Hello, all.

I hope you don't mind my piping up here. My qualification is that I'm a
thinking clinician without a philosophy background, and who sees concrete
physical phenomena as the "terra firms" on which to base understanding when
possible.

So typically, my first real encounter with mind/body was in the early 80s,
when I got my kids a Commodore Vic 20 computer. That was the one before the
Commodore 64, and it had 8k of memory and basic programming built in. My
first real project was, of course, to build a neural network program for
character recognition. It finally ran all night, and I wasn't sure if it
had succeeded or not, but in the process I got a feel for how a network of
nodes of adjustable sensitivity could hold information in a form that could
not be "read" other than by running the program., In the electronic world,
the hardware was in no way altered by the information it contained. I could
wipe it out and reseed it from my cassette drive at any time. That was
total separation between hardware and data processing.

Applying that analogy to the brain, the situation is only a little
different. The brain can adjust synapses (nodes) in a way we now know can
be reprogrammed, but there is also proliferation of new synapses and more
permanent changes in "hardware." Thus, the mind-brain problem is slightly
complicated. You could do the same with a computer if, attached to the
machine, there was a robot that could add memory chips when a running
program was exceeding its existing memory. Then the hardware would be
affected by the contents and processing.

Also, as with computers, the design of the hardware can and does impose
some restrictions and stylistic slant to the way data is processed. The
design of the brain affects the mind. The fact that nerve cells are all or
nothing and the fact that they can either activate each other or inhibit
each other has something to do with how we think. I think of the
non-conscious part, especially, as a "metaphor engine, which is specialized
for associations and has a bent for binary organization of choices.

What that means to me, is that mind is the processing and manipulation of
information, and information of all kinds sis stored in neural networks and
pathways. All forms of information appear to be stored in the same form,
ranging from the smell of lilacs to the latest "look" from the Paris
Fashion Week.

I was also very interested in unconscious logic, where I could imagine the
smell of lilacs activating other neural networks like the memory of a
picnic years ago. In the unconscious, these associations are simply
associations, and have no specificity as to the exact nature of the
relationship. It just means that one neural network has some connections to
another.

So in this way, I guess I have always though of Qualia as activation of
neural networks with connections to other neural networks that make for the
rich connotations and associations we have.

Two things are central to being human. One is that we all go through
similar challenges in life but the exact way each is experienced is
different for every individual, so the smell of lilacs can't be assumed to
be the same from one person to another. On the other hand, we do a huge
amount of comparing notes and correcting, starting from childhood, so as to
build and maintain a relative sameness of names and language within
cultures. With regard to different schools of therapy, this means that, at
best, everyone has a different understanding of terms, and no school's
understanding is very cohesive or consistent. That leads to a last point.

It has been very important to me, to identify what I think of as the
"natural cleavage planes" of psychology. That is to say there are some
"things," shame for example, that are extremely useful, and that we can
name with some confidence that everyone is talking about the same thing, or
close to it. I've always tried to build concepts and ideas out of those
elements that seem to correspond to relatively consistent aspects of
reality. Doing so, I think it is possible to talk about therapy in ways
that can be shared.

I am curious to know if this is an unusual point of view and if it makes
sense from the philosophical vantage point.

Thanks for reading.

Jeffery Smith

PS:  Two resources helped me:

1.  About Qualia:
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__plato.stanford.edu_entries_qualia_&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=qw24RYyqZT2FxHb-TKq4t-vPk8z0wVfvQ5uo2OXZwgU&s=B2APfI7nkM39wuARyuspC4NQZPhSwxnFnVeDQf6LEtY&e=

2. Bayesian processing theory:
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.mindcoolness.com_blog_bayesian-2Dbrain-2Dpredictive-2Dprocessing_&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=qw24RYyqZT2FxHb-TKq4t-vPk8z0wVfvQ5uo2OXZwgU&s=slG1YRmH0ac56wlGUEpBwNuGV-TDaMZYoyjTMq83Xxo&e=



On Thu, Apr 2, 2020 at 6:15 PM Cole Butler <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Thank you for sharing these wonderfully insightful and well-articulated
> responses.
>
> Gregg, I need to pick-up a copy of your book as my next read. I'm
> currently slowly making my way through Maps of Meaning. It has been hard to
> read it consistently, as my "quarantine routine" isn't really ironed out
> yet.
>
> I think you all raise amazing points, and the main one that I'm seeing is
> achieving consensus. Primarily, consensus about what we're talking about,
> what there is, and where we go from here. This is especially salient in the
> context of modern psychology.
>
> As I was reading some scientific articles today, I started to shift back
> into a state of feeling like some of the aforementioned discrepancies are
> actually reconcilable. In re-reading through your responses and attached
> articles I'm now having my doubts. Nevertheless, I will articulate where
> I'm coming from. If it is indeed the interpretations of the science that
> are the problem here (via semantic issues, consensus issues, and conceptual
> mis-understanding), rather than the science itself, it may make sense for
> psychological scientists to continue in their pursuits. As an example, I'm
> particularly interested in how family systems impact behavior of children -
> things like parent depression, anger issues, divorce, anxiety etc.. I work
> in this area of research, answering empirical questions to formulate
> treatments to change the cognitions and behavior of parents and thus
> prevent child psychopathology from manifesting and worsening.
>
> So, in thinking about this, it seems to me that it is reconcilable to
> consider the broader problem/theory/meaning of parent psychopathology and
> impact on the child, and to use the established empirical methods to derive
> solutions. For example, one article that I read showed that parent training
> programs were equally effective across nations and were not impacted by
> cultural differences. If science is effective at establishing solutions to
> this problem, then scientists in this area should continue with what
> they're doing. Further, another meta-analysis of parent-training programs
> specifically referenced that scientists should work to identify what the
> key components to the treatment are, and what components are non-essential.
> If that is the focus of the science, are not these scientists also working
> to identify common factors that are particularly important within the
> framework on this subfield?
>
> Perhaps that works when looking within the domain of one program of
> research, but sees its issues manifest at the macro-level, when attempting
> to speak about psychology more broadly. Therefore the question then
> becomes, "What do we do about it?" If scientists are successfully making
> meaningful advances within their own sub-field of psychology using the
> strict empirical methods, then should they not continue? Perhaps that
> answer is obvious. However, when the field becomes disparate and
> argumentation arises surrounding what we're even talking about and we
> cannot form coherence, there the problems arise.
>
> I think this issue is especially interesting to me as I work to figure
> next steps in life. The question for me, then, would be: Can a
> psychological scientist be cognizant of the inherent issues of the field
> and limitations of the methodologies and still continue to work within the
> confines of the modern institution of psychology?
>
> Thanks for reading,
>
> Cole Butler
> TPAC Project Coordinator
> University of Maryland
> UMD ADHD Lab
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.umdadhd.org_cole&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=YzUAa3nTVUAvWKrP4aIiSXl3sLMT8jNQE0YWYauMdF8&s=TORIDXUBjIeSfpjgNuY5J1ac_qghJOUki7ZSCo_yS-Y&e=>
> 2103W, Cole Field House | College Park, MD 20742
> tel 301.405.6163
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 2, 2020 at 7:28 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for these messages.
>>
>>
>>
>> Cole, you are raising a key point. First, you are noting the difference
>> between theorists/philosophers and empiricists.
>>
>>
>>
>> Now, I would likely be more sympathetic to the physicists than the
>> philosophers in some ways, although I would enjoy hearing both. But the
>> situation changes when we move to the psychologists, at least as far as
>> this theorist is concerned.
>>
>>
>>
>> As a theoretical/philosophical AND clinical psychologist, however, I am
>> quite frustrated with the Empirical Psychologists. The reason the issues
>> are different is because we have a decent descriptive metaphysics for
>> physics. That is, general relativity and the Standard Model of Elementary
>> Particle Physics gives us a good map. And all the bizarreness of the
>> quantum was found not by philosophers reflecting on stuff, but by empirical
>> work. That said, there is much interesting stuff going on that requires
>> philosophical reflection, but the issues are complicated and we definitely
>> need both.
>>
>>
>>
>> Now move to psychology, where the conceptual world is a MESS. You bring
>> up “anxiety and the coronavirus”  as a wonderful example. There are, to be
>> sure, interesting empirical questions to be asked. (Indeed, I think a
>> mental health wave will be following the medical and financial and knowing
>> where and when how to shunt it some is very important), but the level of
>> conceptual chaos is outrageous. Consider, for example, most psychologists
>> don’t even recognize the variable versus individual problem. That is, the
>> field used to care about individual human behavior. For example, how will
>> my experience/behavior/personality be impacted by corona? Over the years,
>> the field, with its empirical bent and statistical methods, shifted to
>> variable analysis. This asks, how does a variable like anxiety relate to
>> coronavirus. Anxiety as an AGGREGATE variable distribution of a state is
>> “smeared” across a population. That is VERY different than an individual
>> level of analysis (see here
>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.psychologytoday.com_us_blog_theory-2Dknowledge_201409_why-2Dpsychology-2Dthinks-2Dyou-2Dare-2Daverage&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=YzUAa3nTVUAvWKrP4aIiSXl3sLMT8jNQE0YWYauMdF8&s=9EcwheFV7CGtUJjh0YHjUzaI7wHw_L1KPZGbqrIjSws&e=>
>> for more on this point). This is just one of about sixty points of horrible
>> conceptual confusion.
>>
>>
>>
>> This conceptual confusion is there for anyone to see and anyone who
>> analyzes can see how profound the problem is. Consider, for the love of
>> god, that many people still debate if our field is even a freakin’ science.
>> This
>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.psychologytoday.com_us_blog_theory-2Dknowledge_201601_the-2Dis-2Dpsychology-2Dscience-2Ddebate&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=YzUAa3nTVUAvWKrP4aIiSXl3sLMT8jNQE0YWYauMdF8&s=yVaVpbWP3DyikBQPc5KGxbFqd4eC2oxD94h71x8Hm4I&e=>
>> is the reason. And so, what does many stream psychology keep doing…More
>> Empiricism. More studies. More data. As I note in my book, the different
>> research paradigms anchored to different operational systems are like
>> building sandcastles. They might be intricate and interesting, but they get
>> washed out with the tide of new definitions and the consequence is a
>> general absence of deep, consensual, cumulative knowledge, which is the
>> real utility of scientific knowledge (as opposed to the methods of science).
>>
>>
>>
>> My current book is about this problem and solving it with the Unified
>> Framework…
>>
>>
>> Best,
>> G
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* tree of knowledge system discussion <
>> [log in to unmask]> *On Behalf Of *Brent Allsop
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, April 1, 2020 11:11 PM
>> *To:* [log in to unmask]
>> *Subject:* Re: Philosophy, physics, and psychology
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi Cole and Jeffrey,
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 1, 2020 at 1:07 PM Cole Butler <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> One day I attended a colloquium held by the philosophy professor that
>> taught my Philosophy and the Physics course. His talk referenced the
>> measurement problem, and it was addressed to the physics department.
>> However, rather than sparking a discussion on what the theoretical issues
>> with understanding quantum mechanics, the physics professors quickly made
>> it into an egotistical thing. They turned the Q and A into a discussion
>> about their own research, but weren’t particularly interested in discussing
>> the fact that no current theory provides a complete answer to how a
>> measurement is made (when the wave function collapses).
>>
>>
>>
>> Not sure if this is what your trying to get at, but this seems to be the
>> exact problem I see in studies of the qualitative nature of consciousness.
>> Today, everyone simply fails to distinguish between intrinsic qualities of
>> (reality and knowledge of reality).  This results in 'qualia blindness'
>> (using one word for all things red (both reality and knowledge of reality
>> having the same label: red).  Everyone ideologically polarizes to one
>> hierarchy or the other, religious people claiming qualia are "spiritual
>> qualities" and atheists claiming: "We don't have qualia , it just seems
>> like we do".  So everyone just wants to twist everything to support the
>> ideological beliefs of their hierarchy, rather than just resolve the
>> problem, which is usually somewhere in the middle.  And people like David
>> Chalmers becomes famous (at least to all the religious people, the enemy of
>> the atheists) for just claiming we need to "face up to the hard problem"
>> instead of realizing a simple mistake on our epistemology of color.
>>
>>
>>
>> If you simply stop being qualia blind and start using multiple words for
>> different qualities (red = reflects or emits red light, and redness =
>> intrinsic redness quality of our knowledge of red things we directly
>> experience).  You can finally come to the simple conclusion that it isn't
>> an impossibly "hard mind body problem" it's just a color problem.  All we
>> haver are abstract descriptions of the stuff in the brain, but we don't
>> know the intrinsic quality any of the descriptions of behavior are
>> describing.  To know what the word "red" means, you need to point to a
>> particular thing with that intrinsic red property.  So, all we need to do
>> is have a dictionary that might be something like:  Our description of how
>> glutamate reacts in a synapse, is describing redness.  In other words, the
>> abstract word redness and the abstract word glutamate could be labels for
>> the same thing.
>>
>>
>>
>> But of course, since both the religious people and atheists, have a hard
>> time wanting to be told their entire carreras (both past and future) are
>> based on a simple epistemology of color fallacy.  nobody wants to listen
>> to, lat alone publishing anything pointing out anything like this.
>>
>>
>>
>> Here is a link to a new page with a set of 12 questions asking: "Are you
>> qualia blind?
>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__qualia.insite21.com_survey_1584554976&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=WRoUUV_cMT2BetcpsaJI2qbY1DIMBUKodYDtk5g8usc&s=-Er_ogfUz6N0M0-1nrhDGQTUzg673pLJ1EOyR4Go6NE&e=>"
>> which will hopefully help people to better understand what qualia blindness
>> is.
>>
>> And as usual, you can always check out the emerging consensus "Representational
>> Qualia Theory
>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__canonizer.com_topic_88-2DRepresentational-2DQualia_6&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=WRoUUV_cMT2BetcpsaJI2qbY1DIMBUKodYDtk5g8usc&s=63UEpDcNRzKZa7Os9IUJIaie7sTUG5yAqX0vznJ4J6o&e=>
>> ".
>>
>>
>>
>> Would love feedback on any of this.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 1, 2020 at 7:08 PM Jeffery Smith MD <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hello, Cole and group, I definitely resonate with your thoughts. I am
>> somewhat of an outsider, since I am primarily a clinician and do not have
>> an academic job. From my point of view, the need for consensus is huge, as
>> a means of strengthening the stature of psychotherapy and crossing
>> boundaries between schools to do research. From my point of view, there are
>> enough non-controversial principles to flesh out the common infrastructure
>> that applies to all psychotherapies. I'm envisioning a kind of Rosetta
>> Stone, a common set of constructs that underlie all therapies. But the
>> amount of resistance has surprised me.
>>
>>
>>
>> Feeling resistance has led me to think more about what keeps the current
>> state of affairs as is. To use Dan Siegel's favorite concept from systems
>> theory, I think there's an *attractor *in there somewhere.
>>
>>
>>
>> To me these ideological "attractor"s are all based on the fact that we've
>> all been bread to support the guy at the top of the hierarchy.  For
>> billions of years, the largest group was the only one that could survive,
>> with siver limits on resources.  And in the past, the only way to scale,
>> was within a Hierarchy, all about only what the guy at the top wanted.
>> These hierarchies have been bread, in a survival of the fittest contest,
>> only the fittest surviving.  The humans that were best bread to best
>> support only the guy at the top, having a clear distinction of what is
>> supporting our leader and right, and who wasn't supporting our leader / not
>> right.  We are good and anything not supporting our leader is "them" and
>> needs to be either destroyed or consumed/converted.  Our only surviving
>> ancestors were the ones with the strongest tendencies to support the guy at
>> the top, all others being slaughtered and not surviving.
>>
>>
>>
>> As you pointed out, it is all about consensus.  Building and tracking
>> consensus is what canonizer is all about.  It's all about having the fewest
>> possible camps, with a negotiated consistent language and so on.  Each camp
>> is encouraged to describe how their camp can be falsified.  Describing the
>> experiments is the job of the theoretician, after all.  Then it is up to
>> the experimentalist to falsify all but THE ONE camp that can't be falsified
>> - achieving a true bottom up consensus, not just what some guy at the top
>> dictates - everything else being destroyed / consumed / ignored - at any
>> cost.
>>
>>
>>
>> We've already had at least one person abandon his camp on consciousness,
>> due to falsifying evidence from the large hadron collider.  And it's
>> already surprising that even Dennett's current "Predictive Bayesian
>> Coding Theory
>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__canonizer.com_topic_88-2DDennett-2Ds-2DPBC-2DTheory_21&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=WRoUUV_cMT2BetcpsaJI2qbY1DIMBUKodYDtk5g8usc&s=2Sib9u0w815dREvH4jjUlhcU_614C3pmqiUvK9J85xI&e=>"
>> is in a supporting sub camp position to RQT
>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__canonizer.com_topic_88-2DRepresentational-2DQualia_6&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=WRoUUV_cMT2BetcpsaJI2qbY1DIMBUKodYDtk5g8usc&s=63UEpDcNRzKZa7Os9IUJIaie7sTUG5yAqX0vznJ4J6o&e=>.
>> I think this is strong evidence that we have already made, and continue to
>> make more progress towards consensus than anyone realises, in this field.
>> And I bet the same is true in most all fields. as you say.  What we agree
>> on is always far more than what we argue about and polarize on.  It's all
>> about building and tracking consensus.  That which you measure, improves.
>>
>>
>>
>> Brent Allsop
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ############################
>>
>> To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to:
>> mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the
>> following link:
>> http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1
>> ############################
>>
>> To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to:
>> mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the
>> following link:
>> http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1
>>
> ############################
>
> To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to:
> mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the
> following link:
> http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1
>

############################

To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list:
write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]
or click the following link:
http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1