Distinguishing between apparent and real time in reporting Libet-related research

Here's a distinction that many writers seem insufficiently sensitive to in reporting research by and about Libet and the questioned efficacy of conscious will: It's the distinction between when something seems to have happened and when something really happened. This is a distinction we might label as that between subjective and objective time or apparent and real time.

It seems easy enough to acknowledge such a distinction and find clear cases of its applicability. Unbeknownst to George, his watch is 5-mins fast. So, when some event actually happened may be a quite different time (a difference of 5 mins) than when it seemed to George to have happened. This is so simple, that young children can keep them apart. So whence the alleged difficulty?

Things start to get a bit confusing when we realize that mental events we can call seemings can have real objective times of occurrence too. Especially confusing is when the seemings concern times of occurrence. Ordinary language is ill-equipped to keep the real time/apparent time distinction clear in describing such situations. (My spell-checker is hating on "seemings" right now.) Suppose George's seeming objectively occurred at 12:50, but it seemed to George that the mental event in question occurred at 12:55. Note how totally ambiguous a statement like the following can seem once such a distinction is in mind:

"It seemed to George that he made a conscious decision at 12:55 to flick his wrist"

Is 12:55 here the objective time of the seeming or the subjective time of occurrence according to George?

Here's some recent blogging on Libet that seems to me to make the mistake I'm talking about.

From "I didn’t do it, my brain did" @The Philosopher's Eye

In 1983 Libet showed that before subjects announced their decision to perform an action (and hence, or so Libet assumed, before deciding to perform an action) their motor cortex was already preparing the way for the act in question.

It seems that the safe thing to say of what Libet showed is that the apparent (according to the subject) time of the conscious descision was later than the objective time of the (perhaps conscious) decision.

From "Libet was wrong...?" @Conscious Entitites

...Benjamin Libet’s remarkable experiments, which seemed to show that decisions to move were really made half a second before we were aware of having decided.

Here the crucial ambiguity is with "half a second before we were aware of having decided." Is that 1/2second subjective? If so, that's a modest, though unexciting, description of what Libet showed. Is it instead objective? That would be very exciting indeed, but it's a great mystery how Libet, or anyone, could possibly show such a thing.

Anyway, the line I'm recommending here is what I take to be be one of Dan Dennett's key insights in his various discussions of Libet, so I don't pretend any originality here.

Hey look it's Pete the P-zombie!

Chaospet comic #144 Regrets: "

Astute readers will recall that we have seen P-Zombie Pete before (though not by that name).
Sorry if this comic is sort of all over the place. I am very sleep deprived today, so random stream-of-thought comic is what you get!
Oh! And I almost forgot, the Zombie Karl Popper comic was featured in the [...]"

NDPR Janice Thomas, The Minds of the Moderns: Rationalism, Empiricism, and Philosophy of Mind

NDPR Janice Thomas, The Minds of the Moderns: Rationalism, Empiricism, and Philosophy of Mind: "

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2009-09-29 : View this Review Online : View Other NDPR Reviews

Janice Thomas, The Minds of the Moderns: Rationalism, Empiricism, and Philosophy of Mind, Acumen, 2009, 293pp., $27.95 (pbk), ISBN 9780773536388.

Reviewed by Stephen Puryear, North Carolina State University

---

 

Excerpt from review:

In the chapters devoted to the nature of consciousness,
Thomas contends that Spinoza, Locke, and Hume offer few insights. Indeed she
roundly criticizes Spinoza and Locke for deficiencies in their views. One
problem with Spinoza's theory, she says, is that he seems committed to denying
that human minds are conscious subjects. For if God is the only substance, it's
hard to see how he could fail to be the only conscious subject (81-82).
Moreover, she adds, if the divine mind is just a bundle of ideas, as Spinoza
appears to hold, it's hard to see how even God could be a conscious subject
(Ibid.). Thomas objects to Locke's view on the
ground that his account of memory conflicts with his belief that we are always
conscious of all our ideas (156-59).

On the positive side, Thomas sees Descartes and Leibniz as
proposing accounts of the nature of consciousness -- accounts that may be viewed
as precursors of the sort of higher-order thought approaches that some advocate
today. She also argues that many early modern philosophers recognize, even if
only tacitly, different kinds of consciousness.
For instance, on her reading Descartes, Leibniz, and Hume all distinguish at
least implicitly between what contemporary philosophers would call 'perceptual
consciousness', 'access consciousness', and 'phenomenal consciousness'; and
Descartes further distinguishes between 'organism consciousness' and
'introspective consciousness'. Thomas appears to be rather impressed by this
point; however, I believe it rests on a faulty inference. In each case she
starts with the banal observation that a philosopher recognizes consciousness of
different kinds of things, and from this infers the substantive conclusion that
he believes in different kinds of consciousness. This is clearly a non-sequitur.
Consciousness of different kinds of things does not imply different kinds of
consciousness, and in the absence of any explicit evidence that these
philosophers drew such distinctions, we should not be so quick to suppose that
they did.

Down Dog

Down Dog
Originally uploaded by Pete Mandik

Russell's Nightmares

Nightmares of Eminent Persons by Bertrand Russell

"This was intended to illustrate the secret fears which beset the Great while they sleep."

"The writing of these stories was a great release of my hitherto unexpressed feelings and of thoughts which could not be stated without mention of fears that had no rational basis... In this way it was possible to warn of dangers which might or might not occur in the near future." ~~Bertrand Russell

from http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com: "Charles W. Stewart
Cover illustration for Bertrand Russell. Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories. London: The Bodley Head, 1954.

"

Loveyourcopyeditor's Infinite Summer Wrap-up

Much love to my personal favorite of the Infinite Summer bloggers, Love Your Copyeditor. Here's an excerpt from her wrap-up, The Last Jest, aka Infinite Summer Week 14 (end):

I have an increased appreciation for the graphic elements in the book: Gately's scrawly 'Yo.' The precise rendering of the markings on drugs on page 891. Peemster's chart. The annular ring/eclipse/special wobbly lens/meniscus glyph that appears throughout. The sweet and earnest lunula in the bottom-right corner of page 981, like a coda symbol in music, asking you to pick up again or exit the phrase, depending.

While I know I need to shelve the book again for quite some time and move on to other projects and lick my psychic wounds, I am incredibly glad I participated in Infinite Summer. The guides at the mother site have been good company. And those I encountered on the splinter blogs I feel queerly affectionate toward, as though we had a real bond even though my commenting was sporadic and my status as a newbie blogger painfully obvious. To name just a few folks I Identify with: Infinite Zombies, Infinite Detox, Infinite Tasks, I Just Read About That . . . and more. The list may not be infinite but my appreciation for their contributions and insights is. Keep Coming Back.

Speaking of back, I bought this shirt:

It says Enfield Tennis Academy on the front.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

p.s. GAUDEAMUS IGITUR

Defining "Objectivity" and "Subjectivity"

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind by Pete Mandik, to be published by Continuum in May 2010 (link to publisher's page).

objectivity, (1) of that which exists, that it exists independently of any one’s PERCEPTION of it or THOUGHT or BELIEF about it. (2) Of that which exists, KNOWLEDGE about it being acquirable via multiple kinds of EXPERIENCE. (3) Of mental states, especially judgments or beliefs, that they are arrived at impartially and do not simply reflect the bias of the judge or believer and, additionally, have their TRUTH-value (true or false) in virtue of factors that have objectivity in sense (1) of the term “objectivity.” All three senses of “objectivity” may be contrasted against correlative senses of SUBJECTIVITY.

Despite sense (3)’s being explicitly about a feature of mental states, senses (1) and (2) have played more central roles in the philosophy of mind. Sense (1) of “objectivity” has played a central role in discussions of REALISM and TRUTH. The classical debate between early versions of MATERIALISM and IDEALISM concerned whether so-called material objects existed independently of anyone’s perceiving or conceiving of them. Related are discussions of the contrast between PRIMARY QUALITIES and SECONDARY QUALITIES, with the former being more objective than the latter.

Sense (2) of “objectivity” and a contrasting sense of “subjectivity” have been central in discussions of phenomenal consciousness (see CONSCIOUSNESS, PHENOMENAL). Some philosophers have urged that WHAT IT IS LIKE to see red or to be a bat is subjective in the sense of being knowable only from the point of view of one who has seen red or been a bat. In contrast, one need not have any particular kind of experience to know about the brain states of a bat or of a person seeing red. It is claimed, for instance, that while a person blind from birth may not know what it is like to see red, everything physical about the brain states of a red-seeing person is knowable by the blind person. (See also FIRST-PERSON; FIRST-PERSON AUTHORITY.)

subjectivity, (1) Of that which exists, that its existence depends on someone’s PERCEPTION of it or THOUGHT or BELIEF about it. (2) Of that which exists, KNOWLEDGE about it being acquirable via limited kinds of EXPERIENCE. (3) Of mental states, especially judgments or beliefs, that they fail to be impartial and instead reflect the bias of the judge or believer and have their TRUTH-value (true or false) in virtue of factors that have subjectivity in sense (1) of the term. All three senses of “subjectivity” may be contrasted against correlative senses of OBJECTIVITY. For further discussion of both subjectivity and objectivity, see the entry on objectivity.

Workshop on Perception, Action and the Self; Now with link

Thanks, Ned Block, for sending this link to the afore-posted workshop:

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/colloquia/ConfList.htm

Workshop on Perception, Action and the Self

Jointly sponsored by Transitions, the

CNRS/NYU Center for International

Research in the Humanities and

Social Sciences, the NYU Institute of

Philosophy, and the NYU

Consciousness Project

Friday, October 30th and Saturday

October 31, 2009

Friday, October 30th: ACTION AND

CONSCIOUSNESS

5 Washington Place, 2nd floor

seminar room

9:00 AM-12:00PM: Vision and

Action (Ned Block, chair)

9:00-9:35: Speaker: Mel Goodale,

Western Ontario

9:35-9:45 brief discussion

Commentators:

9:45-10:05 Andy Clark, Edinburgh

10:05- 10:25 Farid Masrour, NYU

10:25-10:40 coffee break

10:40-11:00 Jesse Prinz, CUNY

11:00- 12:00 Discussion

2:00-5:00 Perception of Others

(Frédérique de Vignemont, chair)

2:00 PM- 2:35PM: Speaker: Amanda

Woodward,Maryland

2:35-2:45 brief discussion

Commentators:

2:45-3:05 Susan Carey, Harvard

3:05- 3:25 Pierre Jacob, CNRS

3:25-3:40 coffee break

3:40-4:00 Chris Peacocke, Columbia

4:05- 5:00 Discussion

DAY 2: SELF AND OTHER

4 Washington Square North, 2nd floor

seminar room

9:00 AM-12:00PM: Self, Body and

action (Susan Carey, chair)

9:00-9:35: Speaker: Patrick Haggard,

UC London,

9:35- 9:45 brief discussion

Commentators

9:45-10:05 Frédérique de

Vignemont, CNRS/NYU

10:05- 10:25, David Velleman, NYU

10:25-10:40: coffee break

10:40-11:00, Tim Bayne, Oxford

11:00- 12:00 Discussion

2:00-5:00: Higher Order

Consciousness (Pierre Jacob, chair)

2:00 PM- 2:35PM: Speaker: Hakwan

Lau, Columbia,

2:35-2:45 brief discussion

Commentators:

2:45-3:05 Ned Block, NYU

3:05- 3:25 David Rosenthal, CUNY

3:25-3:40 coffee break

3:40-4:00 David Chalmers,

NYU/ANU

4:05- 5:00 Discussion

Workshop on Perception, Action and the Self

[update: now, here's a link: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/colloquia/ConfList.htm ]

Workshop on Perception, Action and the Self

Jointly sponsored by Transitions, the

CNRS/NYU Center for International

Research in the Humanities and

Social Sciences, the NYU Institute of

Philosophy, and the NYU

Consciousness Project

Friday, October 30th and Saturday

October 31, 2009

Friday, October 30th: ACTION AND

CONSCIOUSNESS

5 Washington Place, 2nd floor

seminar room

9:00 AM-12:00PM: Vision and

Action (Ned Block, chair)

9:00-9:35: Speaker: Mel Goodale,

Western Ontario

9:35-9:45 brief discussion

Commentators:

9:45-10:05 Andy Clark, Edinburgh

10:05- 10:25 Farid Masrour, NYU

10:25-10:40 coffee break

10:40-11:00 Jesse Prinz, CUNY

11:00- 12:00 Discussion

2:00-5:00 Perception of Others

(Frédérique de Vignemont, chair)

2:00 PM- 2:35PM: Speaker: Amanda

Woodward,Maryland

2:35-2:45 brief discussion

Commentators:

2:45-3:05 Susan Carey, Harvard

3:05- 3:25 Pierre Jacob, CNRS

3:25-3:40 coffee break

3:40-4:00 Chris Peacocke, Columbia

4:05- 5:00 Discussion

DAY 2: SELF AND OTHER

4 Washington Square North, 2nd floor

seminar room

9:00 AM-12:00PM: Self, Body and

action (Susan Carey, chair)

9:00-9:35: Speaker: Patrick Haggard,

UC London,

9:35- 9:45 brief discussion

Commentators

9:45-10:05 Frédérique de

Vignemont, CNRS/NYU

10:05- 10:25, David Velleman, NYU

10:25-10:40: coffee break

10:40-11:00, Tim Bayne, Oxford

11:00- 12:00 Discussion

2:00-5:00: Higher Order

Consciousness (Pierre Jacob, chair)

2:00 PM- 2:35PM: Speaker: Hakwan

Lau, Columbia,

2:35-2:45 brief discussion

Commentators:

2:45-3:05 Ned Block, NYU

3:05- 3:25 David Rosenthal, CUNY

3:25-3:40 coffee break

3:40-4:00 David Chalmers,

NYU/ANU

4:05- 5:00 Discussion

As if it had an end...

Pretty convincing! What Happens at the End of Infinite Jest? (or, the Infinite Jest ending explained)

Defining "Emotion"

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind by Pete Mandik, to be published by Continuum in May 2010 (link to publisher's page).

emotion, an affective mental state, examples of which include states of fear, anger, disgust, and joy. Emotions are often regarded as obstacles to RATIONALITY, but they play central roles in quality of life, personal preferences and priorities, social affiliations, and morality. Emotions may be distinguished from other mental states such as judgment or BELIEF by the relative closeness of association between emotions and characteristic bodily reactions (e.g., increased heart rate, perspiration). Emotions may be differentiated from each other along numerous dimensions such as (1) the presence and type of intentional object (see INTENTIONALITY), (2) intensity, and (3) valence (positive versus negative). So, for an example concerning (1), joy and resentment
may be distinguished by what they are about or directed at, where resentment
is directed toward other people in a way that joy need not be. For an example concerning (2), irritation and rage may be distinguished by, among other things, their intensity. For an example concerning (3), joy and fear have opposite valences, with there being a relatively obvious sense in which one is more positive than the other.

George Washington Bridge from My Apartment

George Washington Bridge from My Apartment
Originally uploaded by Pete Mandik

No editing involved. Just sticking the iPhone out the window. Thanks, Ray Gunn, for mentioning the setting of the sun.

The Monsters of Logic, Part Two

It's the time of the semester to think about this problem again: how to get students with only a few logic lectures under their belts to warm up to the very unintuitive truth-table for the material conditional. Here's my current favorite strategy:

Step 1: Point out the obviousness of holding P->Q true for true P and true Q, and holding P->Q false for true P and false Q.

Step 2: Point out the redundancy generated between conditionals and conjunctions if P->Q is held to be true only when P and Q are both true; and the redundancy generated between conditionals and equivalences when P->Q is held to be true whenever P and Q both have the same truth value. It's clear, at this point, that P->Q is going to need to be true when P is false and Q is true; the remaining question is what's best when P and Q are both false.

Step 3: Point out that if P->Q is held to be false when P and Q are both false, then we don't get to recover the intuitive equivalency between P<-->Q and [(P->Q)&(Q->P)]. Demonstrate with truth tables.

Step 4: Point out that if P->Q is held to be false when P and Q are both false, then we don't get to hold valid arguments as equivalent to tautological conditionals (which is a pretty sweet thing to be able to do). Demonstrate with truth tables for simple examples such as simplification [(P&Q)->P] and addition [P->(PvQ)].

9.11.2001

9.11.2001
Originally uploaded by Pete Mandik

Attack of the Boltzmann Brains!

Yikes! Swamp-brain supervillians (@Cosmic Variance):

Attack of the Boltzmann Brains!: "

Briscoe's Egocentric Spatial Representation in Action and Perception

Egocentric Spatial Representation in Action and Perception

ROBERT BRISCOE

Ohio University

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Volume 79 Issue 2, Pages 423 - 460

Published Online: 10 Sep 2009

ABSTRACT

Neuropsychological findings used to motivate the "two visual systems" hypothesis have been taken to endanger a pair of widely accepted claims about spatial representation in conscious visual experience. The first is the claim that visual experience represents 3-D space around the perceiver using an egocentric frame of reference. The second is the claim that there is a constitutive link between the spatial contents of visual experience and the perceiver's bodily actions. In this paper, I review and assess three main sources of evidence for the two visual systems hypothesis. I argue that the best interpretation of the evidence is in fact consistent with both claims. I conclude with some brief remarks on the relation between visual consciousness and rational agency.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122594428/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Thomson on the meta-hard problem

Neuroscientist and frequent Brain Hammer commenter, Eric Thomson, posting over at Brains, has written a terrific piece, The Meta-Hard Problem. I highly recommend that people check out both the post and the excellent discussion thread that sprouts forth.

My favorite chunk from the main post:

[Chalmers] sometimes suggests that his claim that experience is something over and above the biology isn't an assumption, but definitional of experience. Indeed, he often writes as if this loaded notion of experience is pretheoretic and obvious (i.e., the 'primary' intension). As he says in the Introduction to the book, "I cannot prove that there is a further [hard] problem, any more than I can prove that consciousness exists. We know about consciousness more directly than we know about anything else, so 'proof' is inappropriate.'

Speaking personally, such high-falutin' notions (about causal and functional underpinnings of experience) were never part of my pretheoretic notion of experience. I'll go with him as far as the claim that consciousness is synonymous with experience or awareness. That seems vacuous. However, adding the proviso that experience is something over and above neuronal or other mechanisms goes well beyond my pretheoretic notions, and probably beyond the intuitions of Fodor's Grandma. However, Chalmers has the stones to claim that those not working within this loaded conception of consciousness aren't 'taking consciousness seriously' (this is a chorus in his book, from the Introduction onward).

So while I admire his clear expression of an idiosyncratic view of consciousness, I personally find it too tendentious to be useful.

Despite these seemingly obvious problems with his approach, I observed with dismay as the phrase 'What about the hard problem?' spread like syphilis over the amateur philosophy of consciousness landscape. It became a kind of cognitive creativity sink, an easy knee-jerk response to any discussion of consciousness. Psychologists and neuroscientists are now required, by law, to address the 'hard problem' in the first or final chapter of their books on consciousness. It's a bit ridiculous.

By analogy, when I talk to Creationists about a cool biological phenomenon, they immediately seem compelled to explain its origin in terms of God's amazing designing powers. It is really quite strange, as they are perfectly intelligent people, capable of having good discussions of other things. However, when it comes to the topic of phenotypes, their creativity, their scientific curiosity, and (most importantly) their obsession with evidential details and brainstorming about possible mechanisms are all shut off.

Philosophyhelmet.com

A new blog, by Tony Landreth and Alex Sparrow. Looks good. I wonder
about the name: protection against brain hammers?

http://philosophyhelmet.com/

Thanks for the votes

Thanks, everybody who voted: Brain Hammer made it into the pile of 20 semifinalists in the 3 Quarks Daily philosophy blog contest. (And big shout outs to Tony Chemero for the nomination in the first place.)

What now?

The daily editors of 3 Quarks Daily will now pick the top six entries from these, and after possibly adding up to three "wildcard" entries, will send that list of finalists to Professor Dan Dennett on September 11. We will also post the list of finalists here on that date.

Also, check out my awesome trophy badge. And/or reread the relevant Brain Hammer post: Bandwidth and Storage in the Human Biocomputer.

Vote Brain Hammer

The Brain Hammer blog post, Bandwidth and Storage in the Human Biocomputer, is one of the nominees in the 3 Quarks Daily philosophy blog contest. The link for voting is here. Details concerning the contest are here. The full list of nominees is here.

Back to School

Platform
Originally uploaded by Pete Mandik

I'm back in New Amsterdam from Old Amsterdam and getting back into the swing of teaching, etc. I've uploaded a gianormous bolus of megapixels from my trip here: link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dr_smax/tags/amsterdam/