It's a philosopher's job to tell people how to live

Yitwail

Cognitive science is one of my favorite topics. I have been studying "Philosophy in the Flesh" for many months and have written several essays that I have posted on different forums. This is some of them. If you have an interest in this subject you must study this book. It is a tuff read but I consider it to be one of the best books I have studied.

I will not try to answer your specific questions because to do so with any coherence I would have to 'set the stage' with all of this anyway.

Cognitive Science(2)

We have in our Western philosophy a traditional theory of faculty psychology wherein our reasoning is a faculty completely separate from the body. "Reason is seen as independent of perception and bodily movement." It is this capacity of autonomous reason that makes us different in kind from all other animals. I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals.

This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science. Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason. Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind.

The three major findings of cognitive science are:
The mind is inherently embodied.
Thought is mostly unconscious.
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

"These findings of cognitive science are profoundly disquieting [for traditional thinking] in two respects. First, they tell us that human reason is a form of animal reason, a reason inextricably tied to our bodies and the peculiarities of our brains. Second, these results tell us that our bodies, brains, and interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real."

All living creatures categorize. All creatures, as a minimum, separate eat from no eat and friend from foe. As neural creatures tadpole and wo/man categorize. There are trillions of synaptic connections taking place in the least sophisticated of creatures and this multiple synapses must be organized in some way to facilitate passage through a small number of interconnections and thus categorization takes place. Great numbers of different synapses take place in an experience and these are subsumed in some fashion to provide the category eat or foe perhaps.

Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories.

Quotes from "Philosophy in the Flesh".

P.S If we take a big bite out of reality we will, I think, find that it is multilayered like the onion. There are many domains of knowledge available to us for penetrating those layers of reality. Cognitive science is one that I find to be very interesting.







Concepts

Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories.

Human categories, the stuff of experience, are reasoned about in many different ways. These differing ways of reasoning, these different conceptualizations, are called prototypes.

Typical-case prototype conceptualization modes are "used in drawing inferences about category members in the absence of any special contextual information. Ideal-case prototypes allow us to evaluate category members relative to some conceptual standard…Social stereotypes are used to make snap judgments…Salient exemplars (well-known examples) are used for making probability judgments…Reasoning with prototypes is, indeed, so common that it is inconceivable that we could function for long without them."

When we conceptualize categories in this fashion we often envision them using spatial metaphors. Spatial relation metaphors form the heart of our ability to perceive, conceive, and to move about in space. We unconsciously form spatial relation contexts for entities: in, on, about, across from some other entity are common relationships that make it possible for us to function in our normal manner.

When we perceive a black cat and do not wish to cross its path our imagination conceives container shapes such that we do not penetrate the container space occupied by the cat at some time in its journey. We function in space and the container schema is a normal means we have for reasoning about action in space. Such imaginings are not conscious but most of our perception and conception is an automatic unconscious force for functioning in the world.


Neural Modeling


Cognitive science has radically attacked the traditional Western philosophical position that there is a dichotomy between perception and conception. This traditional view that perception is strictly a faculty of body and conception (the formation and use of concepts) is purely mental and wholly separate from and independent of our ability to perceive and move.

Cognitive science has introduced revolutionary theories that, if true, will change dramatically the views of Western philosophy. Advocates of the traditional view will, of course, "say that conceptual structure must have a neural realization in the brain, which just happens to reside in a body. But they deny that anything about the body is essential for characterizing what concepts are."

The cognitive science claim is that "the very properties of concepts are created as a result of the way the brain and body are structured and the way they function in interpersonal relations and in the physical world."

The embodied-mind hypothesis therefore radically undercuts the perception/conception distinction. In an embodied mind, it is conceivable that the same neural system engaged in perception (or in bodily movements) plays a central role in conception. Indeed, in recent neural modeling research, models of perceptual mechanisms and motor schemas can actually do conception work in language learning and in reasoning.

A standard technique for checking out new ideas is to create computer models of the idea and subject that model to simulated conditions to determine if the model behaves as does the reality. Such modeling techniques are used constantly in projecting behavior of meteorological parameters.

Neural computer models have shown that the types of operations required to perceive and move in space require the very same type of capability associated with reasoning. That is, neural models capable of doing all of the things that a body must be able to do when perceiving and moving can also perform the same kinds of actions associated with reasoning, i.e. inferring, categorizing, and conceiving.

Our understanding of biology indicates that the body has a marvelous ability to do as any handyman does, i.e. make do with what is at hand. The body would, it seems logical to assume, take these abilities that exist in all creatures that move and survive in space and with such fundamental capabilities reshape it through evolution to become what we now know as our ability to reason. The first budding of the reasoning ability exists in all creatures that function as perceiving, moving, surviving, creatures.

Cognitive science has, it seems to me, connected our ability to reason with our bodies in such away as to make sense out of connecting reason with our biological evolution in ways that Western philosophy has not done, as far as I know.

It seems to me that Western philosophical tradition as always tried to separate mind from body and in so doing has never been able to show how mind, as was conceived by this tradition, could be part of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Cognitive science now provides us with a comprehensible model for grounding all that we are both bodily and mentally into a unified whole that makes sense without all of the attempts to make mind as some kind of transcendent, mystical, reality unassociated with biology.

Quotes from "Philosophy in the Flesh"


From a biological perspective it is certainly a logical extrapolation to expect that reasoning is an ability to evolve from sensorimotor capacity. "It explains why our system for structuring and reasoning about events of all kinds should have a structure of a motor-control system.""Philosophically, the embodiment of reason via the sensorimotor system is of great importance. It is a crucial part of the explanation of why it is possible for our concepts to fit so well with the way we function in the world."

This is principally what I object to in most of your posts: the determination to replace one with the other. I would rather have both.

From it's very inception, this thread has elements of IDIOCY & IDOL WORSHIP and not just ordinary idol worship, but exceptionally snotty idol worship. What's so special about Brandeis? What does a retired teacher have that YOU are so deeply lacking in? YOU feel compelled to give that ludicrous statement some kind of immense significance that it simply has never had. Obviously this retired professor of note has awoken at a very old age to begin asking the real questions, and still this is more like science fiction than life. Far more than what it was worth. What exactly IS a philosopher? Just a thinker. Like me. Each of us are bound by the truest nature of our humanity to THINK. To consider. To watch and to ask what things mean to us. Can YOU answer for me what the birth of my daughter meant for me, to me? Can you tell me how I should respond to my father's death? No one else can answer one single question for me in this life, for the questions are mine, hence the answers must also be mine. Carl Jung spoke about the interpretation of dreams in the truest way anyone ever has. ONLY the dreamer can decipher the symbolic & the meaningful images we see while we are close between the conscious and the unconscious. The harder I work at the remembering and writing down my dreams, going through the steps, the work that only I can do, for they are uniquely MY symbols and no one else's - the closer I come to understanding the reality of me and my life.
No one else exists who can do this for me, or for you. What terrible agony
it must be to reach old age after teaching people a crock for my entire life only to realize that I have yet to begin to ask my own questions. Actually
the philosophers of the past are worthy of study only because from them we can see what in their day and time, was most worthy of effort & study of time, reflection & thought. I've never heard of any other human being having the AUDACITY to deluded themselves into the believing that they should be telling people how to live their lives since Emily Post.
Or maybe Billy Graham. What absolute nonsense, and what's even worse is that it is snobbish nonsense. Why not try to find some cojones one day & begin doing your own work yourself. Stop looking for someone else to give you the road map. There isn't any.

Re: It's a philosopher's job to tell people how to live


Oh good, once you're done we'll all be omniscient?

Surely ignorance is relative among mortals, and can never be destroyed.

I wonder if you have any idea as to the depth of your own ignorance coberst?

Personally, I give more credence to those who claim to understand only the smallest percentage of all there is to know ....over those who claim to know much.

The key word here is 'suspend' not replace! Wods are important and I try to be accurate. Sometimes I fail but I do not think this is one of those times.

Now you can 'suspend' your objection for awhile.

Re: It's a philosopher's job to tell people how to live


Like ants, I try to destroy ignorance one entity at a time.

Ignorance, as those who spend time trying to destroy their own know best, is infinite. The more one knows the more one recognizes one's own ignorance. There is only one exception to this rule. Th exception to this rule is the sophmore. It is the sophmoric attitude that we all display at one time in our lives.

Coberst.

"Ignorance" is "the act of ignoring". What better way to promote this than to write successively lengthy posts

?????

i.e. You are not going to "destroy ignorance" by waffling on and on.

Communication is like salesmanship...you find out where your prospect "is at" and move him/her in small stages to what you want. No body on this thread agrees with philosophers as advisors on life but if you show an interest in a person's a personal philosophy and where it came from, satisfaction might be obtainable on both sides. Compris ?

coberst, your last "reply" to my questions was tantamount to a suggestion to read "philosophy in the flesh." i read the excerpt and examined the index on Amazon. at around 650 pages, i'm afraid it's too lengthy to wade through at this point, especially considering there's no index entry for "free will," which was the subject of one of my questions to you. if it has nothing to say about whether an embodied mind can have volition that is not externally caused, it hardly explains how the mind works as far as i'm concerned.

Eorl wrote:


An important question, and not just to coberst. Do I know the depth of my own ignorance? Delusions may form at any level of thought, and do so usually without our knowing.


babsatamelia,

For the most part I agree with you post, but if the approach in this thread is indeed snotty idol worship, then I'd have to say that your approach is perhaps a tad self-indulging.

coberst wrote:


Infinite as in "never ending, never beginning", or as in "sustaining".

It takes a great deal of self awareness and humbleness to end ignorance. One needs to be prepated, at all times, to acknowledge the fact that you might be wrong, despite the most sound and logical reasoning.

fresco wrote:


Hmm... best be wary of this fresco, or he'll sell you the holes in your own shoes..

But seriously, I think you made a good point with "ignoring is the act of ignorance".

Good salesmanship is, in a way, to expliot ignorance. To prod and nudge, fire the ego, plant fictional needs, manipulate and sweettalk.

Some of what we regard as philosophy fit the above description better than the one they are currently labeled under.

I hate to say this fresco but you do not know what you are talking about! So there, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I was in the selling business--that is how I retired at an early age.

Such questions as 'what is free will' cannot be answered easily. If you are looking for quick answers then this book is not your cup of tea.

This book is about a first paradigm for cognitive science. It is revolutionary and not for the timid nor those looking for a quickie.

coberst,

Since you say that fresco has no idea, I guess that means me too, because I agree with fresco.

So why don't try to enlighten us? It might be our ignorance that make us hold to such claims, but putting things in my pipe and smoking them has never helped against that.

I try to maintain such a level of humbleness that I can see whenever I'm being ignorant, and I try to have the good manners to admit it when I know I am.

Not to insult you, but from where I'm standing I'd say you preach CT much better than you practice it.

all things being equal, i prefer quick answers, but lengthy answers are better than none. so, having read the book "philosophy in the flesh," be so kind as to at least indicate whether it proposes a mechanism for free will or alternately denies its existence, using as few or as many words as you prefer.

yitwail,

I posted some thought on the issue of free will and named it "free will- a debate on false premisses?"

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

sure, as soon as i find out from coberst if the debate's already been settled.

Cyracuz

I suspect that is your judgment because you most likely know nothing about CT.