Re: Cool visual illusion

On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 10:41:15 -0500, "Glen M. Sizemore"
<gmsizemore2@xxxxxxxxx> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

>
>"Allan C Cybulskie" <allan.c.cybulskie@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:fJyqf.2227$1Y4.249731@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>> "Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemore2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:43a944bf$0$9236$ed362ca5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> > Cultures that force "awareness" in its members are more fit (from a
>>> > cultural-level selection view) than those that do not, primarily
>>> > because
>> a
>>> > person can describe what they see or hear (and later saw or heard) and
>>> > report what they did and what effect it had etc. This leads to cultures
>>> that
>>> > arrange contingencies that make our own behavior discriminative
>>> > stimuli.
>>>
>>> AC: Now think for a second about how you can train someone to be aware of
>> a
>>> feeling that they don't actually possess, which is what you'd have to
>> assert
>>> if your view was in any way correct.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> GS: There must be some response to the situation, but people need not "be
>>> aware of it." The Hefferline experiments, obviously, proved that we could
>>> respond and yet be unable to report the response.
>>
>> But we are talking about the "feeling", or at least I was.
>
>The people in the Hefferline experiments cannot feel their response, and

More dualisms.

>cannot report it, but the response is an operant response nonetheless. That
>is the issue. The environment "makes behavior occur" and, sometimes, if we
>are suitably trained, we "are aware of the response" or we "feel the
>response" or whatever verb you want to use. But the Hefferline experiments
>show that we can behave without feeling the response. By extension to
>emotion, engaging in behavior said to "show emotion" does not mean that we
>behave because we feel something. It is equally likely that we simply behave
>and that the "awareness of the response" or "feeling the response" comes
>from "something else" and that "something else" is contingencies. It doesn't
>HAVE to be either way. I believe that there are good philosophical arguments
>that can be made, and there are data that are relevant (some of which I have
>mentioned repeatedly) but, in the final analysis, there is nothing to stop
>you from insisting that when we train "a reporting response" we are merely
>giving an animal a way to report what it is already aware of.
>
>
>
>
>
>If they are
>> supposed to be aware of or react to the feeling, then they have to HAVE
>> the
>> feeling first, right?
>
>They aren't "reacting to a feeling, they are reacting to their own behavior,
>but the behavior to which they react can occur without them "being aware of
>it." There is simply no "HAVE to" or "must" about it. It is your opinion,
>and it is one that no data can shake as your response to the Hefferline data
>indicates.
>
>
>
>
>Since emotions seem to, in general, be responses to
>> stimuli, without the FEELING of an emotion you would be conditioning the
>> response to the stimulus, and not to the "feeling", making it hard to
>> imagine that you could be trained to have or pay attention to the feelings
>> if you didn't have them in the first place.
>>> > Obviously, I disagree. Or more precisely, without the contingencies
>>> arranged
>>> > by the verbal community that makes our own behavior discriminative
>>> stimuli,
>>> > we can respond reflexively to "painful stimuli" and we can escape and
>>> avoid
>>> > them.
>>>
>>> AC: In short, we can feel pleasure and pain in the absence of societal
>>> notions.
>>> Do you always prove points that you disagree with?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> GS: You don't understand how language works. There are at least 3
>> different
>>> circumstances in which we "use pain language" and they all involve
>> different
>>> processes.
>>
>> But I'm not talking about "pain language". I'm talking about the
>> experience
>> of pain itself.
>>
>>> We say stimuli "are painful when we see certain reflexes, we see
>>> animals escape or avoid them, or when other responses are under
>>> discriminative control of the behavior engendered by the "painful
>> stimuli."
>>> The last one is relevant to both third-, and first-person perspectives.
>>> We
>>> say that someone is "in pain" when they tell us they are (because
>> sometimes
>>> they are responding to the behavior engendered by the "painful stimuli" -
>>> sometimes they are lying, but that is beside the point) and we say we are
>>> "in pain" after observing behavior engendered by "painful stimuli" in
>>> ourselves.
>>
>> See, the problem is that this is irrelevant to how we know that WE are
>> ACTUALLY in pain. You say that this is when we say that other people are
>> in
>> pain, but this is not indicative of when they or we are actually in pain.
>> Note that what you talk about above is what we'd be able to observe from a
>> good actor pretending to be in pain, and yet it seems clear to us -- if we
>> are aware that the actor is acting -- that the actor is NOT actually in
>> pain.
>>
>>>
>>> These are some of the conditions that, when observed, cause a speaker
>>> > to "use pain language" (and note that these are very different
>> processes -
>>> > unless you hold that reflexive movements and operant escape and
>> avoidance
>>> > are the same thing).
>>>
>>> AC: I'd actually hold that the "reflexive movements" are hardcoded
>> reactions
>>> to
>>> the feelings, and therefore we must have the feelings without the operant
>>> conditioning. As has been evidenced in experiments referenced by Prinz,
>>> Damasio, and James.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> GS: An alternative view is that the "reaction" is to the state of
>>> affairs.
>>> You strike because I stomp on your foot - not because the stomping makes
>> you
>>> feel angry.
>>
>> This cannot be correct, since you can stomp on my foot and I won't get
>> angry. For example, note the classic joke about the wife stomping on her
>> husband's foot when he says something stupid. Often, he won't get angry,
>> and he usually doesn't strike. You can insult someone in the worst
>> possible
>> way and they may not react at all if they don't recognize it as an insult.
>> If James, Prinz, and Damasio are correct, "feeling angry" is an awareness
>> of
>> a physiological state (state of the body) and therefore the action I
>> take --
>> striking -- is in this case certainly influenced by the state that I was
>> prepared to be in.
>>
>>>
>>> AC: However, as I have said repeatedly "using pain language" is not
>> "feeling
>>> pain". I can use pain language without feeling pain, and can feel pain
>>> without using pain language.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> GS: This does not alter anything that I have said. Examine the logical
>>> connection between what I am saying and what you have said.
>>
>> If this is the case, then all you are saying is that we are not talking
>> about the same thing, as I pointed out above.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> AC: You again conflate feeling the pain with the
>>> means used to demonstrate the feeling of pain to the society.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> GS: No, I am not. But the fact remains that we are able to train the use
>> of
>>> "pain language" in the first-person, because there are correlated stimuli
>> or
>>> correlated responses. Were this not true, there would be no way to
>> establish
>>> "the meanings" of these terms. It would be like a color-blind person
>> trying
>>> to establish color discriminations.
>>
>> I never disagreed that people have to be trained to use the word "pain" to
>> describe that sensation, and can only learn it by co-ordinating their
>> reactions externally with how others react to them in unequivocable cases
>> of
>> the sensation. But the person must feel pain in order to make the right
>> connection from the sensation of pain to the word or actions.
>>
>> Imagine someone who had the reflexive actions to painful situations, but
>> never felt pain. They could learn that the situations are "painful", but
>> wouldn't associate it to the feeling at all. Note that because we can
>> actually describe -- somewhat -- the sensations indepedent of direct pain
>> language, they would learn that they don't feel pain like others do
>> eventually.
>>
>> Therefore, the "meaning" of pain is derived directly from the sensations,
>> but the terminology of pain is derived from societal definition.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> AC: It seems
>>> obvious that before I can learn how to express pain, I have to feel it.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> GS: This is a result of your indoctrination.
>>
>> No, this is a result of logic. How can I learn to express a feeling that
>> I
>> never feel? See the above example for more on that.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> AC: Or
>>> else you'd have to advocate that I NEVER feel pain but just react to
>>> specific instances that I was taught should be painful. I cannot see how
>>> you can make the claim that you seem to want to make which is that I
>>> don't
>>> feel pain until I am taught that certain things should be painful, and
>> then
>>> I feel pain.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> GS: That is not exactly what I said. We respond to painful stimuli, and
>>> their removal or postponement can strengthen operant behavior. None of
>> this
>>> requires that we respond to our response. It is the last, responding to
>> ones
>>> response, that is what I am saying is what is usually meant when "feeling
>>> pain" is said to raise issues of subjectivity. We can respond
>>> reflexively,
>>> and we can escape and avoid, but there is no reason to believe that we
>> have
>>> to "be aware" of our own responses.
>>
>> Forgive me, but so what? I can react in pain, you argue, without being in
>> pain. Well, assume this is true. So what? This doesn't mean anything
>> about what happens when I actually feel pain, or that I actually feel it.
>> So why is this a big deal?
>>
>>> AC: As a
>>> personal example, I once fell in the street and broke my wrist. As I was
>>> lying on the ground, I demonstrated various pain behaviours (clutching my
>>> wrist, and so on) while consciously noting that it was odd that nothing
>>> actually hurt. So this example seems to shoot a very large hole in your
>>> theory, since I was aware of acting as if I was in pain and yet didn't
>> feel
>>> pain.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> GS: This does not shoot it down at all. It is perfectly consistent with
>>> my
>>> view.
>>
>> Then you are agreeing that feeling pain and the expression of pain are
>> different things, which is what I was going on about.
>>
>>
>
>


~v~~

.

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