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"Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

psychclassics.yorku.ca

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Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#41

Post by ryanklee »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #30
pineaux wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I¹ get it. The STEM educated people are better at technical stuff like math and logic, thus they must be a lot more enlightened than these non-STEM journalists that walk around in the darkness of the intellectual void. We smart, They stupid. /s You should ask yourself where this arrogance stems (so punny) from. Although you could argue that the liberal arts/humanities are stifled by leftist worldviews, which is true,…

I find it very suspicious that people who avoid learning rhetoric, or formal logic, or axiomatic thinking in general, are able to draw useful conclusions from studying humanities.

I think you are putting words in GP's mouth. They never said anything about avoiding learning formal logic or math. The context of that statement was a sarcastic position.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#42

Post by operatingthetan »

mgaunard wrote: post #39
operatingthetan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I entertain the idea that inanimate objects have consciousness too and it's pretty disturbing because it would mean we are doing pretty much everything wrong.

Do we even have consciousness or merely the illusion of it?

I'm not sure what the illusion of it would even mean. A known true statement for me would be "I appear to be experiencing something."

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#43

Post by wwweston »

retrac wrote: post #40
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #5

1879 These arguments aren't new. This is good argument for why tech/science/stem need to read history, or 'older' science history. To at least be familiar with the science that has come before, either to know what was discarded, to be familiar with past dead ends, or forgotten knowledge that could still have value. A lot of the AI spurred arguments in the last year seem like so much re-hashing since they were being d…

I recently stumbled across a speech from 1855 by an American physician [1], and I suppose proto-electrical-engineer, talking about the telegraph. In it, he makes a direct analogy between the telegraph and the animal nervous system. (People were aware by then, that the nervous system was partly electrical in nature.) The complexity of the nervous system and its ability to coordinate across distance, allows it to suppo…

I wonder if Channing would be gratified to see the telegraph analogy survived to find new expression in 1970s popular culture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivk_irrH1WY

which means that there's probably a bunch of Gen Xers with this song still in their head somewhere (and since it's pretty catchy, some of HNs audience now).

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#44

Post by lisper »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #5

1879 These arguments aren't new. This is good argument for why tech/science/stem need to read history, or 'older' science history. To at least be familiar with the science that has come before, either to know what was discarded, to be familiar with past dead ends, or forgotten knowledge that could still have value. A lot of the AI spurred arguments in the last year seem like so much re-hashing since they were being d…

> These arguments aren't new. This is good argument for why tech/science/stem need to read history, or 'older' science history.

Sure, but it is also important not to lend too much credence to these arguments, because they were devised from a position of ignorance. In particular, in 1879 we didn't have neurobiology, nor the theory of computation and complexity, and we barely had evolution. OoS had been published just 20 years before, and molecular biology was many decades in the future. There is value in studying Ptolemy and Aristotle too, but mainly to understand how they got things wrong.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#45

Post by johngossman »

ryanklee wrote: post #14
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #5

1879 These arguments aren't new. This is good argument for why tech/science/stem need to read history, or 'older' science history. To at least be familiar with the science that has come before, either to know what was discarded, to be familiar with past dead ends, or forgotten knowledge that could still have value. A lot of the AI spurred arguments in the last year seem like so much re-hashing since they were being d…

Absolutely agreed. I find it embarrassing how STEM devalued non-STEM studies for years, and now that LLMs are center stage, so is the near-universal unpreparedness of interested parties and stakeholders to wrestle with issues of cognition, consciousness, and ethics. This, despite literally thousands of years of prior studies on these matters. Even now, I see basic refusal to engage with this extant literature, and a…

This made me go look up whether STEM includes psychology and medicine. Wikipedia says "depends how you ask." In any case, William James trained to be a doctor and is considered the father of American psychology. If you've read any of his stuff, he was certainly not science illiterate. Which is not to say I disagree with your point. However, it turns out a lot of people, especially the really smart ones we've all heard about, aren't easily characterized as STEM or non-STEM. That includes all the AI researchers I know.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#46

Post by ryanklee »

Avicebron wrote: post #38
dnissley wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> STEM devalued non-STEM studies for years What does this refer to?

I think it in general refers to a (seeming) lack of awareness/acknowledgement of non-stem topics like philosophy, theology, ethics, history, etc. I'm not sure I would phrase it as STEM itself devaluing non-stem (I mean it's an acronym for subjects) but, rather society in general devaluing these, example, how hard is it go out, get a philosophy degree, and practice/write that and live comfortably with that occupation…

This is not correct. This attitude was nurtured by science's most successful public mouthpieces. Stephen Hawking and Neal Degrasse Tyson have been running around for decades telling everyone that the humanities are worthless. Young students, unfortunately, listened to them on this subject. A real tragedy, I think.

Carl Sagan would have been a much better steward for science today, as he had a very healthy respect for the relationship between science and humanities and the latter's value for understanding our world.

This dangerous rift goes back even further. See C.P. Snow's lecture "The Two Cultures".(1)

EDIT: Not sure how this slipped my mind, but Sean Carroll is exactly the kind of representative of the syncretic relationship between sciences and humanities that ought to be the default, rather than the exception.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#47

Post by kouru225 »

mgaunard wrote: post #39
operatingthetan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I entertain the idea that inanimate objects have consciousness too and it's pretty disturbing because it would mean we are doing pretty much everything wrong.

Do we even have consciousness or merely the illusion of it?

I don’t think it makes sense to ask this question without rigorously defining what we mean when we say “consciousness.”

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#48

Post by zo1 »

ryanklee wrote: post #14
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #5

1879 These arguments aren't new. This is good argument for why tech/science/stem need to read history, or 'older' science history. To at least be familiar with the science that has come before, either to know what was discarded, to be familiar with past dead ends, or forgotten knowledge that could still have value. A lot of the AI spurred arguments in the last year seem like so much re-hashing since they were being d…

Absolutely agreed. I find it embarrassing how STEM devalued non-STEM studies for years, and now that LLMs are center stage, so is the near-universal unpreparedness of interested parties and stakeholders to wrestle with issues of cognition, consciousness, and ethics. This, despite literally thousands of years of prior studies on these matters. Even now, I see basic refusal to engage with this extant literature, and a…

This is because the humanities got taken over in some sense and filled with mumbo jumbo. Technical people don't want to touch that with a ten foot pole.

Besides, science used to be very much a "thinkers" only thing, because only those people went into studies instead of just being laborers. These were people that would question and ponder the things you mention. These days, STEM is filled with factory widget repeaters that are taught to regurgitate the syllabus and apply it in context so they can be good workers.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#49

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #31

Fwiw nothing with outside influence is automata as the true randomness from quantum phenomena propagates. Eg. If you take in real world visual input to a system that from that point on is deterministic the output of that system is now non-deterministic. Similar to how Shrodinger talked about the macro scale cat being alive and dead at the same time. So the arguments that the neurons in the brain are deterministic or…

As far as we've been able to determine, almost all macroscopic objects can be behaviorally described in terms of classical physics, and this includes neurons.

Even in rare cases where quantum effects are seen, such as photosynthesis, or radioactive decay, it's extremely localized. The fact that a plant's efficiency of conversion of light to chemical energy appears to use quantum effects doesn't affect the rest of the plant or turn it into some "Schrodringer's cabbage" thought experiment. We can still understand the rest of the plant in classical terms.

Even if it were to be discovered that neurons are sometimes (or even always for that matter) behaving randomly due to quantum effects, that would not mean that we have free will and are not automata. It would just mean we are non-deterministic automata.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#50

Post by operatingthetan »

kouru225 wrote: post #37
operatingthetan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I entertain the idea that inanimate objects have consciousness too and it's pretty disturbing because it would mean we are doing pretty much everything wrong.

You mean we’re killing things?

Not sure about killing, but maybe harming.
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