tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post7641857450362394449..comments2024-03-28T19:14:33.619-07:00Comments on The Splintered Mind: What Are You Noticing When You Adjust Your Binoculars?Eric Schwitzgebelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-70975763564195896232013-05-18T06:16:25.619-07:002013-05-18T06:16:25.619-07:00Callan: Maybe so. Also, of course, animals focus t...<i>Callan: Maybe so. Also, of course, animals focus their eyes and plan how much food to take or store, without what we might think of as introspection.</i><br /><br />They don't?<br /><br />I dunno - take a horrible example of an animal gnawing its own limb off to get out of a trap. The mutually conflicting pains, partly quite clearly attributed to its own actions (or so I assume) - surely there'd be something inspected there, if not introspected? I'm sure animals deal with a number of competing and conflicting agendas/emotions as well. After all, why do we adjust the bionoculars at all (let alone how we do it)?<br /><br />Okay, a bit off topic!Callan S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15373053356095440571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-53734324802423708322013-05-16T13:21:33.730-07:002013-05-16T13:21:33.730-07:00@ Scott: No, you were reading my book right, and p...@ Scott: No, you were reading my book right, and perhaps my post came off a bit wrong. In the larger context of my full written reply to Maja (not yet circulating -- maybe tomorrow), my position might be clearer.<br /><br />I think Maja *might* be right about these cases; and I very much like her idea of looking for introspection-reliant abilities as a possible wedge into the question of introspective reliability. Such abilities could be honed and selected for, and then success in those tasks could be corroborating evidence of our accuracy that is nicely different from intuitive appeals to subjective feelings of confidence.<br /><br />And I don't think introspection is impossible or always and forever unreliable.<br /><br />But I also do see difficulties with Maja's examples. Despite the appeal of the idea in the abstract, when one pushes on the details it gets squirrely! I'm still not quite sure what to think about these cases....Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-56403594809824313272013-05-16T13:14:47.609-07:002013-05-16T13:14:47.609-07:00Callan: Maybe so. Also, of course, animals focus ...Callan: Maybe so. Also, of course, animals focus their eyes and plan how much food to take or store, without what we might think of as introspection. But something in me is still attracted to part of Maja's picture.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-64376248837821828132013-05-16T13:13:35.226-07:002013-05-16T13:13:35.226-07:00Thanks for the thoughtful comments, folks!
@ Tony...Thanks for the thoughtful comments, folks!<br /><br />@ Tony: Right, I share approximately the same set of confusions about the case. I don't mean to be presenting a clean interpretation, since part of me is pulled by Maja's idea that we know what our visual experience is and adjust in light of it. But I also don't want to *just* sign up for that. I mean to be showing some avenues for resisting Maja on this point -- producing (in my own case) indecision, not a clean theory on the other side.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-82354843564423736712013-05-16T10:53:56.732-07:002013-05-16T10:53:56.732-07:00I actually think you're misinterpreting your o...I actually think you're misinterpreting your own book, Eric! I never took you to be making any gross generalizations so far as raising topic-specific instances of introspective unreliability that may or may not generalize vis a vis all introspection, but nevertheless contradict the prevailing, traditional generalization: that introspection provides privileged access to its objects. Tearing down an ill-advised generalization doesn't mean replacing it with a new one.<br /><br />Certainly our capacity to introspect, given the metabolic expense it likely entails, is the result of some grab-bag of metacognitive adaptations - heuristics. But as Hohwy persuasively argues, we have no reason to presume that any of the philosophical uses of introspection lie within the 'problem ecologies' of those heuristics. <br /><br />Maja's examples don't suggest anything more than the fact that introspection, when deployed in certain problem contexts, functions quite well. This is pretty much what we would expect, just as we would expect that efficacy to sharply fall off in problem contexts (like the theoretical cognition of the mind/soul/being-in-the-world) where we are clearly outside any problem context faced by our mutating ancestors. <br /><br />I guess I just don't see where or how PoC rules out the possibility of introspection doing ANY work...<br /><br />Or was I reading you too charitably?! Scott Bakkerhttp://rsbakker.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-19416139691673202082013-05-15T16:44:21.337-07:002013-05-15T16:44:21.337-07:00I'd say the food and binoculars are simply lea...I'd say the food and binoculars are simply learned adjustments. If you forced a baby to always see things blurry, right into adulthood, the put a binocular before them that is already focused on the object it's aimed at, might they adjust the dial to unfocus it? Or what we call unfocusing anyway - for them, they would be focusing it.Callan S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15373053356095440571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-91276572474994552832013-05-15T15:46:16.656-07:002013-05-15T15:46:16.656-07:00Or Locke.
Rockin' advertisement for your boo...Or Locke. <br /><br />Rockin' advertisement for your book -- I've got to get it!<br /><br />Not confident what to say about the binoculars case (or a "focus the camera" case). I am aware that the image I'm seeing of the seagull out there is blurrier than I want. That's all about what's in the world (outside visual experience). But I'm aware of it because my visual experience is not what I want it to be. I think I'm with you in not wanting to say, I know the image is blurry because I know that my visual experience is blurry. But I'm finding it difficult to see how to say that I'm visually aware of the blurry image without saying something about the character of my visual experience. Tony Dardishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16135113385974275241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-26329890944421943112013-05-15T15:27:24.148-07:002013-05-15T15:27:24.148-07:00Self-awareness a la Descartes!Self-awareness a la Descartes!Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-87821829682499896762013-05-15T14:32:00.123-07:002013-05-15T14:32:00.123-07:00I'm a little unfamiliar with this issue: is th...I'm a little unfamiliar with this issue: is the crux self awareness ala Descartes or knowing we know or the difference between true belief and justified belief?<br />Or did I miss the pont?Howard Bermannoreply@blogger.com