Consciousness: What is 'Awareness?'

[kellyb]

Exactly. Why should the label of "machine" make us feel our lives and existence are of any less value?

Well, it is a bit of a bummer compared to the hypothesis that really, we are eternal souls (or something like that) temporarily residing in a physical body.

 

[Maia]

How are you defining behaviorism there, and can you give me an example of how it was demonstrated to be ineffective?

Classic behavioral theory in practice involves classic conditioning/learning. A neutral stimulus (something that normally wouldn't get a response from you either way) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (something that normally would get a response.) The neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus because of this consistent pairing. The learned relationship is now a conditioned response. The example that would leap to most people's minds, of course, is Pavlov's dogs. Although behaviorism in theory and practice certainly does get more complicated than that, this really is the gist of it. Behavior can supposedly be controlled directly. We don't need to go through all that messy cognitive stuff.

But it doesn't work that way, and one big reason we know it doesn't is because cognitive-behavioral therapy consistently wins out in empirical studies. That's why it's standard evidence-based practice for so many disorders. Theories of mind are all very nice and interesting, but until they're actually tested in the real world on human beings, study groups against control groups, they're much more "science-y" than they are science. Behaviorism simply doesn't hold up in terms of what it accomplishes. The techniques can be picked out and used in specific situations, and they are a part of CBT, but they just don't stand on their own, and according to classical theory, they should be able to. Behaviorism also doesn't begin to hold up in studies or clinical practice in the way that psych medications do, so it really should not be bundled with biological psychiatry-- as a therapeutic paradigm, it just doesn't deserve it.

 

[calebprime]

This just in from Heidegger's spinning grave: "'Existentialist'!?"



Not sure about the fun part, but right on all other counts. I only bring up Heidegger as an example of the dubious utility of avoiding dualism-speak at all costs. B&T is a seriously great work of philosophy, but a grueling read, even for philosophy, due to its oddball grammar: the nominative, accusative, and genitive cases disappear (bye-bye I, me, and myself -- nice knowin' ya) so the philosopher nazi can describe thinking about / relating to a hammer in the dative (being-to-hand), using it in the ablative (being-at-hand), and the thinker/user in the locative (being-there). No subject-object dualism: consciousness always arising out of the changing environment. Tremendous feat of concentration, and ingenious; but as I say, not sure how useful, when you're always having to translate back and forth between specialized monism- and conventional dualism-speak just to understand what the heck you're talking about. Easier I think to stick with ordinary language and grammar, occasionally footnoting its 'dualism' as an accidental bias.

Being-sorry-for-this-long-winding-winded-aside.



Present perception (of environment + need) to non-present perception (pattern + memory)? Ok, bring on the gestalt and inkblots, then.

more derail, but just by coincidence I happened to read this new book about Heidegger--at least the gist:

1) Heidegger bad!
2) Heidegger Schlect
3) Heidegger no good!
4) Heidegger always working as nazi.
5) Heidegger bad philosopher. obscurantist, shallow, and a nazi.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/books/09philosophy.html

"Now a soon-to-be published book in English has revived the long-running debate about whether the man can be separated from his philosophy. Drawing on new evidence, the author, Emmanuel Faye, argues fascist and racist ideas are so woven into the fabric of Heidegger’s theories that they no longer deserve to be called philosophy. As a result Mr. Faye declares, Heidegger’s works and the many fields built on them need to be re-examined lest they spread sinister ideas as dangerous to modern thought as “the Nazi movement was to the physical existence of the exterminated peoples.”

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Classic behavioral theory in practice involves classic conditioning/learning. A neutral stimulus (something that normally wouldn't get a response from you either way) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (something that normally would get a response.) The neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus because of this consistent pairing. The learned relationship is now a conditioned response. The example that would leap to most people's minds, of course, is Pavlov's dogs. Although behaviorism in theory and practice certainly does get more complicated than that, this really is the gist of it. Behavior can supposedly be controlled directly. We don't need to go through all that messy cognitive stuff.

But it doesn't work that way, and one big reason we know it doesn't is because cognitive-behavioral therapy consistently wins out in empirical studies. That's why it's standard evidence-based practice for so many disorders. Theories of mind are all very nice and interesting, but until they're actually tested in the real world on human beings, study groups against control groups, they're much more "science-y" than they are science. Behaviorism simply doesn't hold up in terms of what it accomplishes. The techniques can be picked out and used in specific situations, and they are a part of CBT, but they just don't stand on their own, and according to classical theory, they should be able to. Behaviorism also doesn't begin to hold up in studies or clinical practice in the way that psych medications do, so it really should not be bundled with biological psychiatry-- as a therapeutic paradigm, it just doesn't deserve it.

I haven't read your longer post, but this is an old, outdated definition of behaviorism, more like 1910-1930's. Behaviorism is defined in entirely different ways now.

Cognitive stuff is just one class of behaviors in its new guise.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

There's been considerable progress in finding out what affects subjective experience, but none at all in figuring out how it comes to exist. Indeed, as we can see from this particular part of the discussion, defining it is in itself extremely difficult.

I'll re-iterate my view on definitions. In any language, if it is to have some bearing on reality, it can't have every word defined in terms of other words. At some stage, a word must refer to reality, and be the end of the line. It might be possible to have a language in which every word was defined in terms of other words, but such a language would be entirely empty of meaning.

If that is the case, then it's inevitable that certain words will not be definable. They will be the wellspring from which other definitions come. IMO awareness, consciousness, etc, are such words. Incapable of definition, but fruitful of meaning.

Which is all fine, but I think we differ widely on what words are incapable of definition.

There has simply been precious little work on emotion and virtually none on the neural basis of motivation, so we have very little information about how these systems work.

When you get down to it, what seems to anger many folks is that when discussing computer models of consciousness or whatever, there are large swathes of human experience left on the side -- namely emotion and motivation.

Keep in mind that computers are cognitive workhorses because we use them to do cognitive work. They are useful to us in that area. They aren't useful as emotion generators, so there is certainly no financial incentive to work toward computer defined emotion; and we certainly don't want self-motivated machines at this point.

We still have to do the hard psychology work of defining and working out what the different emotions are before we can deal with the neural network version or any computer version. Same with motivational states.

That is, in part, why I keep asking "what do we mean by 'feeling'?" And add to this, what is awareness?

I think these concepts are definable, but we have to be willing to break them down into simpler components.

 

[Maia]

I haven't read your longer post, but this is an old, outdated definition of behaviorism, more like 1910-1930's. Behaviorism is defined in entirely different ways now.

Cognitive stuff is just one class of behaviors in its new guise.

No, it isn't. I've designed and run CBT groups and it is not behaviorism by any name or from any era. CBT is about beliefs and cognition determining behavior. And in clinical practice, mental health practitioners use CBT because it's evidence-based. You can't use straight behaviorism outside of a lab, and the real world is not a lab. The closest thing I've seen would probably be the way you'd design therapeutic interventions for people with very severe developmental disabilities. But even in those cases, we leaned more on behaviorism because we didn't have any other choice; it was a compromise we were forced to make, and we knew it was far from the best.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

No, it isn't. I've designed and run CBT groups and it is not behaviorism by any name or from any era. CBT is about beliefs and cognition determining behavior. And in clinical practice, mental health practitioners use CBT because it's evidence-based. You can't use straight behaviorism outside of a lab, and the real world is not a lab. The closest thing I've seen would probably be the way you'd design therapeutic interventions for people with very severe developmental disabilities. But even in those cases, we leaned more on behaviorism because we didn't have any other choice; it was a compromise we were forced to make, and we knew it was far from the best.

There are several behaviorists here who would differ with you. I don't think I would mention any of this near Mercutio's hearing.

Behaviorism has been redefined from Bahm onward.

It's just a label anyway and isn't an important point, but the way behaviorism is defined in academia now has little to do with Watson, Skinner and behavioral therapy. Those are all important early precursors, but the field has moved onward.

I think most people gave up on the idea that external motor behavior is all that we can describe with mental activity decades ago. Even the eliminative materialists generally only speak with different language than other crowds. When they try to eliminate consciousness they often only mean that they want to eliminate the idea that consciousness is some entirely special category akin to a different substance.

 

[Maia]

There are several behaviorists here who would differ with you. I don't think I would mention any of this near Mercutio's hearing.

Well, you do realize he/she can't exactly hear any of this... it being typed on a forum and all...

It's just a label anyway and isn't an important point, but the way behaviorism is defined in academia now has little to do with Watson, Skinner and behavioral therapy. Those are all important early precursors, but the field has moved onward.

What goes on in the hallowed marble halls of academie is a rather far cry from us lowly social workers toiling in the trenches, even though we do most of the mental health work in America. We have to show results. No results, no money. But then there's the slight problem of what happens after the six-month followup of just about any study on any theoretical application...

Look, let's be honest about the terrible truth. We may never really know exactly what worked or didn't work in the long run (which is exactly what the few truly long-term studies tend to show), except that doing something is better than doing nothing, psych meds, at least, have improved by leaps and bounds, and there isn't ever enough money, enough resources, enough anything. In community clinical practice, we have to do the best we can. NOBODY is sitting around and adhering to one strict theory; that would be beyond ridiculous. There are some new models for specific pathologies (such as motivational interviewing for addictions), but I'm not sure if that one is more for the benefit of the client or the therapist. Ultimately, everything depends on the motivation of the clients themselves, or it doesn't matter what you try-- it won't work.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Well, you do realize he/she can't exactly hear any of this... it being typed on a forum and all...



What goes on in the hallowed marble halls of academie is a rather far cry from us lowly social workers toiling in the trenches, even though we do most of the mental health work in America. We have to show results. No results, no money. But then there's the slight problem of what happens after the six-month followup of just about any study on any theoretical application...

Look, let's be honest about the terrible truth. We may never really know exactly what worked or didn't work in the long run (which is exactly what the few truly long-term studies tend to show), except that doing something is better than doing nothing, psych meds, at least, have improved by leaps and bounds, and there isn't ever enough money, enough resources, enough anything. In community clinical practice, we have to do the best we can. NOBODY is sitting around and adhering to one strict theory; that would be beyond ridiculous. There are some new models for specific pathologies (such as motivational interviewing for addictions), but I'm not sure if that one is more for the benefit of the client or the therapist. Ultimately, everything depends on the motivation of the clients themselves, or it doesn't matter what you try-- it won't work.

Right, but when it comes to philosophical perspectives I don't think anyone holds to the beliefs that "behaviorists" (meaning the old school version) once felt were central, so it probably isn't necessary to argue against a position that no one holds philosophically.

When it comes to therapy approaches, that is an entirely different ballgame. What works and doesn't work in therapy is important for therapy but not necessarily for one's philosophical position.

 

[kellyb]

I thought aversion therapy did work? It was just creepy and it "wore off" if people didn't continue with the "treatment"?

 

[blobru]

more derail, but just by coincidence I happened to read this new book about Heidegger--at least the gist:

1) Heidegger bad!
2) Heidegger Schlect
3) Heidegger no good!
4) Heidegger always working as nazi.
5) Heidegger bad philosopher. obscurantist, shallow, and a nazi.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/books/09philosophy.html

"Now a soon-to-be published book in English has revived the long-running debate about whether the man can be separated from his philosophy. Drawing on new evidence, the author, Emmanuel Faye, argues fascist and racist ideas are so woven into the fabric of Heidegger’s theories that they no longer deserve to be called philosophy. As a result Mr. Faye declares, Heidegger’s works and the many fields built on them need to be re-examined lest they spread sinister ideas as dangerous to modern thought as “the Nazi movement was to the physical existence of the exterminated peoples.”

[derail]"How big of a nazi was Heidegger, anyway?" has been a lively topic in philosophy going back at least to Farias' book in the 80's. I think for a while, starting in 1933 when he took the oath as the rector of the university of Freiburg then joined the party while Jewish academics were being stripped of their posts, he was a pretty big nazi. However, it's much harder to make the case that his seminal work, Being and Time, is nazism in disguise, since it was published in 1927 and dedicated to his teacher Husserl, who was Jewish. My own take is he was sucked in for a time by the nazi appeal to the nobility of the hard-working peasant class, a recurring ethic in his later works. And too much of an arrogant fathead to ever renounce or even discuss his decision in later interviews. I think it would be a mistake to bury his theories solely on that basis, though. Being-there, consciousness emerging in time out of care expressed in the world, and not emanating mystically from the "self", was radical stuff in its day, even if it should turn out to be just a naive metaphysical-cum-grammatical-cum-proto-crypto-fascistic inversion, with a big helping of horse poop, upon later critical reflection. {note to meing-there: never write that sentence again}[/derail]

 

[AkuManiMani]

Well, it is a bit of a bummer compared to the hypothesis that really, we are eternal souls (or something like that) temporarily residing in a physical body.

An interesting point of fact to keep in mind is that our physical bodies aren't static structures. Due to metabolism, our bodies constantly reconstruct themselves at the molecular level; matter and energy are constantly flowing into and out of your physical form. Even the atoms that make up your genes experience turnover. Over the course of your life your body has replaced itself many times. Yet, thru all of this, you still retain the same identity as an individual.

So, inna way, you really aren't your body, per se, but the collective process that organizes it. Of course, none this would really give comfort to those hoping that they're "eternal souls". When the flow stops you still end up just as dead :-X

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

An interesting point of fact to keep in mind is that our physical bodies aren't static structures. Due to metabolism, our bodies constantly reconstruct themselves at the molecular level; matter and energy are constantly flowing into and out of your physical form. Even the atoms that make up your genes experience turnover. Over the course of your life your body has replaced itself many times. Yet, thru all of this, you still retain the same identity as an individual.

So, inna way, you really aren't your body, per se, but the collective process that organizes it. Of course, none this would really give comfort to those hoping that they're "eternal souls". When the flow stops you still end up just as dead :-X

Are you suggesting that Kelly looks like the ship of Theseus?

Hey guys, Aku just called Kelly a ship! That's no way to pick up women in an internet forum.

But, yeah, good point.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Are you suggesting that Kelly looks like the ship of Theseus?

Hey guys, Aku just called Kelly a ship! That's no way to pick up women in an internet forum.

I thought pickin' on the ladies was a sign of affection

 

[PixyMisa]

Classic behavioral theory in practice involves classic conditioning/learning. A neutral stimulus (something that normally wouldn't get a response from you either way) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (something that normally would get a response.) The neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus because of this consistent pairing. The learned relationship is now a conditioned response. The example that would leap to most people's minds, of course, is Pavlov's dogs. Although behaviorism in theory and practice certainly does get more complicated than that, this really is the gist of it. Behavior can supposedly be controlled directly. We don't need to go through all that messy cognitive stuff.

Well, no. If you ignore the point that behaviorism in theory and practice certainly does get more complicated than that then all you are really left with is a strawman.

Now, the Churchlands might well be arguing for a strawman, I don't know; most philosophers are just abominable at getting a point across clearly. (And most often, this is deliberate.) But that doesn't mean you get to argue against a strawman with respect to anyone but them.

 

[Mercutio]

No, it isn't. I've designed and run CBT groups and it is not behaviorism by any name or from any era. CBT is about beliefs and cognition determining behavior. And in clinical practice, mental health practitioners use CBT because it's evidence-based. You can't use straight behaviorism outside of a lab, and the real world is not a lab. The closest thing I've seen would probably be the way you'd design therapeutic interventions for people with very severe developmental disabilities. But even in those cases, we leaned more on behaviorism because we didn't have any other choice; it was a compromise we were forced to make, and we knew it was far from the best.

Hi, Maia.

I am a behaviorist. I would hazard a guess that you have never actually met one, nor read anything written by one after Watson. You might like to know that you are wrong. So wrong. Very wrong. "Wrong enough to consider legal action against your professors" wrong. Fortunately, behaviorists have not had to build upon your perceptions, but upon their own research, so your ignorance has not been fatal to our science. If I could suggest, perhaps, Todd & Morris' (1992--a bit dated, but 50 or so years ahead of the behaviorism you are aware of) "Case studies in the great power of steady misrepresentation", in American Psychologist, which I hope can be read in Nashville. I also suggest an online tutorial I have linked on this forum before, which focuses on the differences between methodological behaviorism (that which you have been exposed to) and radical behaviorism (that which people actually did for decades after Watson left Johns Hopkins with Rosie...)

Behaviorism knows that the real world is messy. The operant chamber is behaviorism's equivalent to chemistry's test tube--an oversimplified subset of the real world. Behaviorism has explored, in operant chambers and in the real world (from B-MOD with individuals to ABA with classrooms, to community interventions, to Behavioral Economics), the effects of the environment on our behavior, and has found simple, profound, and practical applications. Behaviorism has changed lives. I sincerely and honestly hope you find out some day.

There is a reason that CBT is evidence-based. That reason is behaviorism. Take your time. Read some history, and the appropriate journals. I'd be glad to help you point out where your education has lied to you. Yes, I can cite the literature. Now... please, quit trying to tell us what behaviorism is. Like I said... you are quite simply wrong.

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

... Even the eliminative materialists generally only speak with different language than other crowds. When they try to eliminate consciousness they often only mean that they want to eliminate the idea that consciousness is some entirely special category akin to a different substance.

This is pretty close to how I’ve perceived their stance. Here’s Patricia Churchland discussing about it in very general outlines (9 min.): P. Churchland on eliminative materialism

 

[kellyb]

I thought pickin' on the ladies was a sign of affection

I had to turn to wiki to know what the ship of Theseus was.

How sad is that?

In my defense, I've avoided philosophy debates since around the age of 15. It usually comes down to how folks chose to define stuff, and there's rarely any great "meaning" in there. I once read about philosophy described as "searching around in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there" and I still agree.
But then again, I'm a "metaphysical naturalist" aka "materialist".

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I had to turn to wiki to know what the ship of Theseus was.

How sad is that?

In my defense, I've avoided philosophy debates since around the age of 15. It usually comes down to how folks chose to define stuff, and there's rarely any great "meaning" in there. I once read about philosophy described as "searching around in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there" and I still agree.
But then again, I'm a "metaphysical naturalist" aka "materialist".

I never studied it formally, only picking up bits and pieces through my life; but I certainly have read a bit of it trying to see what it's all about.

I have to say...............you made the right decision.

 

[westprog]

I did a long, long post on eliminative materialism once, and now it will never be found again. A search was unsuccessful. I'll try to recreate it, but I may miss points I made before.

Basically, eliminative materialism is a theoretical stance put forth as an alternative to so-called "common-sense", "ordinary", or "folk psychology" ways of understanding the mind and mental states. (There may very well be eliminativist methods which can be used in order to discuss or understand specific concepts-- in other words, essentially denying the existence of whatever is being discussed or understood-- but that's not what we're talking about here; this is the original theory.) Earlier forms of eliminative materialism were really impossible to tell apart from reductive materialism in most ways, because they posited that mental states were basically reducible to brain states. In the 1970's and 1980's, however, as developed by people like Paul and Patricia Churchland, eliminative materialism became a radically different theoretical outlook. Under this theory, mental states are not reducible to neurological states, even though they do take place only in the brain (in contrast to what someone like Dennett is actually arguing, so I do have to give him that much.) And no matter how elaborately this is explained, it never really does seem to go beyond this bizarre combination of reductionism and dualism. A number of objections to so-called "common-sense" psychology are certainly brought up, but when examined, they all boil down to the same thing: the theoretical framework which poses our behavior and mental states as being controlled by our beliefs is somehow faulty. "Folk psychology" is classified with "folk physics, folk biology, and folk epidemiology", none of which turned out to accurately represent the natural world. Analogies are repeatedly and regularly drawn between "folk psychology" and beliefs in demons, angels, apparitions of God, etc., complete with clear statements that the psychological and psychiatric community will soon discard all theoretical models related to "folk psychology" just as surely as this outmoded medieval silliness was discarded.

My own particular objection is the argument by analogy. So what if people used to think that the world was flat, or that objects fell at a constant velocity? That's another subject altogether. And most of folk science is actually correct. Diamonds are harder than spongecake. The sun does radiate heat. Apes are smarter than acorns. The only reason to discard folk beliefs is when there's hard evidence to contradict them. We should eat that toadstool just because folk biology says it's poisonous?