« Huckabee and Social Networks | Main | Harry on Cloverfield » What do you think?Gary Wolf at Salon reviews a new book by Russell T. Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel called Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic, wherein the two authors explore consciousness from their combined perspectives – Hurburt is a psychologist, and Schwtizgebel is a philosopher and the "impolite" skeptic who "boasts that with some rather basic interrogation techniques, he can impugn almost any person's credibility as a self-witness." The book is about the reliability of introspection. The classic account of the implications of neuroscience for philosophy is Daniel Dennett's 1991 book "Consciousness Explained," in which he argues that humans are complex machines, without any extra something -- soul, mind, spirit or will -- that does not have its basis in our biological components. Dennett's philosophy is summed up by a beautiful motto he later acquired from the Italian philosopher Giulio Giorello: "Yes, we have a soul, but it's made of lots of tiny robots!" At the book's core is about sessions in which the two authors interview a subject, called Melanie in the book, asking her questions about what she was thinking after random beeps, and wondering to what extent the observation is altering the thing (person) observed. Gary ends with a reference to contemplation in Zen, saying "perhaps Hurlburt's lowly beeper, accompanied by an uninhibited skepticism and taste for the comic, can perform some of the same work as the old style of ritual contemplation. Melanie, who begins as the subject of these experiments, promotes herself to co-investigator." [Link] I found in interesting post about the book at Schwitzgebel's blog (proving again how wunnerful it is to have the blogosphere to extend explorations and conversations). He mentions how, in the book, his co-author defends "the idea that much conscious thinking takes place neither in speech, nor in images, nor in any other symbolic format. He calls this "unsymbolized thinking" and describes the resistance many people have to this idea." I was then surprised a couple weeks ago, when chatting with a brother in law about his stream of experience, when he casually said -- as though it were the most obvious thing -- that he just had a thought that was quite conscious but neither spoken nor in any imagistic form. When I asked him how he knew that he thought was imageless in this way, he said that it had a specific content but nothing visual, more like words, but actually lacking words, since it was neither in English nor in Hindi. Speaking for myself, I've seen many clues over the years that my metathoughts - thoughts about how I think and what I think, or what I think I thought - are not to be trusted. For instance, as I've become increasingly careful about reviewing my writing before publishing, I've found several instances where I was thinking one word but wrote another; or instances where recordings or photographs or older written passages reveal that some memory I had was inaccurate or plain wrong. Because over the years I've been known among others for my memory, I always assumed that it was always correct - the way intelligent people often assume that they're intelligent about everything. We depend on our minds for memory and world view; how can we know, other than phenomenological feedback from time to time (like the recordings or images I mentioned), whether our memories are accurate? In fact, our memories of the past may be quite inaccurate, and we should always be suspicious of them. This is a troubling thought. If you've been around someone with Alzheimer's disease, you know that one of its most devastating effects is the extent to which people so afflicted can be unaware of their gaps and lapses. They may not realize that anything is wrong, and they can be hostile when challenged. To what extent is our flow of "consciousness" faith-based - not that we know who and what and where and when we are at all times, but that we believe we have that knowledge, are reinforced by what's accurate, and ignore the inaccuracies; sweep them under the rug and forget about 'em. My wife and I have caught each other, from time to time, remembering vividly something we did, only to realize that our memory is transforming an intention we had to a supposed action. "I put the keys on the table." In fact, I only thought about putting the keys on the table, they're still in my pocket. To the extent I've come to realize the flaws and gaps in my thinking, I think I've been smarter in general, which is interesting. I spend much of my time with very smart, often brilliant people who have signficant flaws and gaps, who are really not very smart about some aspects of their lives. This is consistently true. Some work very hard to create the impression they are smart about everything, or to reinforce others' impression that their intelligence is heroic. So much of genius is really just PR. jon posted this at 9:24 AM |
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