Political Theory

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

AJ — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 15:21:00 GMT

David Hume:
Whatever has the air of a paradox, and is contrary to the first and most unprejudic'd notions of mankind is often greedily embrac'd by philosophers, as shewing the superiority of their science, which cou'd discover opinions so remote from vulgar conception.

Nice, timely find.

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

Jackson — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 23:49:07 GMT

"Steven Pinker kicks ass and takes names. He is one of the greatest luminaries alive today."

so long as you don't ask him about the police strike in Montreal and the feasibility of anarchy, I agree.

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

AJ — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:17:16 GMT

David Hume:
Tho' a particular colour, taste, and smell are qualities all united together in this apple, 'tis easy to perceive they are not the same, but are at least distinguishable from each other.

I agree with this - or rather I should say, it is self-evident to me as well. This apple on my desk is only accessible to me as a set of sensations: how it looks, smells, tastes, feels, and the sound it makes when I bite into it (or drop it, etc.). Plus my thoughts about apples, such as that they grow in cold climates and are good for digestive health - but those thoughts are also just sensations of those same five senses. (For example, I picture in my mind apples growing in Washington and northern Japan, I imagine feeling healthy as I visualize a calendar with each day containing a little video of me biting into an apple.)

If I do not know how an apple looks, smells, tastes, feels, or sounds when bitten, or that it contains fiber, or where they grow or whether they are healthy or whether they are food, etc. etc., then I cannot really say I know what an apple even is. The concept of APPLE to me is nothing more than those components, which are all sensations (whether direct pure sensations such as redness or tartness, or facts and other abstract notions about the fruit). Of course that must be true by what we have already discussed, but my point here is that this is the sense in which I agree with Hume.

So I think I can understand you as saying we can divide sensations down into primary ones, such as tartness or redness, rather than saying what I thought you might possibly be saying, i.e., that we could further break down tartness into specific taste-receptor components, or the like. Rather, I think both you and Hume (and I as well) are saying that these extra components, although perhaps scientifically established, are not available to our direct subjective experience (without special equipment at least), and since we are trying to arrive at the fundamental elements of experience as we actually experience it, we can (and should) stop at that point where we can no longer subjectively sense anything more primary.

On teasing out the semantic ambiguities here, this brief article is absolutely excellent* and I actually would feel remiss if I didn't recommend reading it right now! For example, a common objection someone might have about my conception of APPLE is that not all apples are red, nor tart, nor have the same feel when bitten into, etc. etc. My answer is that anything that satisfies a certain number of the most pivotal of those characteristics is considered an apple. All concepts and definitions are in that sense somewhat fuzzy. The linked article says just about everything I want to say, and much clearer than I would.

*Except for the determinism vs. free will issue - I think that's a false distinction. Anyway, only the first part of the article is relevant, so I'll post it here:

Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease

122Yvain30 May 2010 09:16PM

Today's therapeutic ethos, which celebrates curing and disparages judging, expresses the liberal disposition to assume that crime and other problematic behaviors reflect social or biological causation. While this absolves the individual of responsibility, it also strips the individual of personhood, and moral dignity

-- George Will, townhall.com

Sandy is a morbidly obese woman looking for advice.

Her husband has no sympathy for her, and tells her she obviously needs to stop eating like a pig, and would it kill her to go to the gym once in a while?

Her doctor tells her that obesity is primarily genetic, and recommends the diet pill orlistat and a consultation with a surgeon about gastric bypass.

Her sister tells her that obesity is a perfectly valid lifestyle choice, and that fat-ism, equivalent to racism, is society's way of keeping her down.

When she tells each of her friends about the opinions of the others, things really start to heat up.

Her husband accuses her doctor and sister of absolving her of personal responsibility with feel-good platitudes that in the end will only prevent her from getting the willpower she needs to start a real diet.

Her doctor accuses her husband of ignorance of the real causes of obesity and of the most effective treatments, and accuses her sister of legitimizing a dangerous health risk that could end with Sandy in hospital or even dead.

Her sister accuses her husband of being a jerk, and her doctor of trying to medicalize her behavior in order to turn it into a "condition" that will keep her on pills for life and make lots of money for Big Pharma.

Sandy is fictional, but similar conversations happen every day, not only about obesity but about a host of other marginal conditions that some consider character flaws, others diseases, and still others normal variation in the human condition. Attention deficit disorder, internet addiction, social anxiety disorder (as one skeptic said, didn't we used to call this "shyness"?), alcoholism, chronic fatigue, oppositional defiant disorder ("didn't we used to call this being a teenager?"), compulsive gambling, homosexuality, Aspergers' syndrome, antisocial personality, even depression have all been placed in two or more of these categories by different people.

Sandy's sister may have a point, but this post will concentrate on the debate between her husband and her doctor, with the understanding that the same techniques will apply to evaluating her sister's opinion. The disagreement between Sandy's husband and doctor centers around the idea of "disease". If obesity, depression, alcoholism, and the like are diseases, most people default to the doctor's point of view; if they are not diseases, they tend to agree with the husband.

The debate over such marginal conditions is in many ways a debate over whether or not they are "real" diseases. The usual surface level arguments trotted out in favor of or against the proposition are generally inconclusive, but this post will apply a host of techniques previously discussed on Less Wrong to illuminate the issue.

What is Disease?

In Disguised Queries , Eliezer demonstrates how a word refers to a cluster of objects related upon multiple axes. For example, in a company that sorts red smooth translucent cubes full of vanadium from blue furry opaque eggs full of palladium, you might invent the word "rube" to designate the red cubes, and another "blegg", to designate the blue eggs. Both words are useful because they "carve reality at the joints" - they refer to two completely separate classes of things which it's practically useful to keep in separate categories. Calling something a "blegg" is a quick and easy way to describe its color, shape, opacity, texture, and chemical composition. It may be that the odd blegg might be purple rather than blue, but in general the characteristics of a blegg remain sufficiently correlated that "blegg" is a useful word. If they weren't so correlated - if blue objects were equally likely to be palladium-containing-cubes as vanadium-containing-eggs, then the word "blegg" would be a waste of breath; the characteristics of the object would remain just as mysterious to your partner after you said "blegg" as they were before.

"Disease", like "blegg", suggests that certain characteristics always come together. A rough sketch of some of the characteristics we expect in a disease might include:

1. Something caused by the sorts of thing you study in biology: proteins, bacteria, ions, viruses, genes.
2. Something involuntary and completely immune to the operations of free will
3. Something rare; the vast majority of people don't have it
4. Something unpleasant; when you have it, you want to get rid of it
5. Something discrete; a graph would show two widely separate populations, one with the disease and one without, and not a normal distribution.
6. Something commonly treated with science-y interventions like chemicals and radiation.

Cancer satisfies every one of these criteria, and so we have no qualms whatsoever about classifying it as a disease. It's a type specimen, the sparrow as opposed to the ostrich. The same is true of heart attack, the flu, diabetes, and many more.

Some conditions satisfy a few of the criteria, but not others. Dwarfism seems to fail (5), and it might get its status as a disease only after studies show that the supposed dwarf falls way out of normal human height variation. Despite the best efforts of transhumanists, it's hard to convince people that aging is a disease, partly because it fails (3). Calling homosexuality a disease is a poor choice for many reasons, but one of them is certainly (4): it's not necessarily unpleasant.

The marginal conditions mentioned above are also in this category. Obesity arguably sort-of-satisfies criteria (1), (4), and (6), but it would be pretty hard to make a case for (2), (3), and (5).

So, is obesity really a disease? Well, is Pluto really a planet? Once we state that obesity satisfies some of the criteria but not others, it is meaningless to talk about an additional fact of whether it "really deserves to be a disease" or not.

If it weren't for those pesky hidden inferences...

Hidden Inferences From Disease Concept

The state of the disease node, meaningless in itself, is used to predict several other nodes with non-empirical content. In English: we make value decisions based on whether we call something a "disease" or not.

If something is a real disease, the patient deserves our sympathy and support; for example, cancer sufferers must universally be described as "brave". If it is not a real disease, people are more likely to get our condemnation; for example Sandy's husband who calls her a "pig" for her inability to control her eating habits. The difference between "shyness" and "social anxiety disorder" is that people with the first get called "weird" and told to man up, and people with the second get special privileges and the sympathy of those around them.

And if something is a real disease, it is socially acceptable (maybe even mandated) to seek medical treatment for it. If it's not a disease, medical treatment gets derided as a "quick fix" or an "abdication of personal responsibility". I have talked to several doctors who are uncomfortable suggesting gastric bypass surgery, even in people for whom it is medically indicated, because they believe it is morally wrong to turn to medicine to solve a character issue.

While a condition's status as a "real disease" ought to be meaningless as a "hanging node" after the status of all other nodes have been determined, it has acquired political and philosophical implications because of its role in determining whether patients receive sympathy and whether they are permitted to seek medical treatment.

If we can determine whether a person should get sympathy, and whether they should be allowed to seek medical treatment, independently of the central node "disease" or of the criteria that feed into it, we will have successfully unasked the question "are these marginal conditions real diseases" and cleared up the confusion.

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

I. Ryan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:08:53 GMT

AJ:

And also, I think this means we are engaged in the same enterprise: we both want to create better engines for basic communication "language," but I am emphasizing the visual aspect (or really all sensations, but visual seems the most practical for now).

It is great to find somebody else working on the same project, especially somebody who is going about it at a different angle. I was beginning to think that I was alone in this! But apparently not.

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

nirgrahamUK — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:24:47 GMT

ah yes, I would say what you refer to is thymological/historical

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

I. Ryan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:22:40 GMT

nirgrahamUK:

its a formal principle of economics; it falls under economics and therefore praxeology, rather than thymology.

now, whether such and such agents acted and engaged in trade/assosciation etc, is a matter of facts and values i.e thymology/history.

Oh, sorry, I was actually talking about the principle of association of David Hume, not the principle of association of Ludwig von Mises. I should have been more clear.

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

nirgrahamUK — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:14:52 GMT

its a formal principle of economics; it falls under economics and therefore praxeology, rather than thymology.

now, whether such and such agents acted and engaged in trade/assosciation etc, is a matter of facts and values i.e thymology/history.

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

I. Ryan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:12:43 GMT

Quick question: Is the principle of association a part of praxeology or thymology? It is a part of thymology, right?

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

AJ — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:53:31 GMT

Quote note on your quick note about getting older and losing consciousness or "mindfulness": I understand exactly what you're talking about, and I have noticed the very same thing. You may find it interesting to note that taste is the same way. You become almost unconscious of the more subtle aspects over time, and not just because of aging taste buds, but I mean when you're still in your teens, 20s and 30s. Remember eating a Werther's Original for the first time? There is a certain substance that is said to undo this effect temporarily (for food and everything else), which I think is a significant factor in its popularity ;-)

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

I. Ryan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:37:04 GMT

AJ:

I'm guessing here by simple perception you do mean "dots" (not as in spatial points, but as in "raw sensory data" prior to applying a theory to make sense of it). It depends on at what level I am thinking of "A chair is in my room." If I am just thinking "X is in Y" and am not at this precise moment concerned about what X and Y refer to, I might just see a diagram.* Even if the diagram could be used for other things it may still be that that is all that is perceptually present for me. Now I think you are making a slightly different point that, say, a picture of a chair in my room would not be simple because it is made up of visual "pixels" (a scientist might say, photons striking my rods and codes). I haven't pursued that line of analysis, just because there are some messy issues about how much we really access those photons hitting our eye directly, how much the subconscious filters it, how much we really see and how much we think we see and is just being filled in by our imagination, etc.

Here is David Hume talking about the distinction:

There is another division of our perceptions, which it will be convenient to observe, and which extends itself both to our impressions and ideas. This division is into Simple and Complex. Simple perceptions or impressions and ideas are such as admit of no distinction nor separation. The complex are the contrary to these, and may be distinguished into parts. Tho' a particular colour, taste, and smell are qualities all united together in this apple, 'tis easy to perceive they are not the same, but are at least distinguishable from each other.

And:

Whatever has the air of a paradox, and is contrary to the first and most unprejudic'd notions of mankind is often greedily embrac'd by philosophers, as shewing the superiority of their science, which cou'd discover opinions so remote from vulgar conception. On the other hand, any thing propos'd to us, which causes surprize and admiration, gives such a satisfaction to the mind, that it indulges itself in those agreeable emotions, and will never be perswaded that its pleasure is entirely without foundation. From these dispositions in philosophers and their disciples arises that mutual complaisance betwixt them; while the former furnish such plenty of strange and unaccountable opinions, and the latter so readily believe them. Of this mutual complaisance I cannot give a more evident instance than in the doctrine of infinite divisibility, with the examination of which I shall begin this subject of the ideas of space and time.

'Tis universally allow'd, that the capacity of the mind is limited, and can never attain a full and adequate conception of infinity: And tho' it were not allow'd, 'twou'd be sufficiently evident from the plainest observation and experience. 'Tis also obvious, that whatever is capable of being divided in infinitum, must consist of an infinite number of parts, and that 'tis impossible to set any bounds to the number of parts, without setting bounds at the same time to the division. It requires scarce any induction to conclude from hence, that the idea, which we form of any finite quality, is not infinitely divisible, but that by proper distinctions and separations we may run up this idea to inferior ones, which will be perfectly simple and indivisible. In rejecting the infinite capacity of the mind, we suppose it may arrive at an end in the division of its ideas; nor are there any possible means of evading the evidence of this conclusion.

'Tis therefore certain, that the imagination reaches a minimum, and may raise up to itself an idea, of which it cannot conceive any sub-division, and which cannot be diminished without a total annihilation. When you tell me of the thousandth and ten thousandth part of a grain of sand, I have a distinct idea of these numbers and of their different proportions; but the images, which I form in my mind to represent the things themselves, are nothing different from each other, nor inferior to that image, by which I represent the grain of sand itself, which is suppos'd so vastly to exceed them. What consists of parts is distinguishable into them, and what is distinguishable is separable. But whatever we may imagine of the thing, the idea of a grain of sand is not distinguishable, nor separable into twenty, much less into a thousand, ten thousand, or an infinite number of different ideas.

'Tis the same case with the impressions of the senses as with the ideas of the imagination. Put a spot of ink upon paper, fix your eye upon that spot, and retire to such a distance, that at last you lose sight of it; 'tis plain, that the moment before it vanish'd the image or impression was perfectly indivisible. 'Tis not for want of rays of light striking on our eyes, that the minute parts of distant bodies convey not any sensible impression; but because they are remov'd beyond that distance, at which their impressions were reduc'd to a minimum, and were incapable of any farther diminution. A microscope or telescope, which renders them visible, produces not any new rays of light, but only spreads those, which always flow'd from them; and by that means both gives parts to impressions, which to the naked eye appear simple and uncompounded, and advances to a minimum, what was formerly imperceptible.

We may hence discover the error of the common opinion, that the capacity of the mind is limited on both sides, and that 'tis impossible for the imagination to form an adequate idea, of what goes beyond a certain degree of minuteness as well as of greatness. Nothing can be more minute, than some ideas, which we form in the fancy; and images, which appear to the senses; since there are ideas and images perfectly simple and indivisible. The only defect of our senses is, that they give us disproportion'd images of things, and represent as minute and uncompounded what is really great and compos'd of a vast number of parts. This mistake we are not sensible of; but taking the impressions of those minute objects, which appear to the senses, to be equal or nearly equal to the objects, and finding by reason, that there are other objects vastly more minute, we too hastily conclude, that these are inferior to any idea of our imagination or impression of our senses. This however is certain, that we can form ideas, which shall be no greater than the smallest atom of the animal spirits of an insect a thousand times less than a mite: And we ought rather to conclude, that the difficulty lies in enlarging our conceptions so much as to form a just notion of a mite, or even of an insect a thousand times less than a mite. For in order to form a just notion of these animals, we must have a distinct idea representing every part of them; which, according to the system of infinite divisibility, is utterly impossible, and according to that of indivisible parts or atoms, is extremely difficult, by reason of the vast number and multiplicity of these parts.

I think that those quotations might be able to clear this up.

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

I. Ryan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:36:48 GMT

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

I. Ryan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:35:23 GMT

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

I. Ryan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:13:08 GMT

AJ:

My suspicion is that the line between conscious and unconscious is not clean, but in fact is just determined by speed. The faster it happens the more subconscious it is. In some sense I can be conscious of almost any one thing I do when riding a bicycle, if I think to notice, but mostly it just happens way too fast. Rather than say it is below conscious awareness, I would say the sensations are flashing in my mind so fast that I cannot possibly remember them. Since there is a limitation on the number of things we can hold in our STM, it would simply be impossible to hold even a small fraction of all the sensations of the process of riding a bicycle in my STM at any given time. When I am first learning and it takes all my concentration is when I am most aware of those sensations, but I am also most preoccupied with the learning task. So one way or another we hardly ever get to notice the sensations that are our thoughts, racing by.

I stopped reading you post there, because I want to say something about it. (I will continue reading it when I finish writing this reply.)

I think that you are correct that the distinction between something being conscious and something being unconscious is at least in one sense just one of how proficient or fast you are at doing it. I can drive someplace normal without even thinking of it at all. I can drive all of the way there, and then not be able to remember anything about the trip except for all of the thoughts not about driving which were occupying my mind during the trip, because those thoughts weren't normal.

I noticed that, the older which I get, the less mundane things which there are which I have to "consciously" do. I don't need to consciously think at all about what I am doing when I am driving someplace familiar, I don't need to consciously think at all about what I am doing when I am using a fork, and so on.

But one of my goals, which I can't really explain, is that I want to "expand" my consciousness. I want to be as conscious as possible. I don't like feeling like I am on autopilot. I want to observe the world as actively as possible, so I don't lose control of my mind. I don't know how to explain this very well, but that is how I feel.

So I try to spend every moment of every single day trying to learn something new. But it is a constant struggle, because everytime I learn something new, it becomes something old, and I have to find something else to learn to keep it going. It is like my entire life is a constant struggle to make sure that I don't fall unconscious, because it might be impossible to come back after that.

I don't know whether you will be able to understand what I am talking about. I wasn't able to explain it very well, so I think that you would have needed to have had the same sorts of experiences as I was talking about to be able to get it.

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

AJ — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:54:47 GMT

I. Ryan:
I think that we should just replace the word "idea" with the word "perceptions", and then define them as everything. Our consciousness is just a series of perceptions. We don't experience anything not a perception, and we don't perceive anything not an experience. Our perceptions aren't in our minds. They are our minds. Our consciousness isn't anything other than a bundle of perceptions. Feeling, seeing, hearing, hating, and so on, all of them are nothing but perceiving.

Although I think this is self-evident, you are almost the first to agree with me on this! I notice you didn't include "thinking" in the list, but the same logic applies: if it's conscious I must be perceiving it, so conscious thought must happen through sensations/perceptions/ proprioceptions or whatever we shall call them. This of course feels strange because we are generally not aware of experiencing sensations as we think. I only realized this last summer when I was actually able to see my thought process for a brief little while. Since then I've been able to access it more regularly, and I've seen and talked to many people who have seen much more (including Einstein, who claimed to think in visual and "muscular" sensations). The sensation-based nature of thought is my No. 1 interest.

I. Ryan:
With the last section in mind, our simple perceptions are spatial points, the most fundamental spatial relations, the most fundamental temporal relations, our most fundamental feelings, and so on. I can't enumerate all of our simple perceptions, because I don't know how, but I am pretty sure that spatial points and temporal disparity are two of them.

This part is hard. I would say that at bottom we access all of these consciously through pure sensation, but what our subconscious does with this, how it processes them and how it feeds them up to our conscious awareness get increasingly into unknown and perhaps even unknowable territory. A few things we do know:

1. We can only focus on a few things at once, because we have a very limited short-term memory (STM). I'd wager that STM figures prominently in how we perceive the flow of time.

2. We get much faster at tasks with practice. What at first required laborious and careful conscious attention (say, using chopsticks), in time becomes something I can do while devoting nearly all of my attention to a conversation. I recently noticed that I can weave through a dense arrangement of pedestrians on my bike, while on the phone speaking Japanese, with enough mental ticks left over to wonder what people are thinking of me! I think the nature of practice is that, once certain patterns of movement and decision rules for eventualities are set through conscious focus, they eventually "take less and less time" = "slip further and further down into the fuzzy threshold that separates conscious from unconscious."

My suspicion is that the line between conscious and unconscious is not clean, but in fact is just determined by speed. The faster it happens the more subconscious it is. In some sense I can be conscious of almost any one thing I do when riding a bicycle, if I think to notice, but mostly it just happens way too fast. Rather than say it is below conscious awareness, I would say the sensations are flashing in my mind so fast that I cannot possibly remember them. Since there is a limitation on the number of things we can hold in our STM, it would simply be impossible to hold even a small fraction of all the sensations of the process of riding a bicycle in my STM at any given time. When I am first learning and it takes all my concentration is when I am most aware of those sensations, but I am also most preoccupied with the learning task. So one way or another we hardly ever get to notice the sensations that are our thoughts, racing by.

3. I also think we can take hints from psychology, even though we of course cannot rely on it for praxeology. I see no reason why it can't inform our intuition, though, since that is a crucial part of how we actually come up with good ideas.

Time is something I've yet to seriously look into, but I will bet it has something to do with STM, as well as a kind of tagging system in the conscious-subconscious interface for labeling a sensation as (a) a memory, (b) a sensation that feels like it's actually happening to our physical body right now, (c) a future imagined sensation, (d) a past imagined sensation, etc. For example, in NLP they claim that if you ask people to imagine a future event they will look up-left, and for an imagined past event up-right, for a real past even down-right, etc. (I don't remember if the directions are correct, and I know different people are supposed to have different internal representational systems). [You can probably torrent Using Your Brain for a Change to get one of the classic NLP books that talks about many different people's specific mental "tagging" systems. Note: My ideas on this are not from NLP, but I've noticed that NLP jives with them.]

I. Ryan:
We can't observe relations without objects, but we also can't observe objects without relations. They aren't logically prior or posterior to each other. They are correlatives. We can't imagine one without the other. We can't imagine a relation without two objects, because there would be no relation. But we also can't imagine an object without a relation, because it would be floating in nothingness. Try to imagine a simple perception such as a spatial point without imagining a relation. It is impossible. It has to be at least related to you. It has to be in front of you, in back of you, in your visual field, or something like that. It can't just be hanging in nothingness, with no relation to you.

I can imagine a pain in my hand, or seeing blue, or smelling watermelon. You can say it's related to me, but then either that's a statement made from a third party or "objective" point of view, or I'd have to wonder what we really mean by "relation." It seems you're saying that anything can be thought us as standing in relation to something else, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that relation is inherent in the experience of the sensation itself. This perhaps goes back to dots and connected dots, which is what I PMed you about before. Perhaps you are talking about the connected dots (the model), not the dots themselves.

I. Ryan:
And what the sentence "a chair is in my room" refers to isn't a simple perception. It is made up of simple perceptions, such as spatial points, the most fundamental relations between those spatial points, and so on, but it isn't itself a simple perception. So we should expect that a diagram referring to it, but also having other uses, wouldn't itself be a simple perception either.

I'm guessing here by simple perception you do mean "dots" (not as in spatial points, but as in "raw sensory data" prior to applying a theory to make sense of it). It depends on at what level I am thinking of "A chair is in my room." If I am just thinking "X is in Y" and am not at this precise moment concerned about what X and Y refer to, I might just see a diagram.* Even if the diagram could be used for other things it may still be that that is all that is perceptually present for me. Now I think you are making a slightly different point that, say, a picture of a chair in my room would not be simple because it is made up of visual "pixels" (a scientist might say, photons striking my rods and codes). I haven't pursued that line of analysis, just because there are some messy issues about how much we really access those photons hitting our eye directly, how much the subconscious filters it, how much we really see and how much we think we see and is just being filled in by our imagination, etc.

*This isn't as strange as it may sound; it's just when I am turning my attention only to the "something-is-in-something-ness" aspect of the situation. I think this is what deduction feels like - a formless, mechanical process of basically reading off diagrams, just like how you can read off from the British Isles diagram that Scotland is in the U.K. The modeling side of thinking feels more like intiuting, being creative, having flashes of insight, etc. Logical error feels like what most people describe as "thinking" - a confusing, somewhat frustrating feeling of having to cut through semantic soup to get at actual thoughts rather than conventional fuzzy word-thought blobs.

I. Ryan:
AJ:

One thing that may be important is to define "relation" more carefully.

I don't know how to. Do you have any ideas?

I really have no idea. I've never employed the term myself, and I half-suspect it might just be an aspect of language rather than of experience itself. That would be radical, but I would not be too surprised if something like that were the case.

I. Ryan:
AJ:

Also, the question of whether the fundamental objects are "dots" or "connected dots" looms large in my mind at this point.

I'm not sure what you mean. (Did you explain it in the Mises/Quine thread?)

There and in the PM. It's just the whole business with the bee and flower connect-the-dots example.

Dots are raw sensory data, and I (my subconscious? my conscious? probably the latter first, then eventually - with practice - the former) connect the dots to make useful predictive models. It's the so-called "inductive" aspect, although I disown the baggage of that term.

For another example, imagine a girl playing Super Mario Bros. for the first time on a really old TV that is cutting off the top part of the screen that would normally be showing how many lives she has left. She doesn't know how the game works and doesn't have the manual, so she has to figure things out for herself. Sometimes she hears a particular noise, but doesn't know what it means. (Spoiler: The noise is the famous 1-UP noise meaning she got an extra life.) She learns from experience that she has to start over if she dies three times, but soon she notices that whenever she has heard that sound, she doesn't have to start over after she has died three times, but instead four times. And she later notices that if she hears the noise twice she can generally count on being able to die five times before getting Game Over.

From the perspective of attempting to make sense of what use that noise (raw sensory data; "dots") could be to her, she might "connect the dots" and form a predictive model that she deems useful to act as if, for instance: "Every time I hear that sound that means I have one more extra life." So if she hears the 1-UP sound many times and she is eager to advance, she may be more cavalier; but if her model predicts she only has one life left, she may exercise particular caution despite her eagerness to advance, or she may adjust her strategy toward trying to harvest more 1-UP mushrooms. She deems it useful to act in accordance with this model, which is constantly being evidenced as being a more and more accurate predictor of her future sensations, hence more useful.

She doesn't ever really know what the sound means; it could actually mean something like, "You just gained an extra life if there are no pipes on the screen right now; otherwise it means nothing." It could mean that, but by Occam's razor - which I think is a natural tendency people generally follow in their modeling unless prompted otherwise by ideology, etc. - it wouldn't be the most efficient theory to posit until at least one data point contradicted the existing model. Make sense? I hope the context of video games, since praxeology also has to apply in it, can help us throw off some of the biases we might otherwise have in discussing human action.

I. Ryan:
But I don't think that the matter is as simple as you are acting like it is, because see what happens when you go back to the example about the water boiling. A video of the macroscopic scale, which would be of a pot of water boiling, and a video of the microscopic scale, which would be of a bunch of molecules vibrating in certain ways, would of course be different. They wouldn't lend themselves to being seen as referring to the same thing as pictures any more than they would in writing. Or would they?

Actually this a great example, because in referring to the things scaling up, that is, that we should be able to derive the macro-scale results - in principle - from the micro-scale ones, you are positing that the physical world behaves essentially like an idealized mathematical model. (Or at least a theory that is tantamount to the same.) In comprehending the physical reactions that take place, I of course will not be seeing just a video of water boiling. I will be seeing the thought process, however fleetingly, that I must see (and/or feel, hear, smell, taste) in order to consciously be aware of my assumptions about the physical world and my deductions on those assumptions as applied to this particular case. If anything, it would be more like a schematic "video" where the assumptions, laws, and data relevant to whatever I was ratiocinating would be represented in abstract, possibly diagrammatic form.

Just take everything you know about the boiling pot of water. Take all the premises about the physical would, about H20, heat, metals, etc., as the starting premises. I contend these can be put into some kind of sensual representation - probably all visual if necessary - perhaps in the same general fashion as with the British Isle's diagram above, in which I can hash out the necessary deductions just like mathematical proofs can be done with diagrams. We arrive at the macro-level result as a logically necessary conclusion, although the schematic itself will not produce the normal-view video of boiling water, simply because there is much more going on in that normal view. But we can know just what we know from the verbal description (and probably much more): that the water will do all the macro-scale things we associate with the phenomenon of boiling. See http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/19163/359200.aspx#359200 and also the follow-up post right below it for more clarification.

If this seems impossible, I reply first that we must do this - it is praxeologically necessary if you agree that all conscious experience is sensations. If we only have five sensations, this thought process has to - one way or another - be available to our conscious minds through sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. If this seems the ravings of a mad man, here's at least some support from outside:

From the book The Philosophical Status of Diagrams, by Mark Greaves

The use of diagrams as permissible parts of formal proofs in logic and geometry encountered stiff resistance in the 20th century. Contemporary definitions of validity in logic are stated purely in terms of relationships between strings of a formal language, and it is now commonplace to observe that a valid geometric proof must not be based on any pictorial properties of an accompanying diagram. Yet diagrams have been a constant part of informal proof practice in both logic and geometry since antiquity, and it is a rare mathematician who can execute a formal proof in plane geometry without one. What accounts for the exclusion of diagrammatic methods from modern proof techniques?

This book explores the reasons why structured graphics have been largely excluded from contemporary formal theories of axiomatic systems. In particular, it traces how several systematic forces in the intellectual history of mathematics and logic drove the adoption of sentential representational styles rather than diagrammatic ones. This book shows the progressive effects of these forces on the evolution of diagram-based systems of inference in logic and geometry, stretching from the Greeks to the early twentieth-century work of David Hilbert. This exploration makes clear that the familiar prejudice against diagrammatic inference in logic and geometry owes more to history and philosophical context than to any technical incompatibility with modern theories of axiomatic systems.

In this way, presuming the world does correspond to the mathematical model-like assumptions you seem to be starting with, the macro-scale effects will present themselves exactly according to the micro-level premises and deductions from them. This is really no more striking than saying that the premises of a mathematical system can allow us to derive high-level theorems by pure deduction; in fact it is essentially the same result, just with the starting premises specified by observation of the physical world instead of human choice of axioms. (That's exactly what a mathematical model is.)

I. Ryan:
The example that you gave with "2 + 2" and "4", I don't know whether mathematics could progress without splitting the visual "...." into the the two levels of description, "2 + 2" and "4", among others.

Visually we can do that, too: . . . . Of course, since people understand that "2" is basically something like " . . " we don't ever need the dots or similar except for teaching young children. My point is that that is how* I at root comprehend numbers. (*Not that this is the only way I do it, nor that other people necessarily do it that way. At times I think of numbers as having colors, maybe even flavors and smells. All for different purposes. My main thrust here is just to show that thinking of numbers in a purely visual/sensual manner is both possible and quite feasible.)

And if you mean for higher than 4, humans can subitize up to 4, and after that we can utilize a base-5 scheme for pretty fast addition and multiplication. I actually see stacks of five blocks in my head when I add, with one or two pieces missing or added on to the top. So when I add 7 to 29, I see the 29 as "ending" with a stack of 4 blocks (25+4) - one block missing from the top - and then slam the stack of 7 blocks (5+2) against it, one block gets caught on the stack of 4 to make a nice round 5 (a 30) then 6 blocks (5+1) are left over to add on top, yielding 36. All the while I am working with subitizable "moving parts" of 4 or less. This is why I think the base-10 system is fairly comfortable for us, because it breaks down into nice 5-block chunks where only 4 pieces added or subtracted ever have to be considered in the final digit.

Above 4, we are of course using Arabic numerals or whatever, although people trained in abacus probably do see it all in pure "pictures," since many abacus users have learned to do it all in their heads (they still have abacus dojos in Japan).

Anyway, from that point on we are working with symbols and then only our formal rules of math - which can all, I posit, be diagrammed sensually (if they are valid*) - govern how we consider them, along with some eclectic pieces of intuition we have about certain "key" numbers, like a mental picture of a classroom of 40 kids, or the knowledge that a million dollars would be a "heckuva lot" (likely a bodily sensation; I've noticed emotional content is all physical - such as in the chest, back, etc. - for me) of money. So I see no problem for math, and certain diagrammatic systems have already been shown to be rigorous, logically sound, and complete methods of mathematical proofs.

*Quine thread has more discussion on this. There is in fact a strain of mathematics that rejects ideas that are supposed to be "unthinkable," such as Riemann's point at infinity, existence proofs, proofs by contradiction, etc. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionism

For anything, I can't necessarily tell you how to put it into sensations - that's my life's work! for now at least - but I can tell you that it must be arrangeable in sensations, or else it cannot be consciously thinkable.

I. Ryan:
So where does jumping between iterations come in? Isn't that psychology or something? Shouldn't we combine psychology and praxeology to get the whole picture, just like people combine mathematics and physics to get mathematical physics, which gives the whole picture?

Yes, that is necessary - that is what thymology is. Praxeology is concerned with what can be deduced. Thymology with the specific models and data. Instead of saying empirico-deductive above I could have said thymo-praxeologic. The role of praxeology, as I see it, is to elucidate those logical deductions that are deductible from premises which are self-evident to everyone, but whose deductive results are nonetheless hidden from view. You might be wondering why the deductions are hidden from view. You have probably heard philosophers say that philosophy is mainly a negative discipline, where the game is to clear away what is preventing us from seeing the obvious. You may have heard of Max Stirner who had a lot of success simply rejecting every other kind of theory.

Mostly what I think happens is people have a pretty good idea of what is going on when they don't think too much, but it is not perfect. They have myriad assumptions and misconceptions handed down from their parents and society in general, and through the distorting effect of language itself, so they must think to some degree to reach useful conclusions and discard other "spooks" in order to be better than the average if they are to prosper as thinkers. However, these theories they develop to cope with the broken conceptions and the noise they started with (in the case of philosophers, the main source of the noise is probably other philosophers!) can easily just lead them more off track, although they may be better than nothing.

Praxeology basically says to me, "All right, STOP. Just think about what you know is self-evidently true and can be deduced from there while making no assumptions (other than the self-evident, but since it's self-evident it perhaps doesn't count as an assumption - depends on your specific starting points). You might learn something! And oh look, you do! Law of diminishing marginal utility. Thought it wouldn't work, and would only lead to useless tautologies, didn't ya? What you didn't realize was that a tautology is no longer worthless when you realize it's in direct contradiction to some commonly held theory!"

In one sense it's a mental hygiene issue. You might have a whole complex of conclusions deduced from certain starting assumptions that are less than self-evident (but still reasonable under the circumstances in which you adopted them), but you may also have more self-evident assumptions whose deductions you have not elaborated as far. If you did undertake to elaborate the deductions of the more self-evident assumptions, you might find the results conflict with the results derived from higher level (less self-evident) assumptions. In such cases, you'll want to seriously think about rejecting those higher level results. Some would say you must reject them if you want to be logical. That is, for example, if some economic theory works pretty well but is overturned by praxeological insights, it would be consistent to reject it, so long as you are sure you did your praxeology right.

About voice, do you think it's necessary only because language is linear/sequential?

There are several important things I didn't get to cover, but rather than add to the length of this - and eat into my sleep time any more - I will leave off here, hoping what I left out won't distort what I have said too much.

Re: Praxeology and Linguistics

I. Ryan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:55:56 GMT

AJ:

I contend it is through this very same process that we learn all words, and all grammar.

I want to show you what I think would be a good starting point in explaining how languages originate, and you can tell me how your explanation relates to my explanation. (I don't know whether I understood your explanation very well.)

David Hume in An Equiry Concerning Hume Understanding:

It is evident that there is a principle of connexion between the different thoughts or ideas of the mind, and that in their appearance to the memory or imagination, they introduce each other with a certain degree of method and regularity. In our more serious thinking or discourse this is so observable that any particular thought, which breaks in upon the regular tract or chain of ideas, is immediately remarked and rejected. And even in our wildest and most wandering reveries, nay in our very dreams, we shall find, if we reflect, that the imagination ran not altogether at adventures, but that there was still a connexion upheld among the different ideas, which succeeded each other. Were the loosest and freest conversation to be transcribed, there would immediately be observed something which connected it in all its transitions. Or where this is wanting, the person who broke the thread of discourse might still inform you, that there had secretly revolved in his mind a succession of thought, which had gradually led him from the subject of conversation. Among different languages, even where we cannot suspect the least connexion or communication, it is found, that the words, expressive of ideas, the most compounded, do yet nearly correspond to each other: a certain proof that the simple ideas, comprehended in the compound ones, were bound together by some universal principle, which had an equal influence on all mankind.

Though it be too obvious to escape observation, that different ideas are connected together; I do not find that any philosopher has attempted to enumerate or class all the principles of association; a subject, however, that seems worthy of curiosity. To me, there appear to be only three principles of connexion among ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause or Effect.

That these principles serve to connect ideas will not, I believe, be much doubted. A picture naturally leads our thoughts to the original:[1] the mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an enquiry or discourse concerning the others:[2] and if we think of a wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it.[3] But that this enumeration is complete, and that there are no other principles of association except these, may be difficult to prove to the satisfaction of the reader, or even to a man's own satisfaction. All we can do, in such cases, is to run over several instances, and examine carefully the principle which binds the different thoughts to each other, never stopping till we render the principle as general as possible.[4] The more instances we examine, and the more care we employ, the more assurance shall we acquire, that the enumeration, which we form from the whole, is complete and entire.

[1] Resemblance.

[2] Contiguity.

[3] Cause and effect.

[4] For instance, Contrast or Contrariety is also a connexion among Ideas: but it may perhaps, be considered as a mixture of Causation and Resemblance. Where two objects are contrary, the one destroys the other; that is, the cause of its annihilation, and the idea of the annihilation of an object, implies the idea of its former existence

David Hume in A Treatise of Human Nature:

As all simple ideas may be separated by the imagination, and may be united again in what form it pleases, nothing wou'd be more unaccountable than the operations of that faculty, were it not guided by some universal principles, which render it, in some measure, uniform with itself in all times and places. Were ideas entirely loose and unconnected, chance alone wou'd join them; and 'tis impossible the same simple ideas should fall regularly into complex ones (as they commonly do) without some bond of union among them, some associating quality, by which one idea naturally introduces another. This uniting principle among ideas is not to be consider'd as an inseparable connexion; for that has been already excluded from the imagination: nor yet are we to conclude, that without it the mind cannot join two ideas; for nothing is more free than that faculty: but we are only to regard it as a gentle force, which commonly prevails, and is the cause why, among other things, languages so nearly correspond to each other; nature in a manner pointing out to every one those simple ideas, which are most proper to be united into a complex one. The qualities, from which this association arises, and by which the mind is after this manner convey'd from one idea to another, are three, viz.Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause and Effect.

I believe it will not be very necessary to prove, that these qualities produce an association among ideas, and upon the appearance of one idea naturally introduce another. 'Tis plain, that in the course of our thinking, and in the constant revolution of our ideas, our imagination runs easily from one idea to any other that resembles it, and that this quality alone is to the fancy a sufficient bond and association. 'Tis likewise evident, that as the senses, in changing their objects, are necessitated to change them regularly, and take them as they lie contiguous to each other, the imagination must by long custom acquire the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects. As to the connexion, that is made by the relation of cause and effect, we shall have occasion afterwards to examine it to the bottom, and therefore shall not at present insist upon it. 'Tis sufficient to observe, that there is no relation, which produces a stronger connexion in the fancy, and makes one idea more readily recall another, than the relation of cause and effect betwixt their objects.

That we may understand the full extent of these relations, we must consider, that two objects are connected together in the imagination, not only when the one is immediately resembling, contiguous to, or the cause of the other, but also when there is interposed betwixt them a third object, which bears to both of them any of these relations. This may be carried on to a great length; tho' at the same time we may observe, that each remove considerably weakens the relation. Cousins in the fourth degree are connected by causation, if I may be allowed to use that term; but not so closely as brothers, much less as child and parent. In general we may observe, that all the relations of blood depend upon cause and effect, and are esteemed near or remote, according to the number of connecting causes interpos'd betwixt the persons.

Of the three relations above-mention'd this of causation is the most extensive. Two objects may be consider'd as plac'd in this relation, as well when one is the cause of any of the actions or motions of the other, as when the former is the cause of the existence of the latter. For as that action or motion is nothing but the object itself, consider'd in a certain light, and as the object continues the same in all its different situations, 'tis easy to imagine how such an influence of objects upon one another may connect them in the imagination.

We may carry this farther, and remark, not only that two objects are connected by the relation of cause and effect, when the one produces a motion or any action in the other, but also when it has a power of producing it. And this we may observe to be the source of all the relations of interest and duty, by which men influence each other in society, and are plac'd in the ties of government and subordination. A master is such-a-one as by his situation, arising either from force or agreement, has a power of directing in certain particulars the actions of another, whom we call servant. A judge is one, who in all disputed cases can fix by his opinion the possession or property of any thing betwixt any members of the society. When a person is possess'd of any power, there is no more required to convert it into action, but the exertion of the will; and that in every case is consider'd as possible, and in many as probable; especially in the case of authority, where the obedience of the subject is a pleasure and advantage to the superior.

These are therefore the principles of union or cohesion among our simple ideas, and in the imagination supply the place of that inseparable connexion, by which they are united in our memory. Here is a kind of Attraction, which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and to shew itself in as many and as various forms. Its effects are every where conspicuous; but as to its causes, they are mostly unknown, and must be resolv'd into original qualities of human nature, which I pretend not to explain. Nothing is more requisite for a true philosopher, than to restrain the intemperate desire of searching into causes, and having establish'd any doctrine upon a sufficient number of experiments, rest contented with that, when he sees a farther examination would lead him into obscure and uncertain speculations. In that case his enquiry wou'd be much better employ'd in examining the effects than the causes of his principle.

We so strongly associate the symbols with what they symbolize that the perceptions of the symbols "feel" like they are what they symbolize. When a person says to me for example "table", a perception of a table appears in my mind whether I want it to or not. This is what underlies the game which children often play in which one of them tells the other to not think of something, such as a purple elephant, and then says that they won because it is clear that the other thought of it. So we barely need to "interpret" the symbols which we hear, because what appears in my mind almost coincidentally with the symbol not of my own will, is what that symbol symbolizes.

So that sheds light on how languages originate. We have the power to choose what to do, we have the power to make a wide range of sounds, and we have this principle of association working in us. So, if somebody makes a certain sound everytime something appears, such as a cat for example, the next time somebody says that sound, the people will perceive a cat whether they want to or not, and then expect that a cat is someplace around them which they haven't checked yet. So, if somebody says "cat" when you are looking at a cat like 20 times, and then says "cat" when you aren't looking at one, you will perceive a cat in your mind, and expect that one is around you someplace.

I think that it would be possible to use the principle of association to come up with an explanation of the origin of language analogous to the explanation of the origin of money.