You say it that way.

What if I said: Things appear (where 'thing' is taken in the broadest sense as objects, processes, colours, basically anything you can think of). What is it then that "has" properties? Are not properties just among the "things" that appear (if we allow that shapes, colours, textures and so on are even separable from shaped, coloured and textured objects)? — Janus

"Property" is just a name.

So my take is: concepts mediate and inspire bodily processes and comportments rather than being strongly (probabilistically) tied to the neural architecture involved with executing (most types) of them. — fdrake

Right, so this is where the Bayseian Brain feedback stuff comes in (that I gave you the link to in PM). I think your model is right, but the conceptual stuff does seem to be able to make some pretty strong links with the neurons involved in executing bodily processes, so that leaves us with the slightly puzzling question of why concepts around what words, images mean to us (which can only possibly be learnt culturally) can have a massive impact on how we gather data, and how we respond to it (even subconsciously), and yet concepts like "It's OK, it's just my heart beating faster because I'm nervous", or "it's OK that the world is moving past but I'm sat still because I'm in a car", don't seem to be able to exert that same level of feedback control in panic attacks.

The most obvious answer (and my personal favourite because I've seen it work in therapeutic environments), is that they can exert that level of feedback, and the reason they don't generally is exactly to do with Kahnnemann's system 2 energy requirements, as you suggest. It's just too damn hard.

A little digression, but a worthy one, there's yet another book which I strongly recommend by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir called 'Scarcity'. It's basically about economical psychology, and it's very good, but in it they develop the idea of bandwidth. Simply because of the energy requirements of the brain, we cannot think of too many things at once, it's like we all have a bandwidth throttle. This really only applies to the frontal cortex, and even then to limited sections of it, as the post-natal development of the brain isolates some important parts (possibly because of this problem, like reserved bandwidth for the important bits). I think that's why bringing new concepts to bear on sensory inputs and bodily feedback is so damn hard, but not impossible. Digression over.

That's really cool. Do you think there's any correspondence with model averaging in stats, if you're familiar? If we imagine anticipation and memory as models of input states based on previous patterns of association; there might be more than one anticipation (model) running at once; a multithreading of thought-action chains (neural+sensorimotor impetus for the body's comportment, including thoughts) that originate in multiple places; these will amplify and die out in accordance with continual feedback (models learning different weights); but the feedback mechanism might 'get stuck' in a certain pattern of valuation. Edit: perhaps when, say, two patterns (which are models in this analogy) generate predictions (anticipations) that are "valued" very highly by each other? (edit: analogy breaks down a lot here, models and loss functions... stupid loss functions). — fdrake

This is unbelievably close to Karl Friston's work on Bayesian feedback in brain processes. The first time I read through what you wrote I thought of his work, but on the second reading it's almost identical, astonishing. This article gives an overview.

There's no way to check anything about any model if there are no objective properties. What would you be checking? — Terrapin Station

Whether it works. Whether you think it helps you achieve whatever it is you're trying to achieve with it (prediction usually, but also justification, comfort...)

There is a way that things are, but the way that things are is always from some point of reference. — Terrapin Station

Then how is that a property of the thing and not of the point of reference (or the two combined). If that point of reference suddenly popped out of existence, what would happen to the 'properties' the object had that were only from that point of reference?

How if biology is a concept you created and it has no properties independent of that? — Terrapin Station

You're confusing concepts I create with concepts I voluntarily create. My nominalism here doesn't fit in with your magic free-will woo I'm afraid, so the idea that my mind creates these concepts is not necessarily synonymous with any ability to control them.

concepts I create with concepts I voluntarily create....... — Isaac

.......implies two separate and distinct mechanisms from which concepts arise. Is that what you meant to suggest?

.......implies two separate and distinct mechanisms from which concepts arise. Is that what you meant to suggest? — Mww

Yes, I think of concepts arising in one of three ways (mostly based on standard child development work). There are clearly concepts we're born with (spatiotemporal models for one), then a whole bunch seem to come along immediately post-natally (object permanence for example), then the refinements come in adolescence/adulthood (social theories, science etc).

The first are virtually impossible to change (though in childhood, ways round them can be constructed), the second are very hard to change, and third are fairly malleable by comparison.

....concepts mediate and inspire.... — fdrake

........which implies contingent rule;

rather than being strongly....tied to the neural architecture — fdrake

......which implies necessary physical law.

How can both inhere in a pure wetware environment? In effect, law is subsumed by mere rule, which contradicts itself.

How can both inhere in a pure wetware environment? In effect, law is subsumed by mere rule, which contradicts itself. — Mww

What do you mean by "mere rule". Isn't a contingent just as powerful as a law. Isn't a contingent just a law that describes a necessary function - if->then? Markov chains are perfectly computable are they not?

Understood.

The question then arises, how is it possible to distinguish whether concepts arise from different mechanisms, or concepts arise by degree from a simpliciter, or, divide into simpliciters from a whole, from one mechanism? The obvious answer would seem to be, the difference in concept kind, or, the difference in their respective application, demonstrates the difference in their respective source.

Is it not reasonable to suppose, that if concepts arise from different mechanisms, they should be different in and of themselves? It follows necessarily that if the difference in concepts is given, there needs be a faculty whose sole modus operandi is to determine, not which concept but which kind of concept, is required for that which concepts are designed to accomplish. Then, have we not succeeded in complicating the human rational system without proper warrant?

Isn't a contingent just a law that describes a necessary function - if->then? — Isaac

I thought that was called a conditional. There are lawful conditionals, yes; “if/then” is merely a form of cause/effect, which has the power of law in its a priori principles. There are no lawful contingents.

I reject the idea that contingency has the power of law. Law incorporates the principles of universality and necessity, whereas rule does not. Mathematics being the prime example: if the human understanding of mathematical principle doesn’t hold no matter where a human finds himself, he has no access to knowledge whatsoever, at least in his present evolutionary status.

Although, in the Grand Scheme of Things of course, everything is contingent because absolute truth is unknown. Even so, we generate conditions under which understanding is prevented from contradicting itself, and the predicates of law are such.

Then, have we not succeeded in complicating the rationally system without proper warrant? — Mww

I think what @Isaac is imagining as a concept is quite different from, in virtue of being a more general form of, ideas about what we do with rationality. Philosophical concepts like justice or modus ponens or "The Private Language Argument" are just one type of concept (I think) in what Isaac is discussing.

We can populate an entire philosophy through (rational/reflective) concepts, concept generating mechanisms (interpretive paradigms, ordinary language philosophy and deconstruction, say), conceptual links (logical inference, induction, ampliative reasoning). These concepts are for the most part articulable; we know of them, we can relate to them as (roughly) distinct objects or themes, we can write about them, discussion surrounding them allows them to propagate, research about involved topics allows the concept to grow. This is an apophantic domain. Broadly concerned with articulation in language; declaratives, knowing that, knowing how to reason; how to think rationally. This is typically the domain we study in epistemology (what are items of knowledge, how do we know what we know). It's the surface of a much deeper sea.

But that's just one type of concept (with this reading of it); if you try to articulate how you would catch a ball, you'd probably only be able to do something like; "Keep your eye on it, judge the distance and speed, raise your hand and make the best corrections you can to your position to grab the ball"; "judge the distance and speed" there isn't apophantic; it's pre-reflective even. We can't articulate that kind of concept so readily; it's a know-how, an embodied concept, requiring adaptive regulation between our body's state and the ball's state through how we process our senses and integrate information from all of 'em and about ourselves. The modes of linkage between the ball and our body are much different from the modes that link concepts in argument and rational thought. This is what lays below the surface.

When we reason, we do a lot of borrowing from what lays below the surface, and we do so without being aware of it. The kind of mechanism that notices a contradiction between propositions is probably a more abstract form of the kind of thing that notices a discrepancy between the ball and the position of my body; reasoning is (well, conjecture with some evidence) just one way of attenuating discrepancies and forecasting our actions.

Seeing the world from a purely apophantic viewpoint; an ontology of properties and objects, concepts, subjects and predicates, propositions and propositional content -minds and bodies even; misses a lot. And for analysing ourselves, it's a disastrous error; it stops us asking where all that shit comes from and how it works.

But when we reason, we can't avoid taking something similar to that perspective; but we can be aware of the blinkers it prediposes us to and cultivate habits of thought that circumvent them (hyper reflection). Moreover, it's not always relevant to think about this stuff: we don't need a neurological description of a bad argument to practice critical thinking. We're still active beings no matter how we describe ourselves.

The question then arises, how is it possible to distinguish whether concepts arise from different mechanisms, or concepts arise by degree from a simpliciter, or, divide into simpliciters from a whole, from one mechanism? — Mww

For me, a combination of neuroscience and psychology, but I don't suppose that's the only way.

Concepts, for me, are just dispositions to behave, I don't divide ideas from the behaviour they entail, and, being a physicalist, those dispositions have to be brain states, the physical cause of certain behaviour in response to certain stimuli.

It's just that talking about them as if they were this is totally unhelpful because we can't get outside of them. We can't talk conceptless language to articulate, or categorise concepts. Like trying to arrange items in a drawer when one of the items is the drawer.

So we take the first group (of the three I mentioned in the last post) at least, as a given, probably much of the second group too (immediate post-natal concepts) even when examining the neuroscientific basis of those very groups. Personally, that doesn't fill me with the existential confusion professed by the "hard problem" crowd.

The thing is not to see these 'concepts' as static input/output machines, but as Markov-like calculating devices, capable of subtlety adjusting their structures in response to stimuli, so as to produce something different in different circumstances. So it's not really fully described by if/then laws, I don't know how to parse it in if/then logic, but it would be something like...

If A then B (where B is "change A a bit, its not quite right, I was expecting it to do C").

Coming back to this draft, I see @fdrake has already explained this.

The kind of mechanism that notices a contradiction between propositions is probably a more abstract form of the kind of thing that notices a discrepancy between the ball and the position of my body; reasoning is (well, conjecture with some evidence) just one way of attenuating discrepancies and forecasting our actions. — fdrake

Absolutely.

This is exactly the kind of unification (or rather avoiding an artificial divide) between action and the concepts that dispose one to it. The 'law of non-contradiction' is no more than "I can't do that and that".

I don’t understand the sense of “contingency” people seem to be using here. As I know that word, it’s just the negation of necessity: something is contingent if and only if it’s not necessary.

Logical contingency (in this context) might be A=B (when C). I'm no logician so I'm sure there's a more accurate way of putting it.

In the brain we could say A is sensory input, B is the response (signals to other areas, production of neurotransmitters, production of neural extension) and C are various environmental and mood circumstances.

The difficulty with applying the term to the way the brain seems to work is that one possible B is to change A. A is not faithfully reported from some objective external state of affairs, the report is biased by the response to it.

"Property" is just a name. — creativesoul

True. "Earth" is just a name, "concept" is just a name, in fact all proper nouns are just names. Were you trying to point out something more than just that?

The same thing as always...

Are we naming something that exists in it's entirety prior to our name? If so, what supportive argument are we using to say that? If it's simply because we say so - by definitional fiat - then that's inadequate here. The saying so requires some knowledge of what the thing being named consists of.

As it pertains to the thread, and the notion of properties and their part in our experience, well it gets interesting when the person using the notion explains how properties play a role in experience.

Yes, I think of concepts arising in one of three ways (mostly based on standard child development work). There are clearly concepts we're born with (spatiotemporal models for one), then a whole bunch seem to come along immediately post-natally (object permanence for example), then the refinements come in adolescence/adulthood (social theories, science etc). — Isaac

I'm not convinced this is helpful. In trying to diversify your conceptualization of what constitutes a concept I think you are, ironically, in danger of flattening the distinctions between basic intuitions or cognition (your first category), inductive or habit-induced expectations (your second category) and concepts as they are ordinarily conceived.

It seems reasonable to think your first two categories are shared by animals. Concepts as ordinarily understood are dependent on symbolic language.

So regarding this:

it's a know-how, an embodied concept, requiring adaptive regulation between our body's state and the ball's state through how we process our senses and integrate information from all of 'em and about ourselves. — fdrake

I think that would better be called an embodied cognition than an embodied concept, since animals do these kinds of things just as well as we do.

So do properties, for you, exist prior to our naming them? I think it is reasonable to say that they do, but they are not in any way separate from, or "had by" or "attached to" things (much less experiences!), as naming can make them seem to be.

So do properties, for you, exist prior to our naming them? I think it is reasonable to say that they do, but they are not in any way separate from, or "had by" or "attached to" things, as naming can make them seem to be. — Janus

So, if I read you correctly, you're claiming that properties are not in any way separate from things.

I'm inclined to agree with that. Different, but not separate.

Some things exist in their entirety prior to our naming them. The properties of such things must also exist prior to our naming them if such things consist, in part at least, of those properties.

Some things exist in their entirety prior to our naming them. The properties of such things must also exist prior to our naming them if such things consist, in part at least, of those properties — creativesoul

:up:

Thanks to both.

My literature and philosophical inclinations cross-reference with fdrake’s comment more than Issac’s, although each are interesting and informative.

I would echo this sentiment regarding the thread itself...

The question then arises, how is it possible to distinguish whether concepts arise from different mechanisms, or concepts arise by degree from a simpliciter, or, divide into simpliciters from a whole, from one mechanism? — Mww

By comparison.

I'm not convinced this is helpful...I think that would better be called an embodied cognition than an embodied concept, since animals do these kinds of things just as well as we do. — Janus

Why is it unhelpful to have an understanding of conceptual architecture which does not distinguish us as well from animals? Or conversely, what is it about distinguishing us from other animals that is so helpful it must be maintained in any understanding of neural systems?

I think that would better be called an embodied cognition than an embodied concept, since animals do these kinds of things just as well as we do. — Janus

I think that's a nice corrective, but I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. I did consider writing "embodied cognition", but I didn't think that conveyed well (in context) that embodied cognition has sub processes that inter link. "an embodied cognition" might've been better.

I also wanted to portray the relevance of embodied cognition to conception; so using concept in both places seemed appropriate. Conception still leverages body stuff that we usually take as conceptually unrelated to it.

A panpsychist would be comfortable with "embodied cognition."

We do experience the world. The universe experiences itself via us. Drop the mysticism and see it as an amazing scientific challenge, not a philosophical one.

It’s a fine line between comparison and relation. It suffices to say comparison, when the rational chronology is from knowledge backwards to perception, insofar as knowledge may or may not compare one-to-one apodectically with the object. In the case of that chronology from perception forward to knowledge, which is the major concern of reason anyway, wherein all procedural methodology is strictly a priori, the much more general relational operative is better suited for deducing precisely what the object is, out of the manifold of possible objects it might be.

Arguments can be made either way, I suppose.

The 'law of non-contradiction' is no more than "I can't do that and that". — Isaac

Hmmmm.......

I can’t walk and walk. Isn’t that more incomprehensible than contradictory? I didn’t think comprehension to be the proper measure of contradiction.

You say it that way.

What if I said: Things appear (where 'thing' is taken in the broadest sense as objects, processes, colours, basically anything you can think of). What is it then that "has" properties? Are not properties just among the "things" that appear (if we allow that shapes, colours, textures and so on are even separable from shaped, coloured and textured objects)? — Janus

First, properties definitely are NOT separable in that way.

It seems like you're asking about things having properties sans experience, which is fine, but presumably you're not just saying there's no experience period, are you? (In other words, you'd just be saying that there is no consciousness/no conscious beings, etc.)

I can’t walk and walk. Isn’t that more incomprehensible than contradictory? I didn’t think comprehension to be the proper measure of contradiction. — Mww

Two different 'that' s. I thought that might be clear from the context. All I mean is that some seemingly abstract concepts like the law of non-contradiction need not be represented in the neural architecture as a single concept at, but merely present in each model. So the spatiotemporal model would deny the possibility of being both 'there' and not 'there', the somatomal models denies both sensation and no sensation, etc...