tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post1271714966741427164..comments2024-03-28T19:14:33.619-07:00Comments on The Splintered Mind: A Negative, Pluralist Account of IntrospectionEric Schwitzgebelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-71176744205538247022014-05-07T09:46:04.925-07:002014-05-07T09:46:04.925-07:00Interesting ideas. However, the brain is able to t...Interesting ideas. However, the brain is able to think about thinking, talk about talking, understand understanding. All of these are underlain by a comparison process going on in our cortex. We can compare a comparison and compare that to comparing a comparison.<br /><br />By this process there is no contradiction in doing so. The logic of the process allows it, endlessly, like looking into two mirrors facing each other altho slightly offset in angle. We are given the same, consistent, endless views by this process.<br /><br />The Comparison Process has that capability. It can look at itself, because each of these tasks is consistent with it. Endlessly recursive and re-iterative it is.<br />It's not at all inconsistent to look at ourselves, either. Just another form of comparison process.<br /><br />There is no exclusion involved, no "This sentence is false." It's internally self-consistent, too. It has its own logic. That's why it can create its own self-consistent systems, such as math, language, and endlessly so.<br />You might check out Le Chanson Sans Fin on wordpress.com<br /><br />Herb Wiggins, MD. Clinical NeurosciencesAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-88445438483603330092014-04-09T08:01:13.674-07:002014-04-09T08:01:13.674-07:00This is definitely a problematic feature of GNWS, ...This is definitely a problematic feature of GNWS, the way the 'workspace' metaphor does disservice to the transactional complexities involved. What we have is something more like a 'loopiness' when it comes to deliberative cognition, where the 'stream of consciousness' pertains to the serial, post-cognitive bottleneck phase of what is a far vaster, and perhaps, as you think, hopelessly tangled process. <br /><br />But this is where Dehaene's notion of conscious access proves useful: as treacherous as the conscious/nonconscious information divide proves to be, it remains the case that some things we can report, and some things we can't. To the extent that conscious cognition is restricted to what we can report, and that what it can report is very likely heuristically tailored to problems other than those posed by philosophers, then it seems safe to suppose that the bulk of philosophy, traditionally speaking, has been committing Spinoza's sin of theorizing the condition (biology) in terms belonging to the conditioned (the implicit, the tacit, the unconscious, the mind, the soul, etc.). It's hard not to see spooky functionalism as a form of auto-anthropomorphizing!<br /><br />Either way, things don't look good for the old way of doing things, *given* the divide. Is there any reasons/research problematizing the divide understood in these terms? Scott Bakkerhttp://rsbakker.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-69616389205448949572014-04-08T15:03:51.502-07:002014-04-08T15:03:51.502-07:00Yes, Scott -- I'm very sympathetic with all of...Yes, Scott -- I'm very sympathetic with all of that, and nicely put. My one main hesitation is that I'm not sure how we decide between a "selecting/broadcasting" view of consciousness and a more liberal view on which even unselected/unbroadcast processes can also be part of the stream of consciousness.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-74439594094465181132014-04-08T11:42:47.789-07:002014-04-08T11:42:47.789-07:00For me this picture of fractionate, heuristic capa...For me this picture of fractionate, heuristic capacities is the only kind of introspective capacity that makes any kind of evolutionary or biomechanical sense. <br /><br />Given what we know, 'consciousness' is in the business of selecting, stabilizing, and broadcasting information for the purposes of problem-solving/facilitating behaviour. This means that conscious metacognition has to continually run the guantlet of the 'cognitive bottleneck': All the information available for the conscious cognition of conscious experience/cognition is 'post-bottleneck.' In addition to the limit on the kinds of information that can be selected for conscious consumption, there's a limit to what can be done with that information. Given the sheer complexity of the brain, there is no way it can solve for itself the way it solves for its environment. So even though human brains belong to the very environments they are adapted to behaviourally solve, they will always constitute a kind of structural blind spot, a point where the powerful machinery of environmental problem solving is largely useless. Human metacognitive capacity, on this picture, will consist in a series of 'specialized hacks,' heuristics geared to narrow problem-ecologies.<br /><br />This is why 'conscious, deliberative metacognition,' philosophical introspective reflection, has proven so treacherous. The above picture is bound to generate any number of illusions, like the 'simple faculty illusion,' where the lack of information pertaining to the numerous tools in the cognitive and metacognitive toolbox generates the assumption of unity; or the 'sufficiency illusion,' where the lack information tagging the adequacy of the information available leads to a generalized form of what Kahneman calls 'What-you-see-is-all-there-is,' or WYSIATI, the sense that our metacognitive intuitions tell the whole story - Cartesian self-transparency. And the list goes on and on.<br /><br />Blind Brain Theory in a nutshell!Scott Bakkerhttp://rsbakker.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-60816110175483264062014-04-08T08:41:35.806-07:002014-04-08T08:41:35.806-07:00Yes, I've written quite a bit on it -- for exa...Yes, I've written quite a bit on it -- for example this:<br />http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/introspection/Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-14534244254410663662014-04-08T07:24:30.130-07:002014-04-08T07:24:30.130-07:00Do you believe self knowledge is rooted in introsp...Do you believe self knowledge is rooted in introspection? Intuitively we or I believe that self knowledge is possible and that some know themselves better than others know themselves.<br />Have you treated this topic at all?Howie Bermannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-21838960528970154862014-04-07T10:29:50.642-07:002014-04-07T10:29:50.642-07:00Nick: Thanks for the kind words. I think we can o...Nick: Thanks for the kind words. I think we can only introspect what is conscious, and only the surface as reasoning/inference/judgment is conscious. Perhaps enough of the surface -- after all we see apples despite seeing only their surfaces -- but the issue is complex.<br /><br />Howard: No, only the conscious, on my view.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-15360494877788844372014-04-06T09:00:25.104-07:002014-04-06T09:00:25.104-07:00On your account, is introspection a glance at cons...On your account, is introspection a glance at conscious thoughts or unconscious thoughts,<br />as well?howard bermannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-80246041653767348802014-04-05T18:51:03.458-07:002014-04-05T18:51:03.458-07:00Hi Eric. Another fun post!
I noticed you never me...Hi Eric. Another fun post!<br /><br />I noticed you never mentioned introspection of our reasoning/inference/judgment. I wonder: would you say all of this about introspection of these cognitive phenomena as well?Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10992458507944205149noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-80641696227157977212014-04-05T09:37:21.908-07:002014-04-05T09:37:21.908-07:00Howard, I do think that introspection can affect t...Howard, I do think that introspection can affect the process introspected and that there are different kinds (though not cleanly separable). I'm inclined to doubt that consciousness requires introspection, since on my account if introspection, it's a process aimed at reaching a conscious judgment about experience, and we don't often do that.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-23056682151172243152014-04-04T11:54:40.644-07:002014-04-04T11:54:40.644-07:00servuMight the act of introspection alter the cont...servuMight the act of introspection alter the content observed, thus complicating introspection regardless of its cause? Or is that view held by the views summarized?<br />Further are there different kinds of introspection matching different levels of awareness?<br />Finally, does any consciousness require introspection?howard bermannoreply@blogger.com