Genetic determinism

[Knotted]

@ Knotted.

I'm not sure how much we're disagreeing here. The system is the model. It's hard to separate out any particular feature since they're all connected. I'm not keen on Dennett's explanation of consciousness, but his idea of 'multiple drafts' has merit here, I think – when you try to examine it too closely, the apparent unity disintegrates, but our everyday experience is that this unity is there. (Or at least that's true of us modern humans – Jaynes would have it, and I think he's right, that it has not always been so.)

Where I think it is useful to think in terms of a model is that it shows very clearly the nature of our experience. We do not experience reality. We experience our construction of 'reality'. It is this construction that I call the model, and it is, as I said originally, necessarily a simplification, an approximation, that shows the features (the meanings) we need to live.

That's why I would call it a metaphor and it is useful for the above reasons. Certainly our brains construct reality - but that doesn't mean they literally construct a model. There is a completeness implicit in the model metaphor that seems invalid. Brains need to function - they don't need to build models.

It's difficult to persuade you of how awful the model metaphor is. When you pay attention to something in your field of vision it is like you are modelling it - you note various features. But what about disinterested observation, what about non-lucid dreams?

Wittgenstein points out that it would be odd to say, "for a second he felt a deep grief." (same part of PI2 as above). It's not as if grief is simply an internal state.

And yes, a fearful image is meaningful because it inspires a physical emotional reaction, and the physical reaction itself informs the meaning. But that's the point. It is a model that is locked into our bodies. But you can disconnect it from various aspects of the body and it will still run. Those with locked-in syndrome have their models very largely cut off from physical reactions such as a fearful reaction, and this gives them a certain emotionless serenity, but their point of view is still there.

Before you were saying the model was in our brains and now it is locked into our bodies, but isn't it also part of our environment? Isn't part of what makes us fearful the object of fear rather than our internal model of our object of fear? Isn't fear in part to do with the unknown and an object might suggest the unknown.

Isn't our reaction also part of what makes something fearful? If we act hysterically is this because the fear is great or does the hysteria create the fear?

What is being modelled by what?

 

[Knotted]

the pdf made no mention of QM that I saw

True. When we're talking emergence we are talking complexity theory and that just doesn't come into QM.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

That's why I would call it a metaphor and it is useful for the above reasons. Certainly our brains construct reality - but that doesn't mean they literally construct a model. There is a completeness implicit in the model metaphor that seems invalid. Brains need to function - they don't need to build models.

I don't agree. Brains need to make sense of reality, and to do so, they need to construct meanings from the information they receive. These meanings are the components of the model, and it is useful and appropriate to talk about them as a model precisely because they are not what is there, they don't even try to be. They are manifestations of those qualities of what is there that concern us. And they are consistent features. We all construct very similar models – the features in them have evolved over time. It's a useful way to look at it.

 

[Knotted]

I don't agree. Brains need to make sense of reality, and to do so, they need to construct meanings from the information they receive. These meanings are the components of the model, and it is useful and appropriate to talk about them as a model precisely because they are not what is there, they don't even try to be. They are manifestations of those qualities of what is there that concern us. And they are consistent features. We all construct very similar models – the features in them have evolved over time. It's a useful way to look at it.

Before you were saying the model constructs the meanings but now the meanings are the components of the model. You can't lift yourself by pulling on your bootstraps.

Meanings are context-sensitive. Does the whole model change in different contexts? Perhaps you see an odd looking piece of metal and only later realise that it is a key. Does your memory of "piece of metal" change to "key"? Is this a radical change, or is it like adding an extra bit of information? What was the memory of "piece of metal" in the first place? Do memories change when you recall them?

 

[Jonti]

...

The model creates the meaning. It is this creation of meaning that we experience as our point of view. Our point of view is the meaning we both see in the model and use to create it. The two cannot be separated.

I like this way of putting things, to explain how sense impressions are made meaningful.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Before you were saying the model constructs the meanings but now the meanings are the components of the model. You can't lift yourself by pulling on your bootstraps.

There's no contradiction here, though. It's probably best to say that the model is constructed of meanings – of meaningful images. When people experience severe psychotic episodes, they speak of losing themselves – their point of view disintegrates – and it is by all accounts a terrifying feeling. This is where dealing with our experience as a model is useful. Without meaning, the information we receive cannot be processed – the model cannot run – and 'we' disappear.

It might be best to think about the model as the sum total of many smaller models – each processing of the information to give it a level of meaning, which are then integrated to form our unified 'I'.

I mentioned Jaynes because he highlights how there is no reason why there should be this unified 'I' – in a bicameral mind, you would have to talk of two or more separate models which do not integrate, or only partially integrate, with each other.

 

[Knotted]

Another one:

An experienced chess player can memorise a game half-way through and reconstruct it later. Did their brains record and construct the complete image of the chess board in their minds? No because they wouldn't have been able to memorise a board with pieces arranged in a random and sensless manner. A memory need not be like a replica, it can be more like clues from which to reconstruct the object given a meaningful context.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Another one:

An experienced chess player can memorise a game half-way through and reconstruct it later. Did their brains record and construct the complete image of the chess board in their minds? No because they wouldn't have been able to memorise a board with pieces arranged in a random and sensless manner. A memory need not be like a replica, it can be more like clues from which to reconstruct the object given a meaningful context.

Yes, and that simply reinforces the fact that the model is constructed of meaningful images. I don't see any contradictions there.

It is no surprise that we have no memories from our infancy. It is only once we can assign meanings to information that we can commit it to memory. So humans, at least, have to learn how to run our models. And putting these meanings into memory takes a huge amount of effort – our brains use more energy doing so than pretty much anything else. Again, not surprising if you see what is being laid down as, literally, the contents of our minds itself.

 

[Knotted]

Yes, and that simply reinforces the fact that the model is constructed of meaningful images. I don't see any contradictions there.

Because there is no image in the mind. If the mind constructed images it wouldn't matter if they were meaningful or not - it would just go ahead and construct them and decide on meaningfulness later.

I must admit I'm not a visual thinker. I never draw diagrams. Perhaps the talk of models and images seems acutely alien to me.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

When I use the word image, I'm not just referring to visual images.

It interests me how you resist the idea of a model, though. I shall think further on it, as what I have written here does not 100% satisfy me. Nonetheless, I do mean to use the word literally, not metaphorically, because it is a very definite simplification of what might be 'really' there, and it has very concrete qualities. Most importantly, I think the idea has explanatory power, some of which I've tried to convey here.

 

[Knotted]

This debate mirrors the debate about blueprints and computer programs. I'm hostile to the idea of a model if by model you mean something that contains all the relevant details like a blueprint. If the model is like a recipe that contains instructions for the reconstruction of the object perhaps given certain contextual clues then that's a different story.

Also I do think that different people have different capacities for mental imagining. I think we're surprinsingly varied in our mental capacities as a species. I have zero artistic talent. If you were to ask me to sit down a draw even the simplest of objects, it would come out all wrong. I don't see any visual images in any concrete sense. But I'm not blind.