Enactive Cognition

[rawadhmd]

Can I have your email, we have a lot to talk about in cognitive science.

cheers

[0ThouArtThat0]

Redliterocket4@gmail.

I think I over-emphasize the autonomy of the organism in this video and neglect to mention the degree to which our consciousness and cognition is inseparably bound up with our extra-bodily environment via structural coupling. So my experience isn't just the state of my nervous system, but of that system as it is embedded in the world.

[rawadhmd]

Brilliant, this is a good explanation

[jephnotjeff]

observation is required to even say that anything even exists. not cognitive observation, necessarily, but an exchange of information between two objects with mass. existence is observation. the mass only exists if it has something to exist RELATIVE TO. therefore, space and time are only subjective, but necessary side-effects of the act of observation necessary for existence. dig?

[AdvanceTechnologies]

Interesting perspective. By studying advanced sensors over the years, each sensor has a variance or tolerance. Just like the living brain and its nervous systems connecting sensors -- everyone (normalized, meaning most of the population) will see the world with the most common elements (i.e. color) but with a variance depending on mental states. We are already in the age of building Artificial Brains, or Cybernetic ones. Soon humans will be obsolete as a workforce or even maybe leadership?

[TheReasonWhyGuy]

We assume their is an objective world out there just like we assume that x=x, these assumptions however separate they seem, independently verify each other.

These are called basic assumptions, without these, we wouldn't even be able to the that thought is able to deduce anything since "reality is an illusion" and thought!=though.

These are called necessary assumptions and its useless to discard them due to the fact that doing so accomplishes nothing.

[eboyinc]

given that the external physical world created by the brain, doesn't that suggest that there isn't one world, but an infinite number of worlds? that our brain's ability to perceive in different ways (ie, we're driving down a road and we perceive in the distance an animal lying ahead on the road---then we get closer and realize it's just a fallen tree branch. we pass it by and continue driving...which was it then, a branch, a dead animal, both? something else? does time exist? just a perception?

[ameroffsky]

Fascinating argument. It would, I suppose, support the cause of skepticism and relativism.

One question though: Given that emotions are basically neurological or chemical reactions, what causes these reactions?

Don't know if I'm making sense.

[patternsinchaos]

"We don't experience anything except the state of our own nervous system. " This is why consciousness exploration is so important for understanding. By changing those neurological states it is possible to get an idea of how perception relates to reality and what is constant, if anything.

[patternsinchaos]

The key is understanding the illusion of independent existence. If you don't mind, please approve my video response to your "What is the mind" video in your other account. ;-)

[studio7manga]

Garbage theory, funny how all of us subjective beings see the same picture of you and those trees. Seems pretty objective to me.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Similar nervous systems enact similar worlds. And then there is our common language which adds even more similarity.

[Duck1987]

too much matrix watching...

[HeidiSaid]

Sorry it took me so long to get here. This discussion is too thick for my blood. ~peace

[pythagoras9]

A biological organism does not need to assume that there is an objective physical world outside itself, what is the point of assuming something that you are already experiencing. I get fed up of mentioning this but all of our ideas of the truth are based on the ideas of the truth that we get from our sense impressions of objective physical reality.

[Canteatpancakes]

Your not telling anyone anything they don't already know...

Who exactly are you attempting to inform?

[0ThouArtThat0]

explain?

[SixMillionDollarAcid]

interesting stuff.

[2bsirius]

How is this not just a different flavor of solipsism?

[blindedsun]

I guess this is what I was getting at. I hadn't heard of solipsism but when you say this middle space I think you mean the inconceivable. Is that what is meant by cognitive unconscious? I just wonder what follows from just speculation. This play between the universe seems like a transparent symbol.

[2bsirius]

Well, sort of I guess...Solipsism is the ideat that the self (i.e., individual subjective existence) is all that can be known to exist. I just don't see why that isn't what Matt and Michael are saying here, but I'm not sure, so I asked.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I'll have to do another video to explain the difference between enactivism and solipsism. Long story short: enactivism posits a consensual domain of experience brought forth by our intersubjective interaction with others. Because we are all similarly structured organisms, we share a human world brought forth by our human brains/bodies.

[2bsirius]

Interesting idea...

[blindedsun]

Matt,

Do you think experience is chained to "internal representational language"? Based off what you read/said, I agree, we're translating every last bit, but there seem to be times when we lose ourselves. But it I also wonder how I can refer to it, and if when I refer to it I'm translating something that couldn't be translated? When we have any experience is there mute internal language?

[0ThouArtThat0]

There is a cognitive unconscious, neural activity that goes on without us being aware of it. But when we call it "representational" we are assuming that it stands for something in the world. But what could it stand for if "the world" is something brought forth by the neural activity itself?

[0ThouArtThat0]

Don't mistake this for solipsism. It isn't all in your mind. But neither is it all waiting in the world for you to inwardly model. Reality is what arises in the middle space between organism and environment.

[blindedsun]

Book, a book, THE BOOK by Alan watts. Good book.

[riverran67]

E-prime is an attempt to become conscious of this phenomenon. Sounded like a bunch of crap to me, until I realized I just said ''that sounds like a bunch of crap to me.''

/watch?v=wyQpkRARA7o

[riverran67]

Robert Anton Wilson and Leary went a little further and claimed that psychological imprints, such as cultural beliefs or anything skimmed as truth rather than assumption, would enact as a kind of filter that would give a reality to the observer that felt both correct and understandable. LSD supposedly changed the way the nervous system received information in a way that people could then tell their fact as fiction. Happy people live in happy worlds, sad people live in sad worlds.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I can't disagree with the intuition.

[GeraldP1983]

Your right on! :D Keep it up!

[jogayot]

you are slighting complexity just like searle is (and the jury is out as with string theory which we simply can not verify for lack of properly powerful smashers). number of connections in single human brain is in the order of atoms in the universe! just try imagining that scale! anyway, i think we think the same thing... my $.02 e.g. here: preview tinyurl com /2956q3

and you can look at my comments under pyrrho314's recent "free will" video for complementary ideas...

[HorridFroth]

Hey man - listened to or read any Rupert Sheldrake? Really excellent, and a big proponent of what he calls the Extended Mind - links very closely to what Watts was describing in 'The Book'. Dean Radin is first class in this area too.

Great vid - as usual.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Yeah I've heard of Sheldrake's ideas. By extended mind do you mean morphic fields?

Extended mind sounds more like what the philosopher Andy Clark I mentioned in an earlier video is working on, ie that a lot of our thinking is done out in the world (using written language, etc.) rather than in the brain itself.

[HorridFroth]

Morphic (morphogenetic) fields are part of it, but he talks about the extended mind in different terms - sheldrake(.)o r g

/realaudio/extended_mind.ram - he's a good speaker too. I'll check out Andy Clark - thanks.

[plenipotentiarius]

The paradigm shift needed is to stop ontologizing consciousness, and forget neurons, nerves and atoms, thats all science not philosophy.

So like a friend of mine who is very mean being challenged by us to not mention money for one week, I challenge you to not mention consciousness, nerves, goo, etc.! Though you may not be mean, you are perhaps secretly a cognitive scientist.

[zezt]

Robert Anton Wilson in his book Quantum Psychology talks about an animals, in his example, a cat's 'umwelt'...their language of perception which is different than average person

[Herrunus]

i think i likened watts to heidegger in another video of yours. i was really wrong to do so.

I am not a nervous system, a nervous system is something i am able to be. Nervous system is a reification; we don't start with nervous systems, we start with being.

good video, great thoughts, but i strongly disagree.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I don't at all disagree with you. Neither would Varela et. al. The real thrust behind the enactive approach is to return to our phenomenological experience of being-in-the-world. The cognitivist/representational paradigm did exactly what you are saying: it made abstract symbols more fundamental than lived experience.

[0ThouArtThat0]

We don't start with an outside 3rd person view of a nervous system, we start with being that nervous system (along with the body that houses it and the world that arises through their activity).

[0ThouArtThat0]

The nervous system/body that give rise to the world(s) we experience is part of our facticity. It provides the unnoticed conditions/constraints that allow for our being.

[0ThouArtThat0]

The structure of our bodies is a product of their evolutionary history, of which our present selves played no role. But our existence today depends on the fact that this evolutionary process did take place. Our being is constrained by this process and so we are unable to be other than what these constraints allow for.

[Herrunus]

I am not in my body; in fact, in my body is precisely where i am not.

a nervous system is an ability for dasein, and in no way can be said to be constitutive of it. A nervous system is constitutive of an organism, etc.

nothing ontic can constitute the ontological.

[0ThouArtThat0]

agreed, but the ontic does constrain the ontological, does it not?

[Herrunus]

everything constrains.

[havonastudios]

I masturbate to Alan Watts. OOH! New podcast up. Mythology of Hinduism #2. Gotta go listen. Peace.

[AOEGuy]

I still have to get that book by Alan Watts... I've heard all about it, but have never read it.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I've read it 3 times and plan to read it again very soon. It is what the Bible should be about.

[Censeo]

Great response!

[SpiritualAtheist]

Matt - Thanks for the video. Let me digest what you've said here and I'll get back to you. I will also check out the videos on enactivism you made under your old account.

[AOEGuy]

i'm going to watch this whole thing but before doing so, i've recently been looking up cognitive science and its very interesting... i was looking at special college's that excel in their cognitive philosophy departments, but i'm not sure if thats different.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Cognitive science is sort of midway between science and philosophy. I love this kind of stuff and I think you probably would to. When I first got into philosophy of mind, I was trying to find a way to make room for spirituality. But the deeper I got into it, the less I had to make room, as the descriptions of what it means to be a mind became more spiritual on their own. I didn't talk too much about the spiritual implications of enactivism in this video, but there are many!

[0ThouArtThat0]

I'm sure 'cognitive philosophy' is nearly identical to cognitive science... Which schools were you looking at?