From: kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown)
Subject: Re: Psychobabble
Organization: I can't see any in the immediate vicinity...
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 04:47:17 GMT

In article <=20mfbh.barry@netcom.com> barry@netcom.com (Kenn Barry) writes:
>In article <1992Aug18.020443.19655@nuchat.sccsi.com> kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown) writes:

>>Well, I didn't say that I *knew* that I was self-aware, did I?  :-) :-)
>
>	Won't work. If you don't _know_ you're self-aware, you're
>therefore _not_ self-aware, by definition. I've got a can't-lose
>proposition here, Kevin :-).

Well, we'll see about that.  :-)

>>>	When you figure out it can't be done, you may also then
>>>understand why "the ghost in the machine" is both an old and an
>>>apropos name for self awareness.
>>
>>I submit to you for your consideration this:  that one cannot, even in
>>principle, prove something (by any definition) unless a test for that
>>something is devised first, and that the term "prove" is devoid of any
>>meaning unless such a test exists.
>>
>>Thus, if you cannot devise a test for the existence of "the ghost in the
>>machine" (aka self-awareness), then the statement that one cannot prove
>>the existence of "the ghost in the machine" is devoid of meaning.
>>
>>Therefore, I must ask: what test or set of tests, if passed would prove
>>self-awareness?
>
>	Descartes' test: "I think, therefore I am".

Okay.  But here we have another implicit test: how do you test whether
or not something "thinks"?

>	Yours is a very concise statement of the tenets of logical
>positivism. Only the measurable and palpable is real, yes? Well, no. Let
>me try to put it in the kind of formal terminology positivists like. 
>Self awareness is an infinite recursion: you know because you know
>because you know. Aristotle overlooked infinite recursions when he
>formalized logic, but they're very important, and very real. Fractals,
>for instance, are a physical phenomenon that involve infinite recursion.

Don't you ultimately run out of stack space?  :-)

>	Infinite recursions are logically important because they're
>self-sufficient. Cause-and-effect propositions are contingent: things
>only exist in relation to other things. By themselves they're a castle
>in the air, floating abstract and unsupported, severed from reality.

Exactly.  This is why cause-and-effect propositions ultimately require
a reference to external reality.  The same cannot be said for infinite
recursions.

Now here's the problem: anything can be made an infinite recursion.  As
such, an infinite recursion is useless because it ultimately cannot be
tested: it's self-sufficient, as you point out, and that means that,
whatever it is, it is "true" from within its own framework.

>	And, believe it or not, this does relate to romance and
>relationships, honest :-); ain't the most direct approach, but perhaps
>it'll be one you can relate to.
>
>	What you don't sufficiently appreciate, Kevin, is that when you
>deal with other people, you are in a world of ghosts and magic. People
>don't live in the "real" world, they live in an abstraction of objective
>reality they've constructed in their heads. That's the reality they see
>and react to, not to the objective constructs of science. 

Absolutely.  However, you don't have control over their abstraction.
Instead, you have (at best) partial control over some of the inputs
into their abstraction: the objective reality I like to talk about.

>These private
>realities are as devoid of concreteness and objectivity as the
>self-awarenesses that inhabit them, 

Well, yes, but this is a tautology (inasmuch as the self-awarenesses you
refer to are the things that hold these private realities to begin with
:-).

>but are still real: they are
>experienced (by the inhabitant), and have concrete effects: if someone
>decides in his private reality that you're about to attack him, he may
>kill you, or run away, both real-world phenomena.

Not only do they have concrete effects, but they have concrete inputs
too.  This is important, for it is how one can go about manipulating
these private realities (indeed, I know of no other way to do so).

[Excellent explanation of why a purely analytical approach to the
subject of love and romance is woefully incomplete, deleted]

>	You'll never understand the aspects of human nature you want to
>understand by trying to dissect it as you would a frog. Stop looking for
>science; expect magic. Magic is within the rules of subjective reality.
>Every aspect of the reality you live in is shaped by the beliefs you
>hold about "reality"; change the beliefs and you change your world.

While this is true, it is true only to a certain degree.  Yes, my
"reality" is shaped by my beliefs, but only to a certain extent.  The
real world itself has a great deal of effect on what my "reality" is.
I've tried to arrange things such that my beliefs *about* reality have
as little direct effect as possible on what my reality *is*.  This is
what minimizing my assumptions is all about.

In any case, it may be quite appropriate to expect magic in the case you
describe.  It would certainly be, er, realistic to do so.  :-)

However, magic is something I don't understand, and never have.  Indeed,
I would have to say that this is so by definition (if one understands
something, it is no longer magic, yes?).

So exactly what good will it do me to expect magic?  I can sit back and
expect anything I want, and chances are quite good that nothing will
happen.  Why?  Because in sitting back and expecting something, I'm not
*doing* anything.

If I'm to get anywhere, I have to Do Something.  But Doing Something
ultimately means interacting with objective reality, in this case in
such a way as to cause the intended transformation of another person's
reality.  This requires knowledge about that other person's reality,
knowledge which I cannot know ahead of time except in the most general
sense.  Obtaining this general knowledge is what my analytical
approach is all about.

Of course, this general knowledge will be modified or discarded (whichever
is more appropriate) as I learn more about the specific person's internal
reality.  The problem is this: the only way I can *learn* about another's
internal reality is by *interacting* with that reality.  But interaction
with another's reality requires knowledge of that reality, as outlined
above!  *This* is what the "general knowledge" is for.  And the more
accurate that "general knowledge" is with respect to the individual in
question, the more effective you'll be at interacting with that individual's
reality.

The problem in the general case is that you can't tailor your "general
knowledge" to a specific person's reality.  Once you do that, it's no
longer "general knowledge", but knowledge about that person specifically.

So what's the best way of acquiring the most effective (on average)
general knowledge?  Well, it seems to me that *this* is where my
statistical/analytical approach comes in.  This approach is predicated
on the assumption that you can learn about someone's internal reality
by observing their external behavior, and on the assumption that a
sufficiently large body of individual experiences will yield a reasonably
accurate general picture.

What I'm trying to do is find such a general picture that, if used, will
yield the largest possibility of achieving my goal: to find a suitable
mate (where "suitable" means that I meet their set of needs, which
includes things like attractiveness levels, compatibility, and so forth,
and they meet mine, simultaneously).  Not only does this involve finding
out what the other person's reality is all about, but also successfully
changing it so that their reality includes me in the role I wish to play,
thus causing them to play the role in my reality that I wish them to
play.

At some point in time, I'll have to deal with the specifics.  I think
what many are saying is that I'll get a greater return by concentrating
on more instances of the specific than I will by concentrating further
on the general.

>-  From the Crow's Nest  -                Kenn Barry


-- 
				Kevin Brown

			    kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com
			    kevin@taronga.taronga.com