An interesting article in Aeon by Thomas Metzinger:
Given how little control we have of our wandering minds, how can we cultivate real mental autonomy?
He develops a metaphor of conscious thoughts as dolphins that leap from the water of unconscious processing into the air of conscious awareness, and asks:
The really interesting question then becomes: how do various thoughts and actions ‘surface’, and what’s the mechanism by which we corral them and make them our own? We ought to probe how our organism turns different sub-personal events into thoughts or states that appear to belong to ‘us’ as a whole, and how we can learn to control them more effectively and efficiently. This capacity creates what I call mental autonomy, and I believe it is the neglected ethical responsibility of government and society to help citizens cultivate it.
Another apt quote from the article:
If you want to discover for yourself just how true this is, learn to meditate. It’s an eye-opening (so to speak) experience.
From the article, an interesting twist on “affordances”:
Hi keiths,
Here is a portion of one of the quotes above with a bit extra from the article.
What Metzinger describes as a surprising result was no surprise to the thinkers of ancient Greece. That is why students were told what they needed to do, and it was to ‘know thyself’. They were aware of how little the average person knew herself or himself.
Neither was it a surprise to Rudolf Steiner. He taught that we are awake in our thinking, we have a dream level of consciousness in our feeling and we are asleep in our willing. And for the vast majority of the time these three attributes are entwined to various degrees. So when you say that deciding is a form of thinking, there is actually a great deal of willing and feeling in decision making.
Everyday thinking comes easy to us but pure thinking is something which take a lot of effort to achieve.
CharlieM:
Of course there is. Decision making is a mixture of all those things.
That doesn’t help Steiner. The only way to rescue his argument (about matter deciding to think) would be if deciding didn’t involve thinking.
Perhaps you do not understand the unique nature of thinking as percept in the way Steiner uses the word.
How would that rescue Steiner from the logical predicament I pointed out?
keiths, do you believe the surprising result Metzinger writes about actually was surprising to anyone?
Can you explain the process by which someone comes to the understanding that matter thinks?
CharlieM:
Yes, and it continues to surprise people. Most people have the illusion of being far more in control of their thoughts than they actually are.
Do you meditate, Charlie?
Thanks for that link — I’m very interested in this idea of “cognitive affordances” and its relevance for mind-wandering.
How would that rescue Steiner from the logical predicament I pointed out?
CharlieM:
You didn’t answer the question. How would that rescue Steiner from the logical predicament I pointed out?
KN,
Me too. Metzinger has some interesting ideas.
He doesn’t insist that matter decides to think, he asks how matter comes to the point where it ponders its own existence.
But you agree that it would not have surprised Steiner?
Yes.
keiths:
CharlieM:
Then you may be able to relate to this. The first form of meditation I learned was focused awareness meditation, with the breath as the object of attention. As a beginner, my mind simply would not stay focused on the breath. It wasn’t surprising that my mind wandered, but it was shocking how quickly it did so, again and again. Until taking up the practice, I had never realized just how little control we actually have over our thoughts.
Every fellow meditator I’ve consulted has said much the same thing. Was your experience different?
CharlieM:
I don’t know, and I can’t be arsed to find out. Steiner has shown himself to be an idiot on other topics, and it doesn’t seem worth it to seek out his opinion on this one.
Thomas Metzinger
Here we go again. What is the subject of the illusion? This is what comes from equation the person with the physical body. The consequences of this is the denial of self.
CharlieM:
Our conscious awareness.
Metzinger is unabashed about that:
CharlieM:
We’ve been over this again and again, Charlie. Here are Steiner’s words:
Existing is not thinking. Steiner is asking why matter doesn’t just sit there. He supposes that in order for a physicalist to explain how matter comes to think — and then to think about itself — we must suppose that it somehow becomes dissatisfied and decides to think.
That’s silly, as I’ve already pointed out:
And then, of course, there’s the logical problem:
Charlie,
I’m still interested in your response to my meditation question.
No, my experience was no different.
You talk about focusing on the breath. Metzinger writes on the results of neuroscience and experimental psychology:
Well I am neither an experimental psychologist nor a neuroscientist and I don’t believe you are either, but I am sure we could both have enlightened the researchers on what they found to be so surprising, that yes, cognitive control is the exception. Just study your breathing and ask yourself (your brain in Metzinger’s case): What percentage of time am I actually aware of my breathing? This would have given them the answer,
Thankyou for telling us a bit more about yourself.
How about, consciousness is talking to ourselves.
Perhaps some of you have experienced the phenomenon of solving a problem as a result of trying to explain it to another person.
When I don’t have another person handy, I try to explain it to myself. I have inner dialogs, taking two or more positions. But there is no reason why two or more people can’t have the same kind of discussion.
What do you mean by ‘our’ in that statement?
The Cheshire cat has the illusion that it exists. 🙂
keiths,
I will ask you what I think is a perfectly legitimate question. Why do you think about your own existence? As far as we know other animals do not philosophise on their own existence. We do not see ants scratching their heads over these sort of questions and they survive perfectly well. So what drives us to ask these sort of questions? Does your time here at TSZ contribute to your survival?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say language.
Glen Davidson
Well I would say that trying to see things from another’s point of view is a very commendable and worthwhile trait.
We get closer to reality by studying things from many angles.
I agree that language has a lot to do with it. Language and rational thinking evolved together. They are the inward and outward expression of one human attribute.
petrushka,
I would say no, because the conscious experience of seeing a beautiful sunset, for instance, is nothing like the experience of hearing someone talk about one, even if that someone is us.
petrushka,
A colleague of mine called it the “wooden Indian effect”, because the other person doesn’t have to do anything but listen. You might as well be explaining your problem to a wooden Indian statue of the kind you used to find in front of tobacco stores.
But why does he have a tabby version of Grumpy Cat painted on his torso?
CharlieM:
keiths:
CharlieM:
Charlie gets grumpy when someone dares to criticize the Dear Leader. 🙂
Charlie,
Life is short and there’s far more stuff out there than any single person can consume in a lifetime. We have to be selective. Why would I go out of my way to find out what Steiner thinks about this, when he’s already shown himself to be a crackpot on other topics (including tomatoes and black people)?
Suppose J-Mac writes a thousand-page tome on quantum mechanics. Who among us would slog through it for anything other than its entertainment value?
CharlieM:
If they were that sloppy about it, then they could just as well have asked people on the street “How much of the time are you in control of your thoughts?”,
and they would have arrived at the wrong conclusion.
Science is about avoiding such pitfalls, Charlie.
CharlieM:
keiths:
CharlieM:
Belonging to us, as individual human beings. Surely you don’t think Metzinger is denying the existence of individuals, do you?
CharlieM:
No, my time at TSZ doesn’t contribute to my survival, except perhaps by keeping me off the street where I might get run over by a bus.
But let’s ask a more relevant question, which is: Was curiosity adaptive for our ancestors?
I think the answer is obviously yes, and that this explains our drive to understand things, including things with no apparent relevance to our survival and reproduction.
I don’t get grumpy except very occasionally with my nearest and dearest who I feel comfortable enough to share my grumpiness with. 🙂
To offer a fair criticism of J-Mac’s or any other person’s writings you would need to read what they wrote about the subject you are criticising. To deal with it in a fair way you should either read it, even if you found it tedious, and then offer your criticism, or decide that you can’t be arsed and refrain from commenting.
The fact that they found the results to be so surprising is that they had already prejudged with they expected the outcome to be. They need not go to the bother of asking other people. They could have honestly examined their own selves and it would have told them all they needed to know. You had already discovered this through your meditations. Their findings should have been no surprise to you.
I take it you feel more in control of your thoughts since before you began meditating. Our consciousness of our selves is very limited but it can be extended with effort.
What do you see as the difference between “myself” and the “individual that is me”? In what way can Metzinger deny the self but not deny the individual?
I don’t think we can separate out individual characteristics and features from the context of the animal or group in which they belong. You ask if curiosity was adaptive in our ancestors. Well what about caution, was that adaptive? Surely when we look at humans as a group we see a wide spectrum between individuals who are very cautious and fearful to those who are curious to the point of recklessness. But intraspecific animals show a more limited range of these traits.
So why do you think about your own existence?
CharlieM,
We were talking about Metzinger’s views, not Steiner’s. You were the one who asked about Steiner and whether he would be surprised by the findings, and I told you correctly that I couldn’t be arsed to find out.
I’ve already read enough of Steiner to know that he is a twit. Life is short, and I can’t be bothered to seek out the opinion of every twit on every topic.
Is it possible that I’ll miss out on some rare gem of insight from Steiner, amidst the horseshit? Sure, it’s logically possible, just as it’s logically possible that J-Mac will come up with a similar gem. But the odds are pretty slim, to say the least.
I’ll place my bets on folks who can deliver better odds than Steiner and J-Mac.
CharlieM,
They did something far better, and investigated the question scientifically. Science is a far more sophisticated approach to gaining knowledge than simply “asking other people.”
Keep in mind that while Steiner was engaged in his masturbatory “clairvoyant investigations”, producing horseshit like this…
…scientists were off learning actual truths about the world.
Metzinger:
CharlieM:
keiths:
CharlieM:
keiths:
CharlieM:
I would rephrase that as “my self” instead of “myself”, and Metzinger makes his meaning quite clear in the quote above, where he refers to the “sense of self” and “the illusion that we are actually the same person over time.”
He elaborates:
keiths:
CharlieM:
Of course, and any successful human will exhibit both. If someone’s curiosity leads her to jump off a cliff, just to see what it’s like, then she’s less likely to produce future offspring. On the other hand, if she starves to death in a cave because she’s too cautious to venture out and look for food, then she’s also less likely to reproduce. There has to be a balance.
I already told you. It’s because I’m curious, and curiosity was a trait favored in my ancestors by evolution.
It is through experience that we recognise that we are self which persists over time, it is an illusion to believe that we possess the same physical body over time.
In the following quote from Metzinger, he claims that the the ego is a mental representation. But he treats the brain as the real source of thinking. This is unjustified. He is no less obliged to treat the brain and central nervous system as a mental representation.
Ron Brady do not fall into the same trap as Metzinger. He writes:
CharlieM,
Your Brady quote misses the mark, because you’ve failed to grasp what Metzinger is saying. Brady asks:
Far from being the clincher that you take it to be, Brady’s question merely reaffirms what Metzinger says:
Metzinger doesn’t claim that there is no “thinking thing”. He simply argues that the “thinking thing” hosts a false representation of the self:
Anyone who reads the Brady article will see that he does not speculate on a “thinking thing”. He explains that by the concept “I” is meant “a thinking that refers to itself…Any further meaning of the term such as ‘I am a man, living in France, etc. . . .’ is still to be demonstrated, as Descartes noted. The cogito argument points only to the irreducible minimum of I-ness.”.
To say that “I am a brain which thinks” is to make the assumption that the “I” is reducible to the brain.
At the end of the article Brady writes:
I would advice you to read the complete article.
keiths,
Thomas Metzinger
Who is this “I” that doesn’t believe?
What is it that loses consciousness each night and then picks up where it left off the night before?
In what way does the brain communicate with itself and tell itself things? Is it the whole brain that tells itself stories and makes up models? Or do the individual brain cells conspire together to produce the illusion of an individual self?
What does he mean by “our” and “us”? Is this use of personal pronouns just a fiction produced by a lump of spongy flesh?
Do you agree with Metzinger, keiths? Does your brain believe that there is a made up model called “you” who has an identity because this made up model convinces itself that it has one? The brain has fooled itself but it understands that it has fooled itself but it still continues to act as if it is fooling itself.
CharlieM,
Why must I keep explaining this to you, Charlie? Metzinger doesn’t deny that we are individual thinking entities:
And as I noted earlier:
It’s clear that you don’t want to understand Metzinger, but why? Why does this idea of an illusory self-model spook you so?