also

[quote="GrahamH";p="1I agree with you, it is the social context that likely shaped the evolution of a self as a co-evolved trait with understanding others in terms of dispositional states and intentions.[/quote]
I would have thought that a "self" would be one of the first evolved traits of a mind - coming long before consciousness as we experience it and certainly long before any social evolution.

There would seem to be no point in an organism modelling it's environment without modelling itself within that environment.

Positron wrote:

GrahamH; p=1186828 wrote:I agree with you, it is the social context that likely shaped the evolution of a self as a co-evolved trait with understanding others in terms of dispositional states and intentions.

I would have thought that a "self" would be one of the first evolved traits of a mind - coming long before consciousness as we experience it and certainly long before any social evolution.

There would seem to be no point in an organism modelling it's environment without modelling itself within that environment.

In the context of the thread, I was reading GrahamH (perhaps wrongly): “...social context that likely shaped the evolution of a self {as a subject having experiences} as a co-evolved trait.......” (I was supposing that the bit in curly brackets went without saying). An organism which models its environment would, as you say, be likely to model itself as a body within the environment, but it’s unlikely to model itself as a subject having experiences unless it’s already modelling other individuals as subjects having experiences.

Positron wrote:
There would seem to be no point in an organism modelling it's environment without modelling itself within that environment.

Well, a 'model' in terms of predicting from within what it is we're going to do next is sometimes called 'free will'. I just think we should call a spade a spade. The language 'modeling itself within its environment' is a metaphor of modeling. It doesn't necessarily mean that any actual modeling is going on. It's explaining something after the fact, you know, the way religion and other woo does. This is the fate of that kind of internalism, the pretense that metaphorical language is 'scientific'.

Modeling itself within its environment is what a machine does, except the modeling is given it by some programmers. If you want to think of evolution metaphorically as the imposition of a programming structure on existence, well, go ahead. Metaphor is fun. It's not anything like building a machine with a model of itself within its environment, which involves knowing mechanical engineering and programming.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Positron wrote:
There would seem to be no point in an organism modelling it's environment without modelling itself within that environment.

Well, a 'model' in terms of predicting from within what it is we're going to do next is sometimes called 'free will'. I just think we should call a spade a spade. The language 'modeling itself within its environment' is a metaphor of modeling. It doesn't necessarily mean that any actual modeling is going on. It's explaining something after the fact, you know, the way religion and other woo does. This is the fate of that kind of internalism, the pretense that metaphorical language is 'scientific'.

Modeling itself within its environment is what a machine does, except the modeling is given it by some programmers. If you want to think of evolution metaphorically as the imposition of a programming structure on existence, well, go ahead. Metaphor is fun. It's not anything like building a machine with a model of itself within its environment, which involves knowing mechanical engineering and programming.

Yet such a machine is yet another model, built to verify the model in our head. All modeled within their environment. Science itself is just a model, albeit it has been tested in every way we can think, and it has its discrepancies which is why it is so fascinating. The idea the scientific model will one day be finished seems absurd, but maybe we can just stop with the modeling for a bit and enjoy the actual reality. Reality, after all, is compete right now. We don't have to analyze it and make up stories about it, or even bend the spoon.

Steve wrote:
Yet such a machine is yet another model, built to verify the model in our head.

You apparently think the objective of merely getting something done as frivolous as I think is the objective of exploring the utmost limits of human imagination. This contretemps is old hat to me now. Don't forget that it is just one of those irresolvable dichotomies. You can't eradicate every difference of opinion. To a scientist, differences of opinion are not a sign of enmity.

To keep it lodged in discursive dichotomies is to avoid the whole scene of having to convince someone else of your metaphysics. Why would you even preach 'simply enjoying reality' to other minds you can't bother to convince yourself are simply not you?

I think what distresses you about science is that it holds out the possibility of an end to a certain kind of investigation. I'm not saying it's proven, but I think that is what distresses you about it and forces you to wibble about 'discrepancies' about which you do not understand the first thing, or else you would not call them 'discrepancies'.

As Rorty would say, the discourse that says, "Just enjoy reality" is a literary discourse. The discourse of getting something done is a scientific, technical or artisanal one. Even Rorty knows that neither one is a handbook on what we should be doing.

Cito di Pense wrote:
I think what distresses you about science is that it holds out the possibility of an end to a certain kind of investigation. I'm not saying it's proven, but I think that is what distresses you about it and forces you to wibble about 'discrepancies' about which you do not understand the first thing, or else you would not call them 'discrepancies'.

LucidFlight wrote:

Positron wrote:But I was clear from the start that the simulation included data from a virtual world. Clearly a virtual world would itself be an algorithm. And I don't know what dictionary you are using but it is perfectly possible to embed all the data within an algorithm.

Normally, I wouldn't embed any data in an algorithm. An algorithm is a set of instructions — a procedure to process data. Do you see the embedding of data as necessary for the simulation? Would you be so kind as to explain why, please?

the concept required here is encapsulation.

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/22769/Introduction-to-Object-Oriented-Programming-Concep wrote:The encapsulation is the inclusion within a program object of all the resources need for the object to function - basically, the methods and the data.

u 2 kan b an object coder.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Steve wrote:
Yet such a machine is yet another model, built to verify the model in our head.

You apparently think the objective of merely getting something done as frivolous as I think is the objective of exploring the utmost limits of human imagination. This contretemps is old hat to me now. Don't forget that it is just one of those irresolvable dichotomies. You can't eradicate every difference of opinion. To a scientist, differences of opinion are not a sign of enmity.

To keep it lodged in discursive dichotomies is to avoid the whole scene of having to convince someone else of your metaphysics. Why would you even preach 'simply enjoying reality' to other minds you can't bother to convince yourself are simply not you?

I think what distresses you about science is that it holds out the possibility of an end to a certain kind of investigation. I'm not saying it's proven, but I think that is what distresses you about it and forces you to wibble about 'discrepancies' about which you do not understand the first thing, or else you would not call them 'discrepancies'.

As Rorty would say, the discourse that says, "Just enjoy reality" is a literary discourse. The discourse of getting something done is a scientific, technical or artisanal one. Even Rorty knows that neither one is a handbook on what we should be doing.

The point is to build a better model in our head so we can do real stuff like cure cancer. But as my wife lies bedridden with cancer she doesn't give a shit about science and what it might do. She is grateful chemo starts tomorrow but that does nothing to ease her discomfort right now. She is simply facing reality as best she can, and doesn't need to complicate it. As my mum used to say "After all is said and done a lot more is said than done."

Sad is thinking I did not get my way yesterday.
Mad is thinking I am not getting my way now.
Fear is thinking I will not get my way in the future.
Happy is thinking I am getting my way now.

The self is just a thought tool, it is not real. It is very useful as far as it goes but we need to see beyond it which is a lot harder than you might think.

Steve wrote:Sad is thinking I did not get my way yesterday.
Mad is thinking I am not getting my way now.
Fear is thinking I will not get my way in the future.
Happy is thinking I am getting my way now.

The self is just a thought tool, it is not real. It is very useful as far as it goes but we need to see beyond it which is a lot harder than you might think.

This is interesting. Do you consider thought real? From this post it seems the answer is yes.

Steve wrote:Sad is thinking I did not get my way yesterday.
Mad is thinking I am not getting my way now.
Fear is thinking I will not get my way in the future.
Happy is thinking I am getting my way now.

The self is just a thought tool, it is not real. It is very useful as far as it goes but we need to see beyond it which is a lot harder than you might think.

The 18th century physicist Georg Lichtenberg would have agreed with you. He was the first to point out that the Descartes' "I think therefore I am" was just a circular argument. He said that, at most, we could say that there was some thinking happening.

Sorry to hear about your wife - hang in there both of you.

GrahamH wrote:

zoon wrote:

Positron wrote:

GrahamH; p=1186828 wrote:I agree with you, it is the social context that likely shaped the evolution of a self as a co-evolved trait with understanding others in terms of dispositional states and intentions.

I would have thought that a "self" would be one of the first evolved traits of a mind - coming long before consciousness as we experience it and certainly long before any social evolution.

There would seem to be no point in an organism modelling it's environment without modelling itself within that environment.

In the context of the thread, I was reading GrahamH (perhaps wrongly): “...social context that likely shaped the evolution of a self {as a subject having experiences} as a co-evolved trait.......” (I was supposing that the bit in curly brackets went without saying). An organism which models its environment would, as you say, be likely to model itself as a body within the environment, but it’s unlikely to model itself as a subject having experiences unless it’s already modelling other individuals as subjects having experiences.

You read me right. "subject having experiences" is something more than physical modelling of a body in an environment.

I am not sure what distinction you are making. Having experiences and modelling our selves within our environment seem to be one and the same thing. The word "physical" seems to be neither here nor there and I am not sure why you added it in.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Positron wrote:
There would seem to be no point in an organism modelling it's environment without modelling itself within that environment.

Well, a 'model' in terms of predicting from within what it is we're going to do next is sometimes called 'free will'. I just think we should call a spade a spade. The language 'modeling itself within its environment' is a metaphor of modeling. It doesn't necessarily mean that any actual modeling is going on.

I would have said that there is definitely modelling going on - it is not a metaphor at all. When I see a tree it is a tree that has been constructed by my mind out of sense data. My mind is computing a real time model of my environment out of sense data.

If a robot was doing that then we could call it modelling the enviroment - so why not say it in our case?

It's not anything like building a machine with a model of itself within its environment, which involves knowing mechanical engineering and programming

No, a robot models itself within an environment and does not know mechanical engineering and programming. What is the difference between, say, a robot building a vector model of an obstacle course from camera data and our representing that obstacle course in our mind from sense data?

zoon wrote:In the context of the thread, I was reading GrahamH (perhaps wrongly): “...social context that likely shaped the evolution of a self {as a subject having experiences} as a co-evolved trait.......” (I was supposing that the bit in curly brackets went without saying). An organism which models its environment would, as you say, be likely to model itself as a body within the environment, but it’s unlikely to model itself as a subject having experiences unless it’s already modelling other individuals as subjects having experiences.

I would have said just the opposite. How would an organism know what it was for other subjects to be selves unless from it's own experiences?

An organism navigating it's environment will represent it's environment, represent its self within the environment it will represent itself as a thing having needs - hunger, fear, avoiding pain etc. All these things - the representation of the environment, the need for food and to avoid danger - all these things are "having experiences" which do not require the need of it knowing that there is any other self but it's own.

The recognition of other "selves" need not necessarily have first come from a social context, it might have come from a prey/predator context - for example a predator recognising fear in another animal.

Of course all these are things we can only guess at.