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I am a Strange Loop. [Philosophy/Logic Content] (pg. 5)
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| kadomony |
i love reading about self-referencing loops.
probably why i loved Chrono Cross so much :D |
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| RJT |
So I'm about half way through my second revision to the term paper I'm writing on this (and also using as a writing sample for grad school), and I'm wondering if I finish it today, whether or not any of you would mind proofreading for me tonight (has to be turned in tomorrow).
I'll try and keep it to less than 10 double spaced pages (which means you'll get the writing sample version), but in general I just need to know if it flows in a coherent manner at all.
Cheers. :) |
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| jdat |
humm I wouldn't say no but you want it to be proof read for what?
fact checking, spelling mistakes etc what?
My knowledge be it from a philosophical vocabulary point of view, or the subject matter in itself is fairly limited ( shamefully so ).
jdatone[NOSPAMYOUTWATSORILLSTABYOUINTHEGUT][at sign]GMAIL.COM |
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| RJT |
| quote: | Originally posted by jdat
humm I wouldn't say no but you want it to be proof read for what?
fact checking, spelling mistakes etc what?
My knowledge be it from a philosophical vocabulary point of view, or the subject matter in itself is fairly limited ( shamefully so ).
jdatone[NOSPAMYOUTWATSORILLSTABYOUINTHEGUT][at sign]GMAIL.COM |
What I need is basic grammar/spelling checking, and in general I need to know if what I've written makes sense to someone with a cursory understanding of philosophy (basically I need to know if what I've written seems reasonable).
Definitely don't need any fact checking (as I'm pretty sure I've got them down - I only have three sources for this paper, one of which is actually an email correspondence I had with Douglas Hofstadter [the guy who wrote the book this thread is about]).
:) |
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| RJT |
Also, I just finished the second revision now, it's just over 10 pages, and so I'll edit it up a bit and then toss it off to those of you who are down to help later on this evening.
For now, I'm taking a break to get riiiiiiiippped. |
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| jdat |
ok well lay on the dope whenever you feel like it :p
getting back to philosophy as a whole, I wish I was in an environment conductive to learning that but the focus just isn't there ...
I want to start reading Sartre - Being and Nothingness but I'm a lazy bastard and have already too many books lined up, which with a dispersed mind such as mine makes it near impossible to fully assimilate the materials in general.
I have gotten into reading about criticism a lot and see myself growing more in that domain despite the fact I think it's mostly one big wank-a-thon. |
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| PETRAN |
Oh yes, i was thinking of buying this book a while ago, glad that you remind me in this thread. I'm a psychology graduate and thought that it might be interesting.
This guy is a brilliant philosopher of mind, so is Chalmers and Dennett, although, they all hold different/contrasting viewpoints (and i personally find Dennett's theory of consciousness bollocks but anyway...). Although, i much prefer the typical cognitive experimentation (with or without imaging techniques), these guys start where science ends (or maybe the opposite?). Overall, books such as these are great in expanding/broadening your horizons, although, i confess that at times they piss me off because some of these philosophical concepts are way too abstract, vague and loose to create testable models and theories.
So, what do we mean by "loop"? How is this "loopy" concept realised in the neural reality? Are we talking about information progressing to higher levels of processing before feeding-back to the starting levels? Kinda like "back-propagation" neural networks? And how is this concept of a "self" (which i presume he thinks its illusory?) arise from such multi-loop processes?
:conf: |
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| PETRAN |
| Oh, so are you writing a paper on this? Are you going to post it lol? i'm very interested in reading it. |
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| diggerz |
| quote: | | Originally posted by RJT |
The phrase Cogito ergo sum is not used in Descartes's most important work, the Meditations on First Philosophy, but the term "the cogito" is (often confusingly) used to refer to an argument from it. Descartes felt that this phrase, which he had used in his earlier Discourse, had been misleading in its implication that he was appealing to an inference, so he changed it to "I am, I exist" (also often called "the first certainty") in order to avoid the term "cogito."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_ergo_sum |
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| Silky Johnson |
| I'll proof read if you like. I pwn at papers. Mind you, I don't know much about philosophy. So I guess I'm out. |
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| RJT |
| quote: | Originally posted by diggerz
The phrase Cogito ergo sum is not used in Descartes's most important work, the Meditations on First Philosophy, but the term "the cogito" is (often confusingly) used to refer to an argument from it. Descartes felt that this phrase, which he had used in his earlier Discourse, had been misleading in its implication that he was appealing to an inference, so he changed it to "I am, I exist" (also often called "the first certainty") in order to avoid the term "cogito."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_ergo_sum |
I'm not quite sure why you posted this, or what it is in reference to. :conf:
I'm not unfamiliar with Descartes, was there a reason you felt I needed to hit this nugget again?
Anyway, here's the writing sample version of my paper (I'm not going to bother you all with the full thing as it's too long and dry):
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Knowledge, Identity, and the Definition of Truth.
Author: Rob Turner, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Theories of knowledge and theories of personal identity are not always necessarily linked to one another. Accounting for how we come to have knowledge, that is, what we perceive to be reliably formed true beliefs about the world around us, and how we understand ourselves as autonomous, thinking beings are pursuits I view as intimately tied to each other by virtue of our propensity to not only use, but shape and mold, language. On the surface, it should be clear that the language we use to interact with others is often used in terms of talking about what is, or what we believe will be, the case in the world. We discuss with our friends and families things that have happened to us, plans for the future, and countless other topics in terms of our understanding of how the world around actually is, and because our experience in the world often verifies the language we use (like when a plan is actualized), we often take for granted the assumed knowledge we have as reliably formed true belief. It is the fact that our language is verified by our experience as often as it is that is crucial to the understanding of how we go about accepting, and dealing with, the idea of truth (and what is true) I intend to put forth in the following pages. As societies and individuals, it is only through language that we come to understand the things we claim to know about the world around us, but also how we come to know ourselves as individuals. Through the account of language as necessary for both knowledge and thought given by Wilfrid Sellars in “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, as well as the notion of self offered by Douglas Hofstadter in his book “I am a Strange Loop”, I aim to explore language’s role in what we believe we can reliably claim to know as true, and further that the very understanding of ourselves as individuals is directly tied to our use of language for knowledge.
“The Myth of the Given” is the backdrop for Sellars work and is linked directly to sense-data theories of knowledge. In rough form, the myth states that we are capable of knowing things about our perceptual experience independently and prior to having a conceptual apparatus used for object perception (namely, language) . Sellars wants to argue against such a theory of knowledge in favor of one in which we must acquire the propensity towards language in order to have any possibility of thinking, much less the possibility of us claiming to “know” anything at all. Sellars view of how human beings develop this ability balances carefully the notions of experience leading to language acquisition, and language acquisition leading to thought.
For Sellars it is best for us to think about this kind of development in terms of phases, and this implies rather strongly the view that prior to acquiring the capacity for language, humans are incapable of any kind of thought, and certainly not knowledge. Once a child reaches the age of approximately two (an arbitrary number chosen only to broadly represent the time of language acquisition), he or she may display a level of language similar to that of a trained parrot, where provided specific stimuli, the child will respond with reasonably appropriate words. This accounts for instances of a child repeatedly saying something like “Mama” when in the presence of their mother (or when they realize such utterances will bring their return to their mothers arms), or “baba” when they feel it would be nice to be fed and would like some milk. This kind of activity may qualify as thought for Sellars, but it doesn’t necessarily count as having knowledge, as these kinds of stimulus response packages do not display any real understanding of the underlying concepts of which they are a part. The critical point for Sellars comes just a few years down the line (the age of six is offered by Robert Brandom in his study guide for Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind) when a child is able to understand something like “mama” in conceptual terms where it is understood as “my mother, my female parent, the person who gave birth to me, etc.”, and isn’t uttered reflexively the same way uttering “mama” at the age of two was solely an effort to be returned to the mother . This framework in which we understand knowledge in terms of a series of interconnected linguistic concepts we use to represent and discuss the world around us, is for Sellars an entirely social phenomenon . The very notion of what we think of as “knowledge” is, for Sellars, entirely socially constructed, which eliminates for him any possibility of “objective, true knowledge.”
In taking on the traditional empiricist project that observational evidence “stands on its own feet” , Sellars wants to say that as opposed to any view that we are reporting on knowledge as “episodic”, what we really mean to say by stating that we “know” something is that we are placing it in what Sellars refers to as the logical space of reasons and justifications that is part of the social construction of knowledge . Sellars goes on to address what he thinks is a major concern with such socially constructed linguistic theories of reason or justification, namely that of an infinite regress. Within such theories of knowledge, Sellars claims it may be argued that the acquisition of knowledge in the form “x is a reliable symptom of y” at a specific time t, relies on us understanding what y is (and why it has come about), which requires us knowledge preceding y, which may in turn require prior knowledge, and so on and so on into the abyss of an infinite regress . This is, however, to fall back into the empiricist project of describing knowledge in terms of episodes, and not in terms of justifications. So while it may be said that one can understand certain forms of knowledge (Sellars gives the specific example of observational knowledge) in terms of a lineage of reasons, when one claims to know something in terms of concepts like “all triangles have three sides”, he or she is placing that knowledge in the larger, logical space of reasons and justification, and not describing a specific episode of observed knowledge. And Sellars account of how we manage to find our way to the “logical space of reasons” is best framed in terms of language acquisition as a result of social construction. If, as Sellars claims, all knowledge is so tied to language, then the only knowledge we can have or even begin to comprehend is going to be relative to the societal constructs around us, and this is where we can clearly see Sellars theory of both knowledge, and the relation of knowledge to language development, tie itself very nicely to the theory of personal identity offered by Douglas Hofstadter in I am a Strange Loop.
While Sellars wants to make the claim that what we know as knowledge is completely socially constructed, Hofstadter wants to say that the kind of knowledge Sellars is discussing is knowledge on the “macro-level” of understanding. By macro level, all Hofstadter means to say is that we filter the infinitely complex world around us into “concepts or categories . . . approximate regularities at a level far higher than that of particles.” For Hofstadter, the universe we live in is infinitely complex, so much so that to practically understand it on the level of “particles” causally interacting with one another (what Hofstadter calls the “micro-level” of understanding) is an incomprehensible task to us. So while it may make sense to think of the world as a series of causal relationships existing between “particles” (where all particles means is “the smallest unit to which the universe can be reduced”), to act and talk of our existence within the world in the terms of particles and causal relationships would be a ludicrous effort to embark upon. And so to resolve this, we filter these micro-level, particular relationships down into Hofstadter’s perceived categories, which he refers to as “hugely coarse grained and highly approximate simplifications.” Given all of this, we are left with two levels at which we can understand knowledge of the world, the macro-level approach that seems to map well onto Sellars account of knowledge as tied to language, and the micro-level account offered by Hofstadter in which it makes sense to talk about the universe in terms of causal relationships between particles, yet is so vastly complex that it proves beyond our capabilities to act in such specific and determined terms in our day to day lives.
The macro-level categories that we filter this all down to is of particular importance to our discussion of the relationship between Sellars and Hofstadter, as the infinite regress with which Sellars was so concerned may come into play here to the benefit, rather than the detriment, of his position. Sellars never directly addresses the issue of determinism in his Empiricism, but should we wish to map his account of linguistic knowledge onto Hofstadter’s theory of macro and micro level knowledge, it will certainly be forced to. For Hofstadter, the mico-level, reductionist concept of knowledge regarding causal relationships between particles absolutely implies determinism. It is, however, determinism with a bit of a caveat in that we are incapable of functioning, or even comprehending, our own existence at a practical level in terms of accepting determinism. Hofstadter says that the macro-level, where we simplify highly complex organizations of particles into approximate categorical simplifications, generally indicates to us consistent patterns of particles which we attach macro level labels to in order to conceptualize these complex organizations in practical terms allowing us to function daily within society. It is our acknowledging, and conceptualizing, of these patterns at the macro-level of knowledge that feeds back into the underlying, micro-level knowledge and contributes to the overall evolution of existence at both levels, meaning evolving patterns in the particulars of the micro level are reflected in evolving practices at the macro level. This is where Hofstadter’s notion of a “strange loop” enters the picture, and we can begin to see that our ability to perceive these patterns contributes to the evolution of the linguistic system of knowledge posited by Sellars.
For Hofstadter and Sellars there is crucial overlap at a point in our development that links one theory of knowledge to another theory of identity, and this is best summarized in Chapter 15 of I am a Strange Loop. Hofstadter discusses the notion of what he calls “I-ness”, and specifically the “I-ness” of babies, in which he quickly makes the claim that human babies have no more sense of self than mosquitoes . Hofstadter quotes William James in stating that the comprehension of sensory input of babies amounts to little more than a “big, blooming, buzzing confusion” which babies are incapable of making sense of. Hofstadter further states that in lacking what he refers to as the “symbolic machinery” for discerning one category or concept from another, babies have a “repertoire of categories so minimal that I would call it nil for all practical purposes.” What Hofstadter is saying here is strikingly similar to Sellars claim that we cannot even think, much less know, until we have the capacity for language. Though Hofstadter does not say that having the capacity for understanding oneself as autonomous requires the capacity for language, his discussion of our need to divide the complex, macro level world, into a series of categories directly implies the need for the ability to distinguish one category from another, and in doing so there is a kind of implied inner monologue of thought occurring that requires language, regardless of any language’s specifics. When this kind of inner deliberation regarding category and concept formation turns outwards, language is developed as a means for autonomous individuals within a society to function as a whole in acknowledging the agreed upon “practical (relative) truths” that represent the world to us (as a whole) in the most reliable possible way. In doing so, our level of understanding the world in terms of macro-level categories is constantly changing as what we perceive as new ideas and concepts arise, but the key here is in acknowledging that it is our perception of these things as new and/or different truths about the world, and not us actually tapping into objective truths about the world, that changes over time. The micro-level patterns we perceive may be perceived differently throughout time, but the causal mechanisms that bring them about are entirely determined, and the objectivity of their truth is what some may call “eternal.” The macro-level “relative truths” (or for Sellars, simply “knowledge”) will always be perceived as in a constant state of flux as it is our perception of patterns occurring at the macro-level that lead us to simplify them into different categories over time, and as new patterns are discerned or old patterns disappear, our macro-level understanding of the categories to which they belong will change.
Taking these two theories of knowledge and self into account, what then can we say about how it is we come to “know”, the role and existence of relative and objective truths, or our own understanding of both what defines knowledge and how it is we attain and use it? First, I feel I should say that there’s a good chance Sellars may not endorse the use of his view on language acquisition and knowledge in a deterministic framework. His view on language, however, does seem to overlay Hofstadter’s idea of self very well, though it thus becomes susceptible to the same pitfalls as any deterministic metaphysical proposition might. What is important to take away from the position of Sellars is that the notion put forth by some of the classic empiricists claiming that knowledge can somehow exist independently of our mechanisms for categorizing it cannot be true. We may be able to react in terms of stimulus-response packages, but for Sellars (and Hofstadter), this doesn’t seem to count for much (if anything) when it comes to making claims about actually having knowledge. If we accept this view of knowledge as directly tied to language, then one has no real knowledge until they have acquired not only the capacity for language, but also that the capacity to understand the concepts and categories that we divide the world into in terms of their relationships to other categories is tied to the evolution of language.
Second, if we accept the framework for knowledge given above, the possibility of knowledge falling prey to accusations of an infinite regress is of genuine concern. This concern can be resolved, however, when one applies the notion of feedback loops that Hofstadter discusses in chapters twelve, fourteen, and fifteen in I am a Strange Loop, most notably because while we are living in an entirely determined world that functions in terms of micro-level interactions of particles, our macro-level understanding is much more like a kind of constant puzzle we aim to solve, and our perceived experience within the world feeds back into prior experience, and the translation of perceived new experiences at the macro-level and causal particular relations at the micro level perpetuate and grow the general feedback loop of existence in what we perceive to be new and different ways each day as we accumulate new experiences and interact with each other in the practical world.
Finally, should one choose to accept the theory of knowledge I’ve offered through the works of Sellars and Hofstadter, we can finally arrive at notion of “knowing” that has an interesting twist with regard to the notion of truth. In the opening paragraph of this paper I briefly mentioned the ideas of objective truth, relative truth, and reliably formed true beliefs about the world around us, and the aim to which I’ve aspired with what followed was twofold. First, through the work of Sellars, my aim was to remove the distinction between an idea of relative truth and reliably formed true beliefs about the world, for in my mind (and I imagine that of Sellars), reliably formed true belief and relative truth are the same thing. These are the truths that emerge as the direct result of language, and truths that we accept as true even if the skeptic should give us reason to doubt their objective truth, because they allow us to function practically on a day-to-day basis. Second, through the work of Hofstadter, I’ve tried to emphasize that though we understand relative truths as kinds of “functional” truths that are pragmatically important or prudent for us to accept in day-to-day life. These relative truths exist solely for our benefit, they are a creation of man and his use of language to categorize discernible micro-level patterns into coherent, practical information. They do not, however, necessarily remove the possibility of the existence of objective truths at the micro-level; they only serve to make broad micro-level truths useful to us at the practical level.
Being fortunate enough to correspond with Professor Hofstadter, one of his final communications expressed this conclusion rather succinctly to me, stating that “[I am a Strange Loop] is a kind of intricate, delicate balancing act between arguing that (1) microphysics is the only true story of causality in our world and that (2) high-level (ed: macro-level) view points are illusions . . . [and that] (3) microphysics is totally irrelevant to understanding the world of everyday experience and that (4) high-level viewpoints (based on macroscopic categories) are the deepest reality and believing in them is the only way to survive in the world.” Hofstadter is saying very clearly here what I’ve tried to argue for in this paper, namely that we live in a reductionist world in which we create the illusion of categories in order to process the world around us in a practical fashion, and yet that the most reduced (causal) level that we can understand existence in terms of is completely irrelevant to our day to day lives, and the deepest reality we are capable of engaging in takes place at the level of macroscopic categories that grant us the ability to interact with one another in meaningful ways.
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If anyone actually wants all the citations and everything, I'd pass along a .doc - but I wasn't really comfortable with just putting one up here as this is a paper I'm hoping will remain a work in progress for the next few years.
:)
Edit: Also, all the citations were in footnotes, so they didn't copy/paste over into this. Each quotation offered has a source, as well as a few of the main ideas.
Other than my personal correspondence with Hofstadter, the two works cited are:
Hofstadter, Douglas. "I am a Strange Loop". Basic Books, New York, 2007.
Sellars, Wilfrid. "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind". University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1956 (Republished w/ notes by Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1997) |
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| diggerz |
| that's an interesting read... |
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