[MD] now it comes

[Krimel]

Krimel said:
Please, if you will, find that quote in "Some Problems..." It isn't in my
copy. In fact, search for it on the net and you will find all of the
references trace back to Pirsig not James.

dmb says:
James's can be tricky, especially the stuff published after his death. But
one scholar's footnote says that quote can be found on page 365 of the 1911
version, which must be the original version, I figure, because James died
just one year before that.

[Krimel]
Yeah, I saw that, except that the 1916 version doesn't even have that many
pages. It is hard to see how an earlier edition would be longer. Another
factors is that the quote in Lila is on about page 365. 

Unfortunately, this just appears to be a case of bad scholarship
perpetuating and compounding itself which is why it is frowned upon so
heavily.

Krimel:
What I don't get is the difference between perceptual and pre-conceptual.
Nor do I see how you can deny that sensation and feelings (both
fundamentally biological processes) precede perception.

dmb says:
Pre-conceputal experience is broader than perception. It includes
perception, feelings, sensations but it's even broader than that. 

[Krimel]
I think pre-conceptual would in fact be more narrow. After all perception
(the term James prefers) includes a touch of the conceptual. That really is
what this discussion is about right? You are offering your reasons for
abandoning the terminology James prefers.

[dmb]
Part of the problem with traditional empiricism (SOM) is that it was also
known as sensory empiricism, which is to say that empirical experience is
whatever can be known through the five senses. Radical empiricism goes
beyond that limit. They say the empiricist weren't being empirical enough
and that it had been so limited for metaphysical reasons, not empirical
reasons. 

[Krimel]
I think you use this as an excuse to let all of the crap empiricism throws
out, sneak in through the back door.

[dmb
There are some very interesting implications to way James focuses on the
body in his psychology but I think you tend to misread that part. I think
you tend to focus on perception, sensation and feeling because then James is
talking about biological processes. And he is but I'm suggesting you need to
think about it in another way. I think you tend to reduce his claims down to
biological processes in a sort of atomistic way. Nobody is denying that we
have bodies or that these processes occur, you see, but that's just not the
point of what he's saying. 

[Krimel]
And by ignoring his understanding that these processes are rooted in biology
I think you miss James's point entirely. I have never said it is all a
matter of biology, never. We never get any farther in our discussion because
you get hung up with name calling and simplistic arguments right about this
point.

I have snipped your simplistic account of typing and so forth because I
agree with it in part, but I think you really don't see it in context and
miss the essential features of your own argument. James as you well know was
ending his career at the time Freud was beginning his. Whatever engagement
they had with each other is a matter for historical archeologists. But the
point I would bring to your attention is that they were both introducing a
discussion of the unconscious.

Freud's use of the term unconscious came to dominate and to this day to
influences thinking on this subject far more than James. As I have pointed
out before, in many areas of psychological research Freud is regarded as a
bit of an embarrassment and people have been at pains to avoid the use of
his terms. However because it is so ubiquitous let me say a word about it.
Freud like James saw the unconscious as rooted in biology. Freud thought of
it as our animal nature. He constructs a kind of inner warfare between the
immediate needs of our biology (id) and the demands placed on us by society
(superego). The ego or face we present to the world, is the manifestation of
the outcome of that inner battle.

The ego or consciousness for Freud was the tip of the iceberg or about one
sixth of the total inner workings of the "mind". The problem, in my view, is
that at one sixth is radically overestimating the power and capacities of
consciousness. James does this as well to some extent. Conscious awareness
as noted in the thread next door is pretty darn small. We can only think of
about seven things at once. We fake ourselves out with this by constantly
cycling thoughts and ideas through this small window of awareness. In fact
some claim that what we measure and take to be "intelligence" is really a
measure of how fast we can cycle data through this awareness. Or as I like
to think of it "processing speed".

You give the example of typing and while I prefer the example of driving
(mostly because, as should be apparent to all, my typing is for shit) but
typing will suffice. We are only able to type without thinking about it
because at some point we devoted enormous conscious effort to learning and
practicing typing. As we are learning something we focus our awareness and
conscious minds on the task at hand. Eventually, as we gain experience we
need devote almost no mental effort to the task. In other words the whole
point of learning a skill like typing, driving, talking... etc is to make it
into an unconscious process. That is a big part of the function
consciousness serves. It allows us to focus intently on the "how" until we
need focus on it no more.

Most of what we do when we act in the world arises from some combination of
our biological instincts and the processes we have devoted much time and
energy into learning. Consciousness and conceptualization are tails that are
waging your dog, dude. They are relatively insignificant in the broad scheme
of things. All conceptualization and formulation of "rules" and "laws" are
after the fact analysis of what we have already done. All that self talk
that Buddhist seek to quite through meditation is just chatter. It is
something we do to keep that conscious awareness portion of our being out of
the way. After all when we think too deeply about what we are doing our
thought just get in the way.

[dmb]
This is where the embodied nature of experience has interesting
implications, by the way. If all conceptual knowledge is derived from
immediate experience and immediate experience is an embodied affair
involving perceptions sensations instincts intuitions and feelings, then
what does that say about the prospects of trying to create artificial
intelligence, which is by definition NOT so embodied? That's what Dreyfus
the Heideggerian tried to tell those guys back at MIT. He makes a pretty big
deal out of this difference too, between knowing-how and knowing-that. Those
two ways of knowing show up in many languages, including German. I imagine
this point was fairly obvious to Heidegger's domestic audience. I've heard
that the old Scottish distinction between wit and ken gets at this
difference too. Skill is its own kind of knowledge. It takes experience and
can't be gained by way of conceptual knowledge. Know-how is not something
you can pick up from a book, not even when it comes to being a skilled
thinker. 

[Krimel]
I think Dreyfus' argument applies to algorithmic models. These follow a
traditional programming model of step one, step two, step three... This is
exactly the kind of conceptualization that reverse engineers action. It
breaks what we do into steps when what we do is actually fluid and not
following steps at all. 

The model of AI that I personally think has great promise is neural
networking. This is a synthetic process that mimics better what the brain
seems to be and what it seems to be doing. It is a much more organic growth
model of knowledge acquisition that, like life, it depends on feedback and
tends to function probabilistically rather than lawfully.

The point I fear you constantly miss is that everything we say and do is the
result of biological processes. You are constantly hung up on the idea that
because they are rooted in biology that is all they are or you think I think
that's all they are. It is entirely possible or it will be some day in the
future, to completely describe every human action in terms of biology just
as it would be entirely possible to describe the Battle of Waterloo entirely
in terms of physics. But no one seriously thinks these would be "good"
explanations. Far from it, they would be cumbersome in the extreme. So we
bracket out the physics and biology and seek higher level explanation in
desire, motivation, spirituality, culture, politics, economics and so forth.

This is, the use of Point of View. Sometimes it is appropriate to talk in
terms of physics or biology, sometimes in terms of economics and psychology
and anthropology. We pick the point of view that suits us and our present
needs. But these higher level explanations cannot just run off in any lod
direction. They are constrained by the lower level physical and biological
explanations.

What I see you doing with radical empiricism is using it as an excuse to
avoid the lower levels. You see it as a loophole for avoiding the basics and
this is something neither James nor Freud would have tolerated. Both were
after all trained as medical doctors and neither theorizes in a way that
violates those lower levels.