The past five days or so have been one of those rare times in my life when my social life expands to the exclusion of all my concrete projects. It's been real good.( Read more... )
Re: in terms of conscious experiencepaulhopeAugust 25 2006, 14:11:31 UTC
I think in principle all mental functions should be definable or at least describable in both conscious terms, neurological terms, and (possibly, if we had Super!Knowledge of detailed circumstances) behavioural terms.
Why this set of kinds of terms? (As opposed to one that includes things like an algorithmic level of description, or a "computational"--not sure how to summarize this one, but David Marr was a big proponent of it--level of description?)
And do you mean that if something is to be a mental function, it must have all three of those kinds of properties ('conscious,' neural, and behavioral)? Because I think I would disagree.
Back on point though, your original claim was that:
Because we who theorise are full to the brim with conscious experience we can make theories that are phrased in terms drawn from or definable in terms of the terms of conscious experience. But rigourous empirical methods can only be applied to mathematical-statistical systems. So to use them in psychology, you need to do a conversion from the terms of conscious experience into the terms of mathematics-statistics.
My claim was that since most mental states are not exclusively definable in terms of conscious experience, you run into the "problem" of converting from from the terms of consciousness to some other set of terms--(or, really, discovering correlations between conscious experience and other features of mentality) no matter what if your goal is to get a good psychological model. Do you disagree?
Re: in terms of conscious experiencelukiferAugust 29 2006, 13:58:43 UTC
Why this set of kinds of terms? Well, I guess you could use algorithmic descriptions and stuff, but wouldn't that be a way of describing the neural facts?
And do you mean that if something is to be a mental function, it must have all three of those kinds of properties? Yep. All mental functions will have a neural basis, will have some effect on behaviour that is specifiable in principle (but in many cases is way way beyond our current capabilities) and is conscious.
My claim was that since most mental states are not exclusively definable in terms of conscious experience, you run into the "problem" of converting from from the terms of consciousness to some other set of terms--(or, really, discovering correlations between conscious experience and other features of mentality) no matter what if your goal is to get a good psychological model. Do you disagree? Um...by 'psychological model' you seem to be talking about predicting actions or something, right? Like, you need to convert between 'you have libidinal energy cathected into your father blah blah' into 'you will suffer from such-and-such symptoms blah but will be able to avoid them by such-and-such treatments blah'? Yes, I suppose so. But I think there's a much smaller jump from conscious terms, to things like purposive actions and neurotic symptoms (which some psychologists want to treat as purposive actions) than from either to mathematical or statistical terms.
Re: in terms of conscious experiencepaulhopeSeptember 2 2006, 14:18:24 UTC
Yep. All mental functions will have a neural basis, will have some effect on behaviour that is specifiable in principle (but in many cases is way way beyond our current capabilities) and is conscious.
I disagree. I think that mental functions are (a) in principle multiply realizable, and hence not necessarily implemented in a neural way, (b) not necessarily directly influencing behavior, but could influence behavior only by exerting causal influence over other mental states (I'm not sure if this is an objection to what you are trying to say here, but maybe you could clarify what you mean), and (c) there are mental functions that are not conscious ones.
Um...by 'psychological model' you seem to be talking about predicting actions or something, right?
I'm talking about an accurate account of how a psychology works. I don't understand your example or the point you are trying to make there.
Why this set of kinds of terms? (As opposed to one that includes things like an algorithmic level of description, or a "computational"--not sure how to summarize this one, but David Marr was a big proponent of it--level of description?)
And do you mean that if something is to be a mental function, it must have all three of those kinds of properties ('conscious,' neural, and behavioral)? Because I think I would disagree.
Back on point though, your original claim was that:
Because we who theorise are full to the brim with conscious experience we can make theories that are phrased in terms drawn from or definable in terms of the terms of conscious experience. But rigourous empirical methods can only be applied to mathematical-statistical systems. So to use them in psychology, you need to do a conversion from the terms of conscious experience into the terms of mathematics-statistics.
My claim was that since most mental states are not exclusively definable in terms of conscious experience, you run into the "problem" of converting from from the terms of consciousness to some other set of terms--(or, really, discovering correlations between conscious experience and other features of mentality) no matter what if your goal is to get a good psychological model. Do you disagree?
Reply
Well, I guess you could use algorithmic descriptions and stuff, but wouldn't that be a way of describing the neural facts?
And do you mean that if something is to be a mental function, it must have all three of those kinds of properties?
Yep. All mental functions will have a neural basis, will have some effect on behaviour that is specifiable in principle (but in many cases is way way beyond our current capabilities) and is conscious.
My claim was that since most mental states are not exclusively definable in terms of conscious experience, you run into the "problem" of converting from from the terms of consciousness to some other set of terms--(or, really, discovering correlations between conscious experience and other features of mentality) no matter what if your goal is to get a good psychological model. Do you disagree?
Um...by 'psychological model' you seem to be talking about predicting actions or something, right? Like, you need to convert between 'you have libidinal energy cathected into your father blah blah' into 'you will suffer from such-and-such symptoms blah but will be able to avoid them by such-and-such treatments blah'? Yes, I suppose so. But I think there's a much smaller jump from conscious terms, to things like purposive actions and neurotic symptoms (which some psychologists want to treat as purposive actions) than from either to mathematical or statistical terms.
Reply
I disagree. I think that mental functions are
(a) in principle multiply realizable, and hence not necessarily implemented in a neural way,
(b) not necessarily directly influencing behavior, but could influence behavior only by exerting causal influence over other mental states (I'm not sure if this is an objection to what you are trying to say here, but maybe you could clarify what you mean), and
(c) there are mental functions that are not conscious ones.
Um...by 'psychological model' you seem to be talking about predicting actions or something, right?
I'm talking about an accurate account of how a psychology works. I don't understand your example or the point you are trying to make there.
Reply
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