Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site flairvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!houxz!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!akgua!mcnc!decvax!decwrl!flairvax!kissell From: kissell@flairvax.UUCP (Kevin Kissell) Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: More mirrors, more dust Message-ID: <620@flairvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 3-Jul-84 14:52:02 EDT Article-I.D.: flairvax.620 Posted: Tue Jul 3 14:52:02 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 7-Jul-84 01:32:08 EDT Organization: Fairchild AI Lab, Palo Alto, CA Lines: 82 (Gordon Moffett still wants to get his empirical hands on my mind) > Ah, herein lies the problem: your claim that "others understand what > I mean" is not adequate to justify that the mind exists or performs > the activities you attribute to it. If, in some other culture, we > were to speak of ghosts, and we knew that others knew what we meant > by ghost (because they had seen them too), would that be enough proof > to say, "there are indeed ghosts" -- and worse yet, to start making > hypotheses about these ghosts (because we've all seen them, right?). > It is also a problem that while your mind may be doing things, I can't > measure your mind's activities or compare them to my own. "Well, of > course you can!" you would say, "do I not speak, do I not analyze, > do I not create ideas?" Yes, you do all of those things, and all of > those things are MANIFESTED AS BEHAVIOR and it is by BEHAVIOR that > we measure these activities. I assert, again, that the mind itself > has never been seen. It is a ghost. It is pretty common for me to have an idea, think about it's possibilities, remember it, but do nothing about it until the opportunity presents itself. It seems to me that in your model, I have not had the idea until I act on it, and if I do not act on it, the idea does not exist. This is strongly counterintuitive to say the least. It may be true that as far as *you* are concerned I have not had the idea, but that does not invalidate my experience. For a more concrete example; I have a long commute, and so it is normal for me to work on problems in my head as I drive. In your model, I am doing nothing but guiding my vehicle. Yet the problems are solved. My impression is that my experiences are far from unique, which is why I said that "others understand what I mean" (arguably a poor choice of words). I do not need their corroboration to experience these things, only to have some assurance that such experiences are relatively normal and not a result of some brain dysfunction (but more on that later). > Do you see what I am doing here? I am applying the scientific method > to behavior and finding little evidence to support the existence of > ``mind'', other than in a mystical or colloquial context. Pardon me, but I have yet to see any application of the scientific method in this discussion. You have stated a thesis - that the mind does not exist - and challenged us to disprove it. You never gave any definition of what a mind *is* (other than something that doesn't exist). The closest dictionary to hand gives as a primary definition Mind n 1. The element or elements in an individual governing reasoning, thought, perception, feeling, will, memory, and imagination. So I suppose you mean to say that you do not reason, think, perceive, feel, will, remember, or imagine. How, then, do you hope to apply the scientific method? > And my original object to ``mind'' was: just where is this mind anyway? > SHOW IT TO ME. Then we can continue to discuss it's function. > Otherwise it is a piece of mythology used to support the presumed > deism of human beings. As far a science can tell, consciousness (the mind, if you will) is a brain function. Our understanding of the workings of the brain is incomplete. It may well be that, should we both live another 200 years, I will be able to sit down under some to-be-invented instrument, point to the display and say "that's my mind over there on the left". In the meantime, we will have to make due with "thought experiments" (if you believe in those) and the evidence of our own experience. As to the bit about the presumed deism of human beings, I don't see what that has to do with it, except as an epithet for the difficulties in applying behaviorist precepts that work well on relatively un-self- conscious beings like pigeons to relatively self-conscious beings such as humans. I suspect that it is precisely these difficulties that condition some behaviorists to reject the existence of the mind: it clutters up their nice model. Kevin D. Kissell Fairchild Research Center Advanced Processor Development uucp: {ihnp4 decvax}!decwrl!\ >flairvax!kissell {ucbvax sdcrdcf}!hplabs!/ "Any closing epigram, regardless of truth or wit, grows galling after a number of repetitions"