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trocheeIn a conversation that included ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chr0me_kitten earlier today, she brought up apophenia*. [Edit: Also, earlier this week, imtboo and blackwingedboy have both been talking about Mercury in retrograde, which, initially, frustrated the heck out of me. But imtboo and I talked about it. Now bear with me, here, 'cause I'm coming back to that thought.]
An old professor of mine [at least, I think it was him! it was about the same time I was reading Daniel Dennett for the first time, and it mighta been him] used to rant about how the apparent inner voice of consciousness, and indeed the useful mental processing that goes on as a cognitive tool, is "merely" a short-circuit to the mouth-ear loop. He didn't go into much detail, but I've adopted the idea fairly firmly as I continue to study language, computation and communication.
The argument is like this: once you're forced to turn your thoughts into language, you make heuristic** approximations to serialize what is a complex brain configuration and turn it into a series of carefully-timed oropharyngeal articulations. Then the listener makes heuristic approximations of zir own, and (one usually expects) constructs a comparable configuration within zir mind. Of course, the listener has a wide array of safety catches, pattern detectors, and BS detectors in place to decide whether this new configuration is acceptable to zir mind.
But once you can do this from you to me, you can do this from you to you, and actually, this series of approximations can be useful to understanding: the ugly corners, the complex sides, the difficult structures can be examined again, from a new angle: "suppose these thoughts were available to me as language [i.e. someone else is saying them]: would they still be useful?" In other words, by constructing a simple short circuit and removing the actual oropharyngeal gestures, you can engage your own decoding apparatus' pattern detectors [and BS detectors] and review the packed-and-unpacked idea after the smoothing and distortion provided by serializing it into language.
My point, if it wasn't already clear [i'm getting to it, I promise!]
analysis of the world into any arbitrary system is itself a creative act. Sometimes, the truth is in the data, and sometimes the truth is in the learner. When we have mental "ruts", we often need to reorganize what we already know and look at it all from a new perspective. Have you ever packed a suitcase only to find that not everything fit, and then found that if you unpack it all and start over, it all fits without trouble? That sort of "serialize, then restore" seems to be useful.
Tarot, for example, is a system that seems to work (at least, seems to me) because it's a random jumble of powerful symbols; the insight comes from our own tendency to assume the intentional stance towards this signal and proceed (in a sort of Gricean way) to assume communicative intent and then "discover" our own pre-existing knowledge in the cards. It's a way to "apopheniacally"*** kick in your own pattern detectors -- the ones that usually point only out at the world -- and point them at your own thought patterns. It's tremendously powerful.
Likewise, one could make lists, read tea leaves, take drugs, or anything else that would provoke apophenia, the discovery of new ideas, given no useful signal. [Edit: For example, having your horoscope read, or looking out for things because Mercury's zodiacal progression seems to change direction.] I wonder if I should try cartomancy for my next program design session....
* when I Google for "apophenia", the top link is to Danah Boyd, whose work is fascinating to me, not to mention she's nerd-cute in a big way and went to my undergrad institution, just a few years after I did. Her recent blog-entry on "why people need to pay for insight" has a similar insight about how spending money can provoke apophenia instead. I dunno whether that's why she titles her blog that way.
** [a grammatical note, for those who can't live without them, i.e. me]: I've just discovered that the word heuristic literally means "technique for directing one's attention towards discovery", or at least it did before its use in computer science, which was more how I intended it (although the philosophical meaning matches my rambles above quite nicely). For those with a historical bent: heuristic is also cognate with eureka. aha!
*** yes, apopheniacally. I make up words sometimes.
chr0me_kitten earlier today, she brought up apophenia*. [Edit: Also, earlier this week, imtboo and blackwingedboy have both been talking about Mercury in retrograde, which, initially, frustrated the heck out of me. But imtboo and I talked about it. Now bear with me, here, 'cause I'm coming back to that thought.] An old professor of mine [at least, I think it was him! it was about the same time I was reading Daniel Dennett for the first time, and it mighta been him] used to rant about how the apparent inner voice of consciousness, and indeed the useful mental processing that goes on as a cognitive tool, is "merely" a short-circuit to the mouth-ear loop. He didn't go into much detail, but I've adopted the idea fairly firmly as I continue to study language, computation and communication.
The argument is like this: once you're forced to turn your thoughts into language, you make heuristic** approximations to serialize what is a complex brain configuration and turn it into a series of carefully-timed oropharyngeal articulations. Then the listener makes heuristic approximations of zir own, and (one usually expects) constructs a comparable configuration within zir mind. Of course, the listener has a wide array of safety catches, pattern detectors, and BS detectors in place to decide whether this new configuration is acceptable to zir mind.
But once you can do this from you to me, you can do this from you to you, and actually, this series of approximations can be useful to understanding: the ugly corners, the complex sides, the difficult structures can be examined again, from a new angle: "suppose these thoughts were available to me as language [i.e. someone else is saying them]: would they still be useful?" In other words, by constructing a simple short circuit and removing the actual oropharyngeal gestures, you can engage your own decoding apparatus' pattern detectors [and BS detectors] and review the packed-and-unpacked idea after the smoothing and distortion provided by serializing it into language.
My point, if it wasn't already clear [i'm getting to it, I promise!]
analysis of the world into any arbitrary system is itself a creative act. Sometimes, the truth is in the data, and sometimes the truth is in the learner. When we have mental "ruts", we often need to reorganize what we already know and look at it all from a new perspective. Have you ever packed a suitcase only to find that not everything fit, and then found that if you unpack it all and start over, it all fits without trouble? That sort of "serialize, then restore" seems to be useful.
Tarot, for example, is a system that seems to work (at least, seems to me) because it's a random jumble of powerful symbols; the insight comes from our own tendency to assume the intentional stance towards this signal and proceed (in a sort of Gricean way) to assume communicative intent and then "discover" our own pre-existing knowledge in the cards. It's a way to "apopheniacally"*** kick in your own pattern detectors -- the ones that usually point only out at the world -- and point them at your own thought patterns. It's tremendously powerful.
Likewise, one could make lists, read tea leaves, take drugs, or anything else that would provoke apophenia, the discovery of new ideas, given no useful signal. [Edit: For example, having your horoscope read, or looking out for things because Mercury's zodiacal progression seems to change direction.] I wonder if I should try cartomancy for my next program design session....
* when I Google for "apophenia", the top link is to Danah Boyd, whose work is fascinating to me, not to mention she's nerd-cute in a big way and went to my undergrad institution, just a few years after I did. Her recent blog-entry on "why people need to pay for insight" has a similar insight about how spending money can provoke apophenia instead. I dunno whether that's why she titles her blog that way.
** [a grammatical note, for those who can't live without them, i.e. me]: I've just discovered that the word heuristic literally means "technique for directing one's attention towards discovery", or at least it did before its use in computer science, which was more how I intended it (although the philosophical meaning matches my rambles above quite nicely). For those with a historical bent: heuristic is also cognate with eureka. aha!
*** yes, apopheniacally. I make up words sometimes.
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Re: not an expert... but interested.
Date: 2005-03-31 02:03 am (UTC)Emergent properties, on the other hand, are where I think the real mysteries in the world reside. No prime creators, no invisible hands, nothing immaterial -- and yet, many many things that cannot be explained without rising to the appropriate level.
Although chemical elements can be explained in terms of physics, the interactions among them really require rising to the level of the atom; although molecule structure can be described in terms of chemistry, molecular and cellular biology require higher levels of generalization, heuristic description, and phenomenological description. These are the emergent properties you mean, right?
Likewise all the way up. Our minds may be made up of brain goo, which may be made up of a mass of neurons, but the appropriate level of abstraction to interact with a human is not as a mass of cells -- it is as a separate, intentional organism. Which is an emergent property of the brain goo.
okay, maybe I am seething. Raving, anyway.
*hums the bridge to the Beatles' anthem to emergence:*
Re: not an expert... but interested.
Date: 2005-03-31 06:02 am (UTC)Emergent properties, such as the fact that Life is inherent in the structure and combination of subatomic particles that make up this physical universe. And consciousness is inherent in the material chains encoding information and informational flows that make up Life.
I am not sure emergent properties get you off the hook about the "No prime creators, no invisible hands, nothing immaterial" stuff. The question of eternal simultaneity vs perceived time (even Einstein felt time could run multiple directions) with all of its corresponding philosophical conundrums and the problem of existence as opposed to non-existential void both seem to hint at additional dimensions or "hidden structure" that we can't yet understand. I guess if you want to deify anything, Life and Consciousness are as nice a focus as any. It sure beats killing in the name of this or that fundamentalist brain-warp...