Vygotsky vs Reality: Evidence Supporting/Contradicting Claims on Mind

[Lievo]

I will take that as a yes

 

[Pythagorean]

I can't follow your points here at all.

That's become apparent over the last couple posts. I'm not going to rearrange the words again. You have a preconception in your mind of what my argument is and you keep projecting it on to me (history repeats itself). I'll leave you to keep arguing with an imaginary me since it doesn't require my presence.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Just because it was in the news today and seemed on topic-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9401000/9401945.stm

 

[JDStupi]

*Speculation alert*. The studies that seem to indicate that certain primates can have at least some level of self-awareness are certainly interesting. Possibly Vygotsky's ideas of language being the root of self-awareness in general can be correlated as a special case of some type of social function. Such that a certain amount of social interaction is necessary in order for animals to develop some sense of self-awareness, but the language capacities of humans have allowed us to develop a whole new level of self-awareness and inner control. Now language is no longer the sole root (not that I"m claiming this was Vygotsky's intent) of human awareness, but rather related to the more genealogically fundamental social functions.

 

[apeiron]

Just because it was in the news today and seemed on topic-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9401000/9401945.stm

Again, demonstrating animals responding intelligently to a current context is not the same as an animal being able to have an inner life of private rumination, reacting to imagined scenarios, recreating past experiences, etc. It is this "off-line" thinking that needs a supra-neurological mechanism like structured speech and the habits of thought that structured speech allows.

 

[Pythagorean]

*Speculation alert*. The studies that seem to indicate that certain primates can have at least some level of self-awareness are certainly interesting. Possibly Vygotsky's ideas of language being the root of self-awareness in general can be correlated as a special case of some type of social function. Such that a certain amount of social interaction is necessary in order for animals to develop some sense of self-awareness, but the language capacities of humans have allowed us to develop a whole new level of self-awareness and inner control. Now language is no longer the sole root (not that I"m claiming this was Vygotsky's intent) of human awareness, but rather related to the more genealogically fundamental social functions.

Dolphin, Human, and Elephant brain complexity is higher than non-human primate complexity. They also happen to be very social animals. That doesn't mean that they all have higher self-awareness, but it makes them good candidates for study (nothing says they DON'T have self-awareness, either). The elephant brain appears, by some measures, to be more complex than the human brain. We can't hook these animals up to an fmri and ask them how they're day went.

The first problem is that its very difficult to infer conscious experience from an animal that's not like you (it's often difficult enough between humans as it is).

I wouldn't expect Dolphin and Elephant consciousness to be an analog of human consciousness, but I have no doubts that behaviorally they heavily influence each other through non-survival social mechanisms (play time, specifically, which serves as art & science time for dolphins: that is, they engage in creative behavior, like making different bubble cascade shapes, then following them up and echo-locating on them to examine their work. They play with each other and other humans, even want to save humans.

Elephants have a complex signaling language, they exhibit tool use (and alteration), and play time.

That's already interesting enough. I'm not sure what dolphin motivation for saving humans is, I've never heard an evolutionary or biological explanation.

Anyway, the point is that there's apparently fine line between anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism. I'm not saying that dolphins think like humans, I'm saying we have a tendency to think we're special or unique in terms of our experience, but we really have no way to judge that until we can get our bearings on our own experience.

Up to just a decade or so ago, we though humans that didn't move weren't self-aware. My ancestors thought people with dark skin weren't self-aware. We've done a lot of harm with this kind of ideology.

So this is an area that deserves more research, in my opinion.

By the way, I harbor no illusions:
http://www.doublex.com/blog/oystersgarter/dark-secrets-dolphins-dont-want-you-know

 

[disregardthat]

The first problem is that its very difficult to infer conscious experience from an animal that's not like you (it's often difficult enough between humans as it is).

How is it even possible to infer conscious experience, how is it testable? I assume you mean subjective experience. To me it seems all we do is testing what characterizes conscious experience by assumptions of what this may be (and our assumptions may be all correct) and inferring with respect to these assumptions, but I think it is a major and unfounded conceptual leap to infer conscious experience per se.

 

[Pythagorean]

How is it even possible to infer conscious experience, how is it testable? I assume you mean subjective experience. To me it seems all we do is testing what characterizes conscious experience by assumptions of what this may be (and our assumptions may be all correct) and inferring with respect to these assumptions, but I think it is a major and unfounded conceptual leap to infer conscious experience per se.

inferring is all we can do precisely because it's not testable.

infer: Deduce or conclude (information) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements.

With humans, we speak their language so we can ask them how they feel and make inferences. We don't even understand the language of other higher mammals, so our inference is reduced to behavioral observations (which is all we do with humans, too, but since we understand language we don't think of it that way, we can "relate" from our own personal experiences with humans).

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Again, demonstrating animals responding intelligently to a current context is not the same as an animal being able to have an inner life of private rumination, reacting to imagined scenarios, recreating past experiences, etc. It is this "off-line" thinking that needs a supra-neurological mechanism like structured speech and the habits of thought that structured speech allows.

apeiron, from your post in the last NZ earthquake thread, I'm sad to hear of another, and I hope that you are ok, and for the best in NZ.

I'll look at this another time.

 

[disregardthat]

inferring is all we can do precisely because it's not testable.

infer: Deduce or conclude (information) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements.

With humans, we speak their language so we can ask them how they feel and make inferences. We don't even understand the language of other higher mammals, so our inference is reduced to behavioral observations (which is all we do with humans, too, but since we understand language we don't think of it that way, we can "relate" from our own personal experiences with humans).

My point was that it is not even testable, so it makes the "inference" much less justifiable! My question was: How do we deduce that there is subjective consciousness? There is nothing in language that justifies us to infer subjective consciousness, which was what I was talking about.

 

[Pythagorean]

My point was that it is not even testable, so it makes the "inference" much less justifiable! My question was: How do we deduce that there is subjective consciousness? There is nothing in language that justifies us to infer subjective consciousness, which was what I was talking about.

Because your dead in the water other wise, you might as well never talk about it. I think it's safe for me to infer you're conscious, for instance, despite not having the most rigorous evidence.

 

[ConradDJ]

How is it even possible to infer conscious experience, how is it testable? ... I think it is a major and unfounded conceptual leap to infer conscious experience per se.

I agree entirely... and of course at the age when we're first learning to communicate with others, we're way too young to "infer" anything about anything. But we're preprogrammed biologically to reach for a certain kind of connection with the people around us -- specifically, a kind that can gradually open up a communications channel and develop into language. The "idea" that other people have their own subjective points of view is built into the structure of human language at its base.. so long before our brains are capable of reflecting on ideas, this "assumption" is already there.

Human consciousness is based on a tacit understanding that others are also conscious... because we only learn to be "conscious" in a human sense by talking to ourselves, taking over the methods we learn for communicating with others and making them reflexive.


Apeiron -- I don't know Vygotsky well enough to know whether this is his perspective as well. Do you think he would describe the basis of language differently?

To me, what’s most remarkable about linguistic communication is that it manages to create a bridge between different people’s subjective universes, creating a very robust illusion that we all live together in the same objective world. By “illusion” I don’t mean that it’s untrue – I mean that we all grow up believing it, despite the fact that none of us will ever experience the world except from our own subjective viewpoint.

We imagine the objective world around us, just as we imagine that the people around us (and animals too) have their own internal mental viewpoints. It’s not “inference” that supports this – it’s just that imagining the world this way works very well for us, makes us able to function as human beings.

So although we often think of human “communication” as basically about exchanging information, at a deeper level what’s going on is a connection of mutual imagining, between two radically distinct universes of experience. But (if our minds are operating normally), it’s only when we grow up and learn to think at a very abstract level that we discover how radically separate our own universe of consciousness really is.

 

[Pythagorean]

To me, what’s most remarkable about linguistic communication is that it manages to create a bridge between different people’s subjective universes, creating a very robust illusion that we all live together in the same objective world. By “illusion” I don’t mean that it’s untrue – I mean that we all grow up believing it, despite the fact that none of us will ever experience the world except from our own subjective viewpoint.

This, I think, can be explained by Vygotsky's ideas. We're somehow born with the "illusion" (and it may as well be an illusion when we're young and it's more-or-less a reflex; mirror neurons for instance. My 14 month old will practice "talking" on the "phone" but I don't think she really has any idea what she's doing. I stuck my tongue out at her when she was an hour old, and she stuck her tongue out back... the well known Meltzoff experiment).

But whether or not it's really an illusion that we're cohesive, we make the illusion a sort of reality by believing it, embracing it, and practicing it. Then setting up a forum and having discussions about it.

Biologically, though, we are quite cohesive through pheromones on a totally unconscious level (human alpha females entraining their beta friend's menstral periods, males messing up the sync; sexual attraction).

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Again, demonstrating animals responding intelligently to a current context is not the same as an animal being able to have an inner life of private rumination, reacting to imagined scenarios, recreating past experiences, etc. It is this "off-line" thinking that needs a supra-neurological mechanism like structured speech and the habits of thought that structured speech allows.

I should have put this week’s BBC news article about macaques displaying thoughts about thoughts in the “Metarepresent” thread with an OP which interests me more, but this thread seemed to involve more discussions about animal cognition.

Just reiterating what I’d said in that thread, I don’t see evidence here that there is a uniquely human self-awareness and I don’t see evidence (that if there is), that it is caused by language.

But briefly, the example of the chimps is about complex trains of thought scaffolded by the immediate situation.
What would be thoughts about thoughts in the human language scaffolded sense would be if a chimp went off and later that afternoon was known to be sitting there, thinking over the tactics it employed, perhaps cursing a wrong decision, considering what might work better next time - then drifting off into daydream fantasies about a pretty bonobo he saw, etc.

However, (I’m trying to decipher the ideas, so correct me if I do so incorrectly ) it has been claimed that not only should animals possesses complex trains of thought, but these should be isolated from anything that may be interpreted as external assistance and thus not the correct method, somehow, (for example, immediate situations) to display a (purported) higher consciousness.

It could seem species-centric to expect animals show that they have arrived at the same displays as humans of this purported higher consciousness, by the same means.
Memory test – (Perhaps non-humans think so quickly that any ruminations occur in unnoticeable time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVlJv7ZkvGA&feature=related

The reliance upon this scaffolding also seems a bit circular- that this purported higher consciousness is defined by human language, which defines this purported higher consciousness, and so on. This could just render this higher consciousness meaningless aside from being human language. So it suffices to say humans have a human language and to leave it at that.

Instead, other descriptions of this higher consciousness have been used. How have “thoughts about thoughts”, “thinking over the tactics it employed, perhaps cursing a wrong decision, considering what might work better next time,” “the introspective abilities “(- “which are the product of sociocultural learning”) not been displayed?

The link I gave was about thoughts about thoughts.

Is there a suggestion that various primates, dolphins and elephants (and, according to Jimmy Snyder, not Jimmy Snyder, ever:) https://www.physicsforums.com/showthr...=471841&page=3
post #48) only have bodily self-awareness when looking at a mirror, but not at other times? How does the mirror represent an assisted scaffold?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-pc_M2qI74&feature=related

The Vygotskean view is that language upgrades all mental faculties. So animals recognise, but humans also recollect. Animals anticipate, humans imagine. Animals think, humans also reason. Animals feel, humans have socialised emotions (scripts such as loyalty, bravery, respect). And so on.

I’ll provide some examples that for consideration-
Here, about animal imagination-

A vivid doggy dream


And the suggestion of chimp imagination –
Chimpanzees “make dolls (of small dead animals) and play and carry them for long lengths of time; in Bos-sou, Guinea, they capture live hyraxes for amusement.”
(The Cultured Chimpanzee
Reflections on Cultural Primatology
By W. C. McGrew
Miami University)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40753694/ns/technology_and_science-science/

The seemingly goal-less “waterfall dance”, where a chimpanzee leaves the group in a kind of trance beside the waterfall, running around it and even endangering itself, the “rain dance”, “fire dance”, rolling rocks in ponds becoming excited by the splashes, fire and sunset watching.

Regarding non-human ability to reflect, chimpanzees mourn the loss of dead relatives, individuals even falling into depression, and at times losing the will to live. There is an example of a well, young male chimp loosing the will to live, eventually dying. ( Goodall, J. Garen, personal communication, 2009).

http://scienceblogs.com/primatediaries/2009/10/chimpanzees_mourn_the_death_of.php

From a different angle, is there no "higher consciousness" in those who haven't learned a language?

http://wn.com/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language

“Deaf children signers in Nicaragua systematized their language with almost no access to adults who spoke a fully developed language.”
And how were the children able to create a language with syntax?
More specifically, this sort of thing interests me.

that the invention of symbolic language.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...2&searchtype=a

And, by the way, is this

the too rapid emergence of symbolic culture in sapiens

referring to Stephen Jay Gould’s ideas here?

 

[disregardthat]

Because your dead in the water other wise, you might as well never talk about it. I think it's safe for me to infer you're conscious, for instance, despite not having the most rigorous evidence.

Do you really think that "we are dead in the water other wise" is a valid justification for inferring subjective consciousness? We might very well talk about it, only acknowledging it as an operational assumption for which we might possibly provide proper justification in the future. Isn't this an effective approach in any case?

The problem is not that the evidence is non-rigorous, but that the evidence is not evidence at all. What is it evidence for? We have already agreed that it is not testable. You don't infer that I am conscious, you assume it and it works well.

 

[apeiron]

Apeiron -- I don't know Vygotsky well enough to know whether this is his perspective as well. Do you think he would describe the basis of language differently?

This particular point about self-consciousness being implicit even in personal pronouns - being taught to say "I want" - is perhaps even more strongly stressed by GH Mead's symbolic interactionism. But yes, it is definitely part of Vygotsky's broad picture.

It is worth noting that Vygotsky worked with a team of psychologists (as well as the world-reknown neurologist AR Luria), that these guys did study children's development, and that they also applied their findings in educational and clinical settings. But Vygotsky died young and Stalin suppressed his budding school. All the knowledge was lost until really the 1980s.

To me, it is another illustration of how haphazard science is, especially when we get to the soft sciences like psychology.

Vygotsky met with early quick approval because he could frame his approach as Marxist - emphasising the socially constructed or collective origins of the human mind. But then he fell foul of the regime (he was Jewish I think, some other party psychologist had the ear of the bosses, I forget the full story).

Meanwhile, around the world, other accounts were competing for academic favour. You had of course Freud and that little fast growing story of psychic development (a rehash of Plato's tripartide soul in fact). You had then Piaget's structuralism which went down well with the academic educationalists (because it had easy experiments and made a lot of good sense). And then Watson's behaviourism (Watson was an advertising guy!) which was based on another good Russian's work, Pavlov and his salivating dogs, and had the brutal reductionist atomism (simple actions chained together by conditioning) that was very appealing to the anglo-saxon turn of mind.

So you could say that different cultures produced the different kinds of models of the mind that you might have expected. That is how socially-shaped our thinking is!

Vygotsky goes down really well in some countries, like Holland and Canada in my experience, but is not liked at all in others.

In the late 80s/early 90s, Vygotskeanism really started to take off in the West. The translations were becoming available. New experiments were happening. I remember the psychology shelf at London's university bookshop suddenly having a whole section devoted.

But then, along came evolutionary psychology as a huge academic bandwagon. It was back to genetic determinism. The model that anglo-saxon culture wants to believe in found a new vehicle - behaviourism, and then cognitive psychology, having been rather dismal busts.

So this OP was a demand about "where is the evidence?". There is of course ample evidence if you are willing to look (it is scattered I agree). But really, as I see it, the story is about the failure of psychology to be able to push back the weight of people's prejudices.

It is basic to modern western culture that humans are a certain way - autonomous selves rather than created beings - and so the game becomes to find a way to give scientific support to that key cultural myth.

The science cannot win because even if it does have good evidence to offer, people's eyes refuse to see it.

 

[apeiron]

So it suffices to say humans have a human language and to leave it at that.

You mention a whole array of research and views, all of which I am familiar with. I agree it is hard to pin down the difference that language makes because animals are generally more intelligent, there is more going on in their heads, then generally given credit.

There was a pendulum swing. Most early cultures were animistic - even the winds, the trees, the planets, were thought to have souls or minds. Then along came Western philosophy (church-influenced scholasticism) that wanted to make instead a sharp divide between brute animal and touched-by-the-divine humans. Thus the kind of views espoused by Decartes (who Lievo so amusingly accused me of supporting! When Vico, Hobbes and Locke would have been the more obvious reference).

Anyway we went the other way too far with the "dumb animals" and animal behaviourists have been steadily rowing the boat back with their more careful experiments.

But there is still clearly a difference, and language is clearly the reason. So how to talk about that difference simply so it does not denigrate the animal mind, and yet also does justice to the actual difference?

One quick way is to say animals are stuck in the present tense, whereas through the structuring power of language, we have the other tenses of thought available to us. We have the past tense, the future tense, etc.

Animals can of course anticipate - but that is a present tense brain activity. In fact, the best theory of awareness, of how the brain is designed, is as an anticipatory machine. That is what brains are for (not to percieve, or to feel, but to evaluate the potential for action).

But still, naked animal awareness is locked into intelligent reactions about the moment. Yes, it could be current pangs of thirst that set off a long trek by an elephant to a long-remembered water hole. But that is still present tense driven.

Future tense driven would be the elephant thinking that tomorrow it is going to be feeling thirsty, even if it isn't right now, and deciding it will set off for that waterhole a day early.

So you see why all the evidence that animals can have mental search images, or make judgements of relative certainty, or recognised their images in mirrors, are not facts against the Vygotskean approach? They are all present tense thinking. The structure of the thought is in the context, in the current circumstances.

It is when the structure of our thoughts becomes essentially free of current circumstances that it becomes human level thinking.

And don't forget the sociocultural aspect. Once thinking is free in this fashion, thoughts can be passed around the group. They can be handed down over generations (being polished and perfected as ideas in the process). So it is also the fact that humans can become loaded with a software of culturally-evolved thoughts.

We are all thinking the distilled wisdom of several thousand years of our cultures. Everything educated in your head once went through other heads. Now which animals can say this is possible for them?

 

[Lievo]

So this OP was a demand about "where is the evidence?". There is of course ample evidence

The fantom evidences. There are all around us, but you can't cite a single one.

 

[apeiron]

The fantom evidences. There are all around us, but you can't cite a single one.

So you keep saying, even though you know I responded to your PM with two articles with comprehensive references.

You have yet to make any response to the simple query I posed you about your chimp example. (And that is on top of repeated similar failures all along the line).

I have yet to see you demonstrate any academic competence in the subject under discussion. Whereas I have published books on this translated into several languages, reviewed in Nature and American Scientist, etc, etc.

 

[Lievo]

So you keep saying, even though you know I responded to your PM with two articles with comprehensive references.

As I said earlier, several times, you did not provided any specific reference to any evidence adressing any of the claims you pretended were evidence-based.

You have yet to make any response to the simple query I posed you about your chimp example. (And that is on top of repeated similar failures all along the line).

That will of course wait until you start answering the topic of this thread, or stop pretending you did.

I have published books on this translated into several languages, reviewed in Nature and American Scientist, etc, etc.

Wow. I'm quite impressed, etc, etc. Did you ever talk to Chalmer in person?

 

[apeiron]

Wow. I'm quite impressed, etc, etc. Did you ever talk to Chalmer in person?

Yes, of course. And I then had a several year dialogue with him about our contrasting views (although that was before I really got into the systems view of causality which deals with hard problem issues so much better).

 

[Pythagorean]

Do you really think that "we are dead in the water other wise" is a valid justification for inferring subjective consciousness? We might very well talk about it, only acknowledging it as an operational assumption for which we might possibly provide proper justification in the future. Isn't this an effective approach in any case?

The problem is not that the evidence is non-rigorous, but that the evidence is not evidence at all. What is it evidence for? We have already agreed that it is not testable. You don't infer that I am conscious, you assume it and it works well.

Look, I don't know if you didn't know what 'infer' meant and now you're saving face or what, but all of the comlpaints you're making are the exact reason the word 'infer' is used in cognitive sciences.

Yes, you're dead in the water because the whole point of invoking 'infer' is you can only rely on logic and behavioral observations. In other words, we might as well be talking about our religious practices if we're not using logic in this discussion. If you're not inferring, you're making things up on the spot. Why would you do that to us? Are you a troll? I don't think so, I think you were just mistaken.

Maybe this will help:

deduce: reason by deduction; establish by deduction

generalize: draw from specific cases for more general cases

deduce: conclude by reasoning; in logic

guess: guess correctly; solve by guessing; "He guessed the right number of beans in the jar and won the prize"

understand: believe to be the case; "I understand you have no previous experience?"

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=infer

 

[disregardthat]

Look, I don't know if you didn't know what 'infer' meant and now you're saving face or what, but all of the comlpaints you're making are the exact reason the word 'infer' is used in cognitive sciences.

Yes, you're dead in the water because the whole point of invoking 'infer' is you can only rely on logic and behavioral observations. In other words, we might as well be talking about our religious practices if we're not using logic in this discussion. If you're not inferring, you're making things up on the spot. Why would you do that to us? Are you a troll? I don't think so, I think you were just mistaken.

Maybe this will help:

What are you talking about? I meant infer as in deduce all along. In addition I pointed this out after you asked me the first time. Why do you keep referring to the dictionary, and why do you think I'm trying to save face? My point here seems to have been understood by CondradJ (and I agree with him, I think his post is insightful), so what makes you think I'm a troll? See, my point is that there is no method of verifying and testing whether a creature actually have subjective experience. So I believe we must admit that we are talking on the basis of an operational assumption that subjective experience (as opposed to the behavioral aspect of it) is caused by the physics of the brain, though I believe no direct causal link have been shown to exist.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

present tense

I was having trouble with my links, and I think the ones that were about human language and symbolism, rather than just animals, may not have worked. I’ll try to fix them. I was interested in the mention that symbolism occurred too rapidly.

I think I addressed some issues with tense in the last post, for example, it would seem chimps entering a period of quiet mourning with subdued behaviour shows an awareness of the past. http://scienceblogs.com/primatediaries/2009/10/chimpanzees_mourn_the_death_of.php Nonetheless, I’m happy to agree that human languages seem useful for forward planning.

 

[ConradDJ]

But whether or not it's really an illusion that we're cohesive, we make the illusion a sort of reality by believing it, embracing it, and practicing it.

Thank you, that’s exactly my point. Communication between humans is very obviously a reality... and it’s therefore too easy to it take for granted, without understanding what a unique and remarkable thing it is, the kind of connection we imagine into being between two subjective minds. I tried to discuss this awhile back https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=334249".

Just reiterating what I’d said in that thread, I don’t see evidence here that there is a uniquely human self-awareness and I don’t see evidence (that if there is), that it is caused by language.

I think this must reflect a prejudice about what “uniquely human self-awareness” means. And that’s the problem I have with discussions of “consciousness” – people seem to have very unclear notions about what “it” is, which leads them to ask whether other animals “have it” or not.

I don’t know how it could be more obvious that there is something unique about our species and that it’s connected with how we use language. But if you want to use “language” or “self-awareness” to describe what other animals do too, I have no issue with that.

What’s unique about life is not that it somehow “transcends” the laws of physics – it’s that it has evolved through a very long history that gradually made organisms utterly different from non-living things. It’s the same with human beings, in comparison with other primates. I don’t know why it surprises anyone to find precursors in other primates of almost anything we humans do. And I don’t understand this as an argument against human “uniqueness”.

The reliance upon this scaffolding also seems a bit circular- that this purported higher consciousness is defined by human language, which defines this purported higher consciousness, and so on. This could just render this higher consciousness meaningless aside from being human language. So it suffices to say humans have a human language and to leave it at that.

This is sensible – except for “leave it at that”. We should certainly drop the talk of “higher consciousness”, which means nothing specific – but we have a long way to go in appreciating what it means to “have a human language”.

I think examples of “human-like” primate behavior are very interesting and will play a significant role in understanding human evolution. But there’s an implicit “either/or” that makes no sense to me – either primates are like humans, or they’re not.

 

[ConradDJ]

One quick way is to say animals are stuck in the present tense, whereas through the structuring power of language, we have the other tenses of thought available to us. We have the past tense, the future tense, etc.

Animals can of course anticipate - but that is a present tense brain activity. In fact, the best theory of awareness, of how the brain is designed, is as an anticipatory machine. That is what brains are for (not to percieve, or to feel, but to evaluate the potential for action).

But still, naked animal awareness is locked into intelligent reactions about the moment. Yes, it could be current pangs of thirst that set off a long trek by an elephant to a long-remembered water hole. But that is still present tense driven.

Apeiron -- Thanks, I appreciate the background on Vygotsky, and the broad perspective you bring to this.

I'm sorry I have to get off to work and can't go further now, but I completely agree with you on the point above. What we humans have evolved through talking is a shared mental picture of reality that goes far, far beyond the "here and now" that comprises the world of other animals. If anything, we tend to get stuck living in that projected "real world," preoccupied with it, and often have a hard time getting back into real-time existence.

And we have a hard time realizing how different that is, i.e. the world of moment-to-moment experience. We've done a great job learning to talk about and conceptualize reality... not so, yet, with the world in present time.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

I think this must reflect a prejudice about what “uniquely human self-awareness” means.

Why do you think my comment "must reflect a predjudice"?

I think what actually happens when we communicate is profoundly complex. It depends on the fact that each of us has our own internal, imaginary world we’ve been developing all our lives – our “conscious mind” – a world no one else will ever experience.

This is from the locked thread you started and linked to, thoughts and "facts" without evidence.

I don’t know how it could be more obvious that there is something unique about our speciesand that it’s connected with how we use language.

It could be more obvious if you provided evidence that language causes something unique about our species.

But if you want to use “language” or “self-awareness” to describe what other animals do too, I have no issue with that.

So, you have no issue with ascribing “uniquely human” qualities to animals. (!)

This is sensible – except for “leave it at that”. We should certainly drop the talk of “higher consciousness”, which means nothing specific – but we have a long way to go in appreciating what it means to “have a human language”.

I think examples of “human-like” primate behavior are very interesting and will play a significant role in understanding human evolution. But there’s an implicit “either/or” that makes no sense to me – either primates are like humans, or they’re not.

Yes, by saying “leave it at that”, I meant, as you agree, to drop the talk of “higher consciousness”. However you keep discussing, higher consciousness caused by language, or, something uniquely human connected to language.

 

[Pythagorean]

What are you talking about? I meant infer as in deduce all along. In addition I pointed this out after you asked me the first time. Why do you keep referring to the dictionary, and why do you think I'm trying to save face? My point here seems to have been understood by CondradJ (and I agree with him, I think his post is insightful), so what makes you think I'm a troll? See, my point is that there is no method of verifying and testing whether a creature actually have subjective experience. So I believe we must admit that we are talking on the basis of an operational assumption that subjective experience (as opposed to the behavioral aspect of it) is caused by the physics of the brain, though I believe no direct causal link have been shown to exist.

yet, you and Conrad (and myself) continue to use deduction for discussion in this thread precisely because you can't use induction.

Once again, deduction starts from theory:

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/dedind.php

So you see, this is exactly what we're doing (starting with Vygotsky's theory)

Furthermore, whenever cognitive scientists talk about "inferring" they're talking exactly about all your complaints. They say things like:

"there is no method of verifying and testing whether a creature actually have subjective experience"

"we must admit that we are talking on the basis of an operational assumption"

Of course no causal link has been shown to exist in other creatures. But you can prove to yourself that a causal link exists by messing with your own brain chemistry and monitoring the subjective results. They're really quite obvious, and CONSISTENT with the same chemistry manipulations (drug addiction, brain meds, etc)

I said that I don't think you're a troll, I think you're mistaken.

 

[apeiron]

I think I addressed some issues with tense in the last post, for example, it would seem chimps entering a period of quiet mourning with subdued behaviour shows an awareness of the past. http://scienceblogs.com/primatediaries/2009/10/chimpanzees_mourn_the_death_of.php

Again I would view this as present tense thinking, because an absence can be just as significance to consciousness as a presence.

A trivial example. If a humming fridge suddenly shuts off, it is the absence of that drone which makes you pay attention. This by the way is part of the evidence that you anticipate your perceptual world and so can ignore most everything, only responding strongly, with attention and thoughts, to unexpected change.

Anyway, we also all know how the absence of a loved one can nag in situations where "they should be there". So really the examples of chimps mourning fit the explanation of present tense thinking. If a tribe mate is lying dead, that is going to be "a salient absence". The dead chimp is not responding as normal, to say the least. And even for some time later, even with no corpse in sight, that absence will be salient. There will be a lack of that troop mate in every context where that troop mate would have been expected, so everyday routine life becomes itself the constant current reminder.

 

[ConradDJ]

Again I would view this as present tense thinking...

I'll try to clarify this point, which I think is basic to the "uniqueness" of us humans.

First, whatever the differences between human and animal experience of the world, of course all experience is in present time. And it's always conditioned by past experience, and is always anticipatory.

What humans have that animals lack is a highly detailed and structured mental picture of the world beyond the present moment, that we learn to construct in language, when we're very young. We have names for things and ways of describing them. As soon as you put something into words, you've taken it out of present time and located it in this quasi-permanent, evolving picture of the world you maintain in your head. That language-based picture let's you scan over your past experiences and consider things other people have told you about, it let's you make plans for specific dates far in the future. And think about what may be happening today on the other side of the world.

I think this is one of the two fundamental functions of language, to enable this shared construction of an imagined "real world" that we use to guide our present-time behavior, and that we're constantly updating when we talk with each other and with ourselves. The other basic function being to create the bridge of "mutual imagining" between people, by which this language-software reproduces itself from one human brain to another.

The OP asks for evidence... for that you could point to most anything in the human world – drugstores, for example. The fact that my cat sometimes chews on a plant is a precursor of the drugstore, which makes the stores no less “uniquely human”. Now can we “prove” that drugstores are a result of language? To me this example only shows that the question is not well-posed.

The real problem here is that we take human language so much for granted that it’s very difficult to appreciate what it is, basically, and what it does. My sense is that it’s much deeper than words, grammar and syntax – it’s a unique kind of communications software that’s managed to reproduce itself in one brain after another over thousands of generations. And you and I, as “conscious minds”, are self-updating run-time structures created by this brain-software.

In general, I’m definitely in favor of scientific evidence. But before we can ask for evidence pro and con, we need to be able to imagine a hypothesis and state it clearly. And when it comes to the function of language in relation to consciousness, I just don’t think we’re there yet. But to me, this is really what “philosophy” is about – i.e. this “pre-scientific” stage of learning to focus on and conceptualize aspects of our existence that we’ve previously taken for granted.

 

[disregardthat]

yet, you and Conrad (and myself) continue to use deduction for discussion in this thread precisely because you can't use induction.

Once again, deduction starts from theory:

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/dedind.php

So you see, this is exactly what we're doing (starting with Vygotsky's theory)

Furthermore, whenever cognitive scientists talk about "inferring" they're talking exactly about all your complaints. They say things like:

"there is no method of verifying and testing whether a creature actually have subjective experience"

"we must admit that we are talking on the basis of an operational assumption"

Of course no causal link has been shown to exist in other creatures. But you can prove to yourself that a causal link exists by messing with your own brain chemistry and monitoring the subjective results. They're really quite obvious, and CONSISTENT with the same chemistry manipulations (drug addiction, brain meds, etc)

I said that I don't think you're a troll, I think you're mistaken.

All right, as long as you agree with

"there is no method of verifying and testing whether a creature actually have subjective experience"

"we must admit that we are talking on the basis of an operational assumption"

then it's pretty much settled, I have nothing more to say. My point was nothing more than that.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

I think this must reflect a prejudice about what “uniquely human self-awareness” means.

Now can we “prove” that drugstores are a result of language? To me this example only shows that the question is not well-posed.

The real problem here is that we take human language so much for granted that it’s very difficult to appreciate what it is, basically, and what it does. My sense is that it’s much deeper than words, grammar and syntax – it’s a unique kind of communications software that’s managed to reproduce itself in one brain after another over thousands of generations. And you and I, as “conscious minds”, are self-updating run-time structures created by this brain-software.

But before we can ask for evidence pro and con, we need to be able to imagine a hypothesis and state it clearly. And when it comes to the function of language in relation to consciousness, I just don’t think we’re there yet.

Despite what you say, claiming something you are unable to verify is verifiable is erroneous. Attacking me and the question of the op doesn’t mitigate the error, it compounds it.

What evidences support or contredict Vygotsky's philosophy of mind? .

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Again I would view this as present tense thinking, because an absence can be just as significance to consciousness as a presence.

A trivial example. If a humming fridge suddenly shuts off, it is the absence of that drone which makes you pay attention. This by the way is part of the evidence that you anticipate your perceptual world and so can ignore most everything, only responding strongly, with attention and thoughts, to unexpected change.

Anyway, we also all know how the absence of a loved one can nag in situations where "they should be there". So really the examples of chimps mourning fit the explanation of present tense thinking. If a tribe mate is lying dead, that is going to be "a salient absence". The dead chimp is not responding as normal, to say the least. And even for some time later, even with no corpse in sight, that absence will be salient. There will be a lack of that troop mate in every context where that troop mate would have been expected, so everyday routine life becomes itself the constant current reminder.

Ok, firstly, maybe I’ll discuss symbolism elsewhere. :)

Secondly, I find that an interesting idea: not present memories, but absence in the present.

Thirdly, I think this works now.
http://wn.com/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language

What of the past memories of the woman free from syntactic language?

 

[apeiron]

What of the past memories of the woman free from syntactic language?

One youtube case is not enough to make judgements. But if you review the full literature on deaf signing, there is plenty of evidence for the Vygotskean position, such as that fluent signers think in signs (they make slips of the hand errors instead of slips of the tongue), or that Victorian era deaf/mutes (with no signing culture) appeared more like animals.

Oliver Sacks wrote a good book, Seeing Voices, on this. The Wild Boy of Aveyron is another good one.

(BTW, there was rudimentary syntax in the lady. She was still having to express one "word" at a time, first son, then gone away. And in a logical order. She followed the same object-verb phrasing to describe the going away of each family member. She was also vocalising, which raises questions of when she went deaf, or if she was completely deaf (something that is rarer than you think). So evidence either for or against a Vygotskean position needs to be carefully considered.)

 

[fuzzyfelt]

One youtube case is not enough to make judgements...



(BTW, there was rudimentary syntax in the lady. She was still having to express one "word" at a time, first son, then gone away. And in a logical order. She followed the same object-verb phrasing to describe the going away of each family member. She was also vocalising, which raises questions of when she went deaf, or if she was completely deaf (something that is rarer than you think). So evidence either for or against a Vygotskean position needs to be carefully considered.)

Sure. Your familiarity didn't extend as far as a not working youtube line ( at the time), my fault, I understand.:)
I actually don't know much about PBS, but the linguists involved are well credentialed, etc.

Kegl, Judy, Ann Senghas & Marie Coppola. 1999. Creation through contact: Sign
language emergence and sign language change in Nicaragua. In Michel
DeGraff (ed.), Langauge Creation and Langauge Change: Creolization,
Diachrony, and Development, 179–237. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Interesting, and thanks, I'll look at your recommendations.

 

[Pythagorean]

(article)

Self-Doubting Monkeys Know What They Don’t Know:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d...lf-doubting-monkeys-know-what-they-dont-know/

 

[Lievo]

I'll try to clarify this point, which I think is basic to the "uniqueness" of us humans.

First (...) What humans have that animals lack is a (...) mental picture of the world beyond the present moment (...) The other basic function being to create the bridge of "mutual imagining" between people, by which this language-software reproduces itself from one human brain to another.

Ok interesting. But I don't see why you say these particular claims could not be evidence-based or contredict by evidence. All you need for first claim is evidence that animal can't think about their past experience, and for second claim that language is not spontaneous. Don't you agree this? (take care I think evidences exist against both). If not, what is the kind of evidence that would convinced you one way or the other?

The OP asks for evidence... for that you could point to most anything in the human world – drugstores, for example. The fact that my cat sometimes chews on a plant is a precursor of the drugstore, which makes the stores no less “uniquely human”. Now can we “prove” that drugstores are a result of language? To me this example only shows that the question is not well-posed.

To me that only shows that this example is badly choosen. I don't think you're trying to build a straw man but look, there are three possibilities in my view: a claim is based on evidences, it is not but could in theory if not in practice now, or neither.

If you think that it's the latter case, then to me the claim is useless. Or usefull for poetry or your own sense of aethetic or whatever, but nothing usefull to understand reality and help me deciding how to do my job. Some philosophies of mind are of this kind. I'm of course interested in the formers, and I just don't know yet where to fit Vytgostky in this framework.

claiming something you are unable to verify is verifiable is erroneous.

Erroneous is for the first time you do it. I'm not sure that's the exact word for >5^th occurences.

if you review the full literature on deaf signing, there is plenty of evidence for the Vygotskean position

 

[apeiron]

Ok interesting.

But Lievo, you have yet to make a single point of any substance here. Your first example fell flat on its face. You do not appear to have any personal expertise in the subject. So why should anyone believe your doubts, no matter how sincerely held?

If I am wrong and you are familiar with the deaf literature, then I would expect to hear some kind of argument in return. Emoticons don't really count as an argument do they.

 

[apeiron]

(article)

Self-Doubting Monkeys Know What They Don’t Know:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d...lf-doubting-monkeys-know-what-they-dont-know/

Same paradigm as presented earlier in the thread. And really, what is the difference from any animal's ability to respond appropriately to ambiguous stimuli?

See coyote metacognition for example...

In addition, coyotes were able to differentiate among the activity of different humans based on their association with negative, neutral, or positive threat levels, even in the presence of confounding visual and olfactory cues. They remembered these associations even after one month. This study is the first that provides evidence suggesting that canids gather and interpret complex information for cognitive inference about threat level associated with access to food.

http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1240&context=etd

 

[Pythagorean]

Same paradigm as presented earlier in the thread. And really, what is the difference from any animal's ability to respond appropriately to ambiguous stimuli

Nothing! In this very behavioralistic view, why are human behaviors any different from an animal's ability to respond appropriately to ambiguous stimuli?

 

[apeiron]

Nothing! In this very behavioralistic view, why are human behaviors any different from an animal's ability to respond appropriately to ambiguous stimuli?

Coyote's don't go to church, cover their private bits from modesty, celebrate their birthdays. Or any of the unlimited other things that make humans distinctive. So what exactly are you arguing here? It is unclear.

Animals and humans share a lot. And then there are the differences. Mind science has to account for both the similarity and the difference. So what's your theory? (Vygotsky at least had one, and gathered evidence for it).

 

[ConradDJ]

What humans have that animals lack is a highly detailed and structured mental picture of the world beyond the present moment, that we learn to construct in language, when we're very young...

The other basic function being to create the bridge of "mutual imagining" between people, by which this language-software reproduces itself from one human brain to another.

Ok interesting. But I don't see why you say these particular claims could not be evidence-based or contradict by evidence. All you need for first claim is evidence that animal can't think about their past experience, and for second claim that language is not spontaneous.

... there are three possibilities in my view: a claim is based on evidences, it is not but could in theory if not in practice now, or neither.

I get your point of view, but I don’t agree with it. Even in the sciences, I think it’s short-sighted to reduce thinking to “claims” that one argues pro or contra based on “evidence”. Because the claims first of all have to be imagined and put into clear language, and also because what’s “evident” to some folks is not so to others. So behind the argumentation are imagined constructions of the world in each of our heads, that we for the most part take for granted.

Once there’s a claim on the table, we may find we don’t know the right answer, but at least we’re aware there’s a question there. But when we take something for granted, it’s not yet accessible for questioning. There’s no direct way to investigate it. What you can do, which is what I was trying to do in the posts above, is to describe something we’re all familiar with in a somewhat unfamiliar way... to try to bring into focus something that hasn’t before been clearly seen or put into words.

I can well understand that a hard-headed, non-nonsense sort of person would have no patience for this kind of intuitive process. You want translate my description into something like “animals can’t think about their past experience” so you can classify it as right or wrong. Or “language is not spontaneous.” I can easily imagine arguing either side of ambiguous “claims” like these – but I can’t imagine that it would lead to any new insight.

My personal sense of the matter is that our clear-minded intellectual mode of consciousness is by nature peculiarly blind to its own emotional and linguistic foundations. It wants clear-cut issues and demonstrations... and there are of course many fields of study where the basics are well-established and this kind of thinking can make important progress. The study of human consciousness and its precursors is not one of those fields, at the present time. It’s a field where “claims” tend to be poorly defined or articulated, where very basic factors like the function of language have not been thought through. Take for instance Derek Bickerton's Langauge and Species, which argues that the function of language is almost exclusively representational, and that its use for communication is entirely secondary. Here we have a completely unnecessary "either/or" argued with chapters full of evidence. This hardly seems like progress to me, but I certainly recognize there are those who disagree.

It’s not that empirical evidence is irrelevant or uninteresting, in this context. But in my personal opinion, we’re fooling ourselves if we think we’re ready to prove something one way or the other about the difference between animal and human awareness. IMHO, we don’t yet have the conceptual language we need to articulate clearly what’s at issue here – i.e. what the distinctiveness of human evolution has been about. And that’s where the work needs to be done, in this field. Please note, this is stated as a well-considered personal opinion, not as fact.

 

[Pythagorean]

... don't go to church, cover their private bits from modesty, celebrate their birthdays...

...all of which are examples of responding ambiguously to appropriate stimuli.

So what's your theory?

What would having my own theory make a difference? I'm still learning what the observations are and what theories have already been developed (and whether or not they were successful). I feel no itch to jump on any particular viewpoint yet, because then I'll only see the observations in a skewed way.

I have been exposed to several of the perspectives (behavioral, humanistic, cognitive, biological). Behavioralism is the safest (just write down what you see) but it's also the least satisfactory for questions bout consciousness. So we have to invoke one of the other perspectives to interpret behavior and we've already opened the floodgate of our own subjective contamination.

This is not an easy task to take one view or the other. Not for me, anyway. I'm still not sure anybody really knows what they're talking about when it comes to "consciousness". Once you start narrowing the subject down to specific cognitive traits/behaviors then it becomes more tangible.

 

[Lievo]

I get your point of view, but I don’t agree with it.

I'm not sure to get yours. Are you saying as a matter of principle that a philosophy of mind can be interesting even if it will never lead to any experimental predictions, or are you saying that Vytgotsky's theory is not ready yet to make predictions but could in some distant future?

If it's the former, yeah let's agree to disagree. But if it's the latter, I have no problem of principle with that -that just means I should wait for the philosophers to figure out what can be.

Remember that I started this thread on behalf of some claims that there were already evidences supporting some claims. Of course I've now came to conclude that's bull, but will certainly not put that on Vytgostky himself... he of course didn't choose himself how he will be promoted 85 years later

The study of human consciousness and its precursors is not one of those fields, at the present time

I would disagree, but that's maybe for another time/thread.

IMHO, we don’t yet have the conceptual language we need to articulate clearly what’s at issue here

I could say that for the hard problem of consciousness. Maybe I'm wrong too.

 

[apeiron]

Remember that I started this thread on behalf of some claims that there were already evidences supporting some claims. Of course I've now came to conclude that's bull, but will certainly not put that on Vytgostky himself... he of course didn't choose himself how he will be promoted 85 years later

What I remember is that you started the thread with a demonstration that you did not even understand the theory. Because you put forward an example about apes that was not a challenge. So until you are competent with regards to the nature of the hypothesis, worrying about the evidence seems a triffle redundant. But you have been directed towards both theory and evidence anyway.

 

[Pythagorean]

Another point to Vygotsky:

The finding contradicts the common understanding that word-order develops in accordance with a set of universal rules, applicable to all languages. Researchers have concluded that languages do not primarily follow innate rules of language processing in the brain. Rather, sentence structure is determined by the historical context in which a language develops.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110414065107.htm

 

[apeiron]

Another point to Vygotsky:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110414065107.htm

To be fair, Vygotsky would not require grammatical structure to be a cultural habit rather than genetically hardwired. His position only requires that the habits of thought which create the higher human functions are encoded by language and evolved socioculturally.

The real problem with a hard Chomskian position is that because it requires genetic hardwiring, this does not fit with either the available paleo or neuro evidence. Langauge arose too fast in human history, and there is too little evidence of a syntax template in the brain's architecture, and so a more soft-wired position seems necessary.

What is actually universal in languages is not word order but an idea - the idea of a sentence that involves the three components of a subject/verb/object, a linear causal tale of who did what to whom. This is what ties every language together. Subject, verb and object can come in any order, but these three components act as a mental template that breaks reality into crisp causal statements.

Yet it is in turn still unknown how the brain could be hard-wired, or even just "language-ready", to see the world in terms of subject/verb/object relationships. Again, it makes no real difference to the Vygotskean story whether this universal structure is hard, soft or un-wired (and completely learned and handed down as a cultural habit). But it is an important research question in its own right.

As an aside, given all the Heidegger talk, it is worth noting that the inauthentic view seems in fact fundamental to humans in this regard. Langauge clearly objectifies the subject, the doer, along with the doings and the done-to (the verbs and the objects). It already lifts us out of any local particular notion of the subject, the active agent, the effective cause, and forces us into a generic or objective stance where we are just an example of such a locus of agency, the cause that produces the effects.

The open question is whether animals also have some kind of proto-objectification and cause and effect thinking wired in. I would expect this to be so as the neural architecture of apes is so similar.

This is then why you need an explanatory mechanism such as Pattee's epistemic cut to explain how brains that are basically the same can with just a little tweaking start to operate at a whole new level.

In animals, syntax and semantics would all be jumbled together in unstructured fashion. In humans, they have become crisply divided into "a universal language generator" (even if the template is more cultural than neurological) and a vocabulary (syllables coding for ideas and impressions).

 

[fuzzyfelt]

More about communication in today’s news-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9475000/9475408.stm
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m1842175233027j1/
“Such highly intentional use of a species-typical repertoire raises intriguing questions for the evolution of advanced communication.”

 

[apeiron]

More about communication in today’s news-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9475000/9475408.stm
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m1842175233027j1/
“Such highly intentional use of a species-typical repertoire raises intriguing questions for the evolution of advanced communication.”

In linguistics, it is useful to follow Peirce's distinction between the three levels of icon, index and symbol. Animals can have sophisticated indexical communication, but only humans have symbolic level communication. Or at least this dividing line seems defensible. And this latest work does not challenge that so far as I can see.

When a chimp is seen using gestures to communicate ideas about a third party to a second party, that's when things would get interesting.

See - http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~port/teach/103/sign.symbol.html - for the basic distinction as used in linguistics.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Yes, it is helpful to mention linguistic distinctions, but I found the species-typicality and family-typicality most interesting.