other if the 'blobs' don't intersect? I honestly don't understand how you reconcile nothin-but-pathe with this interaction. It seems unintelligible to me.They affect each other and maybe they rely on each other in important ways, but that doesn't mean there's any common arena in which they meet, or that they have to realize this relationship is happening or take it to be such a relationship. You respond as you do the same way as you would if alone.
Do you think people can play a basketball game without awareness of each other? — csalisbury
How do people affect each other if the 'blobs' don't intersect? I honestly don't understand how you reconcile nothin-but-pathe with this interaction. It seems unintelligible to me. — csalisbury
I still don't understand the video game example. It seems like a weird choice, given what I know of your view. In a video game, there's a graphical interface which is identical for all players. Various players provide input through their controller or keyboard, and this input can have no have effect on the inputs of other unless these inputs are mediated by that shared interface. This is the model you want to use?Yes. That was the point of the AI fighting game example. All that you need is for two people to make the appropriate motions, and those motions can be triggered by private affections.
No angle with this question, just sincerely curious. Do you think connection and sympathy exist at all?an order arises without connection and sympathy
I still don't understand the video game example. It seems like a weird choice, given what I know of your view. In a video game, there's a graphical interface which is identical for all players. Various players provide input through their controller or keyboard, and this input can have no have effect on the inputs of other unless these inputs are mediated by that shared interface. This is the model you want to use? — csalisbury
One player has to project another player passing the ball. — csalisbury
Or he can, through 'coercion'. But how can he 'coerce' his teammate unless his teammate projects him coercing (e.g., in this case, sees him pass the basketball? — csalisbury
No angle with this question, just sincerely curious. Do you think connection and sympathy exist at all? — csalisbury
Longtime friends who give each other space would be the ideal setup.
Whether there's an interface doesn't matter....You have reactions that lead to inputs on both sides, but no real 'communication' or common space between the players that keeps this together.
Yeah, as long as there's some shared experience everyone's in on and wants to talk about, the differences in 'r' articulations are lost. But the thing is that coordination requires something shared, even if its only a directedness.Just like English speakers can all articulate 'r' differently and never realize it, yet coordinate a language without having to sync up their mouths.
Weird, I played basketball as a kid too and was always quite consciously aware of where the other players were and who had the ball etc. In terms of catching and throwing the ball, yeah, I just knew how to move my body. But that was always integrated with the conscious awareness of where others were. Maybe you were just a better basketball player than me. (Or maybe - though I hope not -this is that thing, again, where I try to use you terminology, in your sense, but all of a sudden you respond to those words as though you've never used them in special contexts)I don't know about that. I played basketball as a kid, and I never 'projected' anything when people passed to me. I more just knew how to move my body.
If a basketball game can take place, one's metaphysical model has to be able to explain how that's possible, even if it's rare.Insofar as the whole world is a game, very little of it is kept going in this way (cooperatively & with mutual understanding).
If a basketball game can take place, one's metaphysical model has to be able to explain how that's possible, even if it's rare. — csalisbury
I don't see how anyone could ever coerce anyone else? — csalisbury
For a basketball game to take place each participant has to illusion (makeshift verb) in a similar way. — csalisbury
That's fine. In that case we externalize many things in very similar ways. — csalisbury
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.