BREAKING NEWS: Sarah Palin says something.

Originally posted by leonidas
cool. playing devil's advocate again for a moment though, the problem i have with that is this: taken to it's inevitable conclusion, you are eschewing freewill and laying all of our actions (and all our future actions) at the foot of 'society'. any decision i make is not 'my' decision. it is a decision based on the society around me. it's robert wright's idea (that GENES control everything) looked at in a mirror.

hypothetically, i could go buy a gun and shoot someone in the street tomorrow, and claim that it wasn't my fault, i was merely a victim myself of a society that made me what i am. even though i'm aware that society itself would deem my actions monstrous and i myself know they are wrong yet make the choice to pull the trigger anyway. it also seems to be a basically unproveable claim, because each time someone says he made THIS choice, your logic would say--but something influenced him to MAKE that choice.

i agree whole-heartedly that society can influence our decision making (some people more than others) but i still feel that rationale choice can--and in most cases do (or more people would be doing whatever they wanted)--overcome those influences (negative as well as positive at times) under normal circumstances. otherwise, again, what becomes of the idea of freewill? or are you saying we are simply societal automatons?

meh, good discussion and just my 2 cents.

That's a bit tangential to his point.

What he's saying is that the environment is essential to defining the individual. This includes the history. The individual cannot be defined without the environment or the history of that individual in the environment. He's not saying a murderer isn't culpable for murdering, but that the murderer did not perform those actions absolutely separate from ANY environmental factors: the action itself necessitates a definition that comes from a zone (both literal and abstract) exogenous the person. In fact, one set of rules defines those same actions as murder and another set could define those actions as righteousness.

In other words, it's both, not the person, not the environment.

I went to see The Dark Knight alone, on opening night, the first time I saw it. I think what inimalist is talking about is the reason why I went alone. I didn't want to go and see The Joker with anyone who couldn't tell when to laugh and when not to laugh at his sick behavior. There were people who laughed at every moment of his screen time, people who thought that everything he did should be laughed at because he doesn't take his psychosis absolutely seriously. It reflect the mindset being addressed, that the psychopath is who everyone wants to be, not even the totally flawed hero of the whole movie.

Originally posted by dadudemon
That's a bit tangential to his point.

What he's saying is that the environment is essential to defining the individual. This includes the history. The individual cannot be defined without the environment or the history of that individual in the environment. He's not saying a murderer isn't culpable for murdering, but that the murderer did not perform those actions absolutely separate from ANY environmental factors: the action itself necessitates a definition that comes from a zone (both literal and abstract) exogenous the person. In fact, one set of rules defines those same actions as murder and another set could define those actions as righteousness.

In other words, it's both, not the person, not the environment.

but if the person is defined by his environment, then where does the person begin? not saying he's saying the killer isn't culpable, but it does leave open the notion that HE ALONE is not culpable.

Originally posted by leonidas
but if the person is defined by his environment, then where does the person begin? not saying he's saying the killer isn't culpable, but it does leave open the notion that HE ALONE is not culpable.

The person is not ONLY defined by the environment. Additionally, the person is greater than the sum of "his" parts. It's the whole thing.

Originally posted by leonidas
cool. playing devil's advocate again for a moment though, the problem i have with that is this: taken to it's inevitable conclusion, you are eschewing freewill and laying all of our actions (and all our future actions) at the foot of 'society'. any decision i make is not 'my' decision. it is a decision based on the society around me. it's robert wright's idea (that GENES control everything) looked at in a mirror.

hypothetically, i could go buy a gun and shoot someone in the street tomorrow, and claim that it wasn't my fault, i was merely a victim myself of a society that made me what i am. even though i'm aware that society itself would deem my actions monstrous and i myself know they are wrong yet make the choice to pull the trigger anyway. it also seems to be a basically unproveable claim, because each time someone says he made THIS choice, your logic would say--but something influenced him to MAKE that choice.

i agree whole-heartedly that society can influence our decision making (some people more than others) but i still feel that rationale choice can--and in most cases do (or more people would be doing whatever they wanted)--overcome those influences (negative as well as positive at times) under normal circumstances. otherwise, again, what becomes of the idea of freewill? or are you saying we are simply societal automatons?

meh, good discussion and just my 2 cents.

this is sort of what I meant by the conflict between scientific findings in psychology and the assumptions of Western philosophy.

What we believe about individual people, in terms of the west, in terms of judicial "fault" and illegal "motives" for actions (in the Canadian judicial system known as mens rea) are based on what I would call a "rational actor" theory of man, where we assume that people, even sane ones like ourselves, calculate and are motivated by rational goals that we can justify and that we have some sort of will over our bodies and our mind. However, when tested empirically, we find much the opposite, and if you want, I can outline a bunch of these things. For instance, what you believe to be a constant, ongoing "stream of consciousness" is really part of your left brain assembling the best story from the available evidence around you, with predictable biases, and able to be tricked in specific ways. Also, when you think you are motivated to do something, your body has already prepared to do it, a significant amount of time before you are even aware of your desire to do it, meaning that your "subconscious" has already planned and prepared actions for you, long before the "conscious" mind is ever aware that you even wanted to act.

Questions about dualism, and free will, and of the "rational individual" sort of become almost nonsensical in this perspective.

That being said, I would never suggest that individual people can't or shouldn't be held responsible for their actions. Whether or not psychology suggests that you have no free will is no more relevant than whether atomic physics suggests you have free will, when considering the law. imho, the law should only be used against those who prove a threat to society, thus it is justified to take away their freedom, so to protect citizens, dangerous people must be dealt with in some way, regardless of the existance or nonexistance of free will.

Ultimately, though, from my view, if you decided to buy a gun and shoot people tomorrow, "responsibility" would be on the cascade of factors that lead to that decision, be they internal in response to external, or external in response to internal, or whatever. Your behaviours cannot be removed from the environment they occur in. Every thought you have is, in some way or another, influenced by the environment you are in, and to some degree, vice versa. In terms of the law, you should probably be forced into some sort of psychological evaluation and/or inprisoned, regardless of who or what might be at fault.

Originally posted by leonidas
but if the person is defined by his environment, then where does the person begin? not saying he's saying the killer isn't culpable, but it does leave open the notion that HE ALONE is not culpable.

thats exactly it though. There is no place where the "person" begins. an organism cannot be define outside of its environment. Everything you do or think is influenced by what is going on around you. There is no "you" that exists independently.

@ inimalist

I wonder that if what you are saying is true, what goes through an individuals mind when they have a difficult decision to make? I'm sure the subconscious has much to do with our every action but isn't a conscious mind necessary to weigh the pros and cons of specific choices?

Originally posted by The MISTER
@ inimalist

I wonder that if what you are saying is true, what goes through an individuals mind when they have a difficult decision to make? I'm sure the subconscious has much to do with our every action but isn't a conscious mind necessary to weigh the pros and cons of specific choices?

ok, well, even before I get into this, let me stress that, and this applies equally to what I said before, as educated and qualified as I might be in this stuff, this is largely my opinion. I can't imagine you would have trouble finding someone with much more experience in the field who would disagree, and I'd gladly debate with them, I just feel bad using the "I know science, lulz" thing, and I don't want you to ascribe any undue authority to my thoughts.

well, ok, yes. And even in terms of your body being ready before you are even aware of your motivation, there is still a period there where your "conscious" mind has the ability to stop you from doing it. The experimenter who discovered the phenomenon called it "free wont". The thing is, what is this "consciousness" that decides "wont", or that seems to weigh decisions to important questions (important to that point, if you feel that a decision is hard, it is probably because it is; your subconscious isn't perfect, and it doesn't always know what is best. If your conscious is confused, this is likely a reflection of conflict at a subconscious level [blah, huge aside, sorry])? Well, it is a construct of previous experiences, social expectations, and thousands of other things. It is not a "dualistic" you, but in fact, many interacting systems that can be shown to rely on "subconscious" processing of information before we become aware of our own desires. Like I said, it is all one big system, we are not seperate from our environment.

however, not to get on another rant or anything, but I don't believe in a split between conscious and unconscious brains either. dualism is still present in neuroscience, whether they want to call it "top down processing" or a soul

@ inimalist

I'd agree about the inability to separate the subconscious from the conscious but I'm sure I've heard of people influencing their subconscious minds purposely through meditation and what not. Point being we do have some level of control though of course we can't control everything.

Oh yeah I just remembered... George Washington? Cmon man, I was talking about a person who is member of America's current society. 😛

Originally posted by inimalist
Also, when you think you are motivated to do something, your body has already prepared to do it, a significant amount of time before you are even aware of your desire to do it, meaning that your "subconscious" has already planned and prepared actions for you, long before the "conscious" mind is ever aware that you even wanted to act.

Interesting.

Does your above statement contradict the following statement:

Originally posted by inimalist
There is no way to measure anything in the subconscious at this point...

No, I'm not being an ass: I'm genuinely interested. I take what you say about your area of expertise, seriously.

Originally posted by The MISTER
@ inimalist

I'd agree about the inability to separate the subconscious from the conscious but I'm sure I've heard of people influencing their subconscious minds purposely through meditation and what not. Point being we do have some level of control though of course we can't control everything.

but what I am saying is that the desire those people would have had to meditate didn't come from "them", but rather was constructed from their memories, desires, emotions, social interactions, genetics, and a huge variety of other things. In fact, these systems would have decided that the person wanted to meditate and prepared to do it before the individual became aware of their desire to do it in the first place. There is no place in this series of sequential motivations where you can stop it and say, "ah-ha, here is where the person made that choice, uninfluenced by what happened before"

Originally posted by The MISTER
Oh yeah I just remembered... George Washington? Cmon man, I was talking about a person who is member of America's current society. 😛

modern america doesn't have a very positive connection to the violence of the revolution?

or

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/03/fran_townsend_terrorism/index.html

Originally posted by dadudemon
Interesting.

Does your above statement contradict the following statement:

...

No, I'm not being an ass: I'm genuinely interested. I take what you say about your area of expertise, seriously.

what context did I say that second part in?

I think it is actually incorrect, so I'm intersted in what got me to say it... was it this thread?

Originally posted by inimalist
what context did I say that second part in?

I think it is actually incorrect, so I'm intersted in what got me to say it... was it this thread?

In my post, I made sure to keep the link to your post intact.

All you have to do is click "post" (which is underlined) and it will take you back to the post I quoted of yours.

It's a nifty little trick and the primary reason I preserve the quote tags while multi-quoting a single post: it helps the other person go back to their original post that I quoted so conversations do not get out of wack.

But, we were talking about measuring "violence" in a weapons' study on people. People reacted more "agressively" in the questions they were asked.

This was about video games and violence. And it wasn't in this thread: it was over a year and 4 months ago.

Originally posted by dadudemon
In my post, I made sure to keep the link to your post intact.

All you have to do is click "post" (which is underlined) and it will take you back to the post I quoted of yours.

It's a nifty little trick and the primary reason I preserve the quote tags while multi-quoting a single post: it helps the other person go back to their original post that I quoted so conversations do not get out of wack.

But, we were talking about measuring "violence" in a weapons' study on people. People reacted more "agressively" in the questions they were asked.

This was about video games and violence. And it wasn't in this thread: it was over a year and 4 months ago.

different "subconsciouses"... or, well, different systems.

We certainly can measure different parts of what is traditionally called "subconscious" thinking, but in terms of knowing how a person "thinks" of violence, outside of things like measures of testosterone or other indirect things, no, that isn't possible. Stuff like that will be based on information that is stored in distributed networks of neurons, rather than, say, in perceptual priming of attention, which is easier to localize and measure through neuroimaging (though, I guess I should add that neuroimaging is still a "correlational" measure... though I don't really believe that...)

Like I said, I don't actually believe in "conscious"/"subconscious", so it isn't surprising I'd contradict myself

Originally posted by inimalist
different "subconsciouses"... or, well, different systems.

We certainly can measure different parts of what is traditionally called "subconscious" thinking, but in terms of knowing how a person "thinks" of violence, outside of things like measures of testosterone or other indirect things, no, that isn't possible. Stuff like that will be based on information that is stored in distributed networks of neurons, rather than, say, in perceptual priming of attention, which is easier to localize and measure through neuroimaging (though, I guess I should add that neuroimaging is still a "correlational" measure... though I don't really believe that...)

Like I said, I don't actually believe in "conscious"/"subconscious", so it isn't surprising I'd contradict myself

No, you're right: neuroimaging is strictly correlational as we cannot measure the exact data firing on every individual neuron and then accurately piece that back together and paint a proper picture of the region that activated. We can make very strong conclusions based off of those correlations, however.

Anyway, I think your suggestion of different subconscious systems makes what you said, make sense. One study measured near primal reactions in an indirect way. What you spoke about in the other post was subconscious motivations for certain actions. While not entirely mutually exclusive, it makes sense that they would be different systems. I would like to refer to these as "background processes" that propagate out, via triggers, into the conscious. The system that prompts some, subconsciously, to wake up and take a piss is not the same system that heightens a person's awareness to violence and makes them have more aggressive thoughts. Different "subconscious" systems, for sure.

So, really, it's a symphony of subconscious systems operating as "background processes" until specific triggers or conditions are met to process those systems in conscious thought.

Originally posted by dadudemon
No, you're right: neuroimaging is strictly correlational as we cannot measure the exact data firing on every individual neuron and then accurately piece that back together and paint a proper picture of the region that activated. We can make very strong conclusions based off of those correlations, however.

not exactly... the reason fMRI is "correlational" is because it measures BOLD response (blood oxygen level) rather than direct neuronal firing, not simply because it doesn't take into account every possible piece of the puzzle. I think this might be better defined as "indirect" or "inferrential", because it is really only correlational in the way that you letting go of a ball is correlated to it falling.

Something like EEG isn't correlational at all, as you are measuring the actual summation of neuronal activity, rather than the system that feeds that activity (blood oxygen), however, it is notoriously unable to determine location or these "specific parts" as you are saying. That is an issue with what is called "spatial resolution" though.

Basically, even if you had the ability to image individual neurons and their connections in fMRI, it would still be "correlational [😠]", because you are measuring the blood/oxygen that is supplying that neuron, not the neuron directly.

Again, I think "indirect" is a better description

Originally posted by dadudemon
Anyway, I think your suggestion of different subconscious systems makes what you said, make sense. One study measured near primal reactions in an indirect way. What you spoke about in the other post was subconscious motivations for certain actions. While not entirely mutually exclusive, it makes sense that they would be different systems. I would like to refer to these as "background processes" that propagate out, via triggers, into the conscious. The system that prompts some, subconsciously, to wake up and take a piss is not the same system that heightens a person's awareness to violence and makes them have more aggressive thoughts. Different "subconscious" systems, for sure.

motivations are difficult too. Notice, I haven't said we could throw louchner in a fmri and determine why he did this (unless there is some unprobable thing like a tumor). Those things would be only really amenible to the indirect measures I was talking about in the other thread.

Like, the Libet studies, that show rediness to action before motivation, never actually measure this sort of "abstract motivational whatever", but rather measure parts of the mind unrelated to consciousness, to see whether they precede or follow conscious awareness of an item.

I think I'm even going to change my answer there... its not exactly that they are different "subconsciousnesses", but that we define so much as "subconscious" that it can't help but include things like abstract meaning and basic motor readiness. Yet another reason why the term is useless...

Originally posted by dadudemon
So, really, it's a symphony of subconscious systems operating as "background processes" until specific triggers or conditions are met to process those systems in conscious thought.

no...

it is a single system where only a very small percentage of activity is made available for explicit awareness. There are some ideas and interesting results, but there is still no way to identify what is "conscious" and what is "subconscious" processing, in fact, as I said above, that is likely an irrelevant distinction.

argh, and here is where stuff gets all confusing, and why I hate these labels anyways, but think of it like this, what is "subconscious" and what is "autonomic"? is your heart rate part of "subconscious processing"? normally not, but if your heart rate is elevated, and you don't have an immediatly available response, the simple fact can lead you to become anxious or whatever. Basically, your brain says "oh, the heart is racing, there must be a reason, I can't think of one, but there must be, I must be anxious!" (ok, not exactly, but a lot of this is nearly impossible to describe in jargon, let alone layman...). In this instance, the heartrate caused the anxiety, so is the heart part of your subconscious mind?

Alright, at the risk of just rambling now, let me try and use an example I like:

In a vaccum, a rock and a feather will fall at the same speed (gravity is a constant, no drag). I know this as a fact, explicity. However, if I ever were to see someone perform this experiment, it would be very counter-intuitive to my implicit mind. It goes against everything that this "subconscious" mind knows. Now, I know for a fact that they will fall at the same speed, but I can't actually use that information to change the way my mind reacts to the actual event. Similarily, knowing that the rotating snakes in that illusion are actually stationary makes me no more able to surpress the perceptual experience.

It tends to be called "bottom up" in the stuff I do, whereas the explicit is "top down", and if you want, I can get into why I don't like those terms either. Long story short, almost all connections and pathways in the brain are two-way: information flows top down, top-up, down up, down down, laterally, laterally down than up two steps then down then laterally again to come down so it is lateral to where it began... etc

Originally posted by inimalist
no...

it is a single system where only a very small percentage of activity is made available for explicit awareness.

That's pretty much what I said. Except, I took it a slight step further and indicated that certain triggers can causes processes to start operating in that small percentage of explicit awareness.

Unless, of course, you disagree and are saying that there are no triggers but just random occurrences? Because I was under the impression that "conscious" execution required triggers to move from "subconscious" to "conscious."

Originally posted by inimalist
There are some ideas and interesting results, but there is still no way to identify what is "conscious" and what is "subconscious" processing, in fact, as I said above, that is likely an irrelevant distinction.

argh, and here is where stuff gets all confusing, and why I hate these labels anyways, but think of it like this, what is "subconscious" and what is "autonomic"? is your heart rate part of "subconscious processing"? normally not, but if your heart rate is elevated, and you don't have an immediatly available response, the simple fact can lead you to become anxious or whatever. Basically, your brain says "oh, the heart is racing, there must be a reason, I can't think of one, but there must be, I must be anxious!" (ok, not exactly, but a lot of this is nearly impossible to describe in jargon, let alone layman...). In this instance, the heartrate caused the anxiety, so is the heart part of your subconscious mind?

Alright, at the risk of just rambling now, let me try and use an example I like:

In a vaccum, a rock and a feather will fall at the same speed (gravity is a constant, no drag). I know this as a fact, explicity. However, if I ever were to see someone perform this experiment, it would be very counter-intuitive to my implicit mind. It goes against everything that this "subconscious" mind knows. Now, I know for a fact that they will fall at the same speed, but I can't actually use that information to change the way my mind reacts to the actual event. Similarily, knowing that the rotating snakes in that illusion are actually stationary makes me no more able to surpress the perceptual experience.

It tends to be called "bottom up" in the stuff I do, whereas the explicit is "top down", and if you want, I can get into why I don't like those terms either. Long story short, almost all connections and pathways in the brain are two-way: information flows top down, top-up, down up, down down, laterally, laterally down than up two steps then down then laterally again to come down so it is lateral to where it began... etc

I think the way I described it is great. lol

What I was describing is not a single system, but a set of smaller systems comprising the "super-system (the brain machine)." The activities in the olfactory cortex are a different "sub-system" of brain than the activities in somatosensory homonculus. Each have triggers that bring processes to "conscious thought" but most of the time, stimulus is ignored and left as a "background process." For example, you are not aware for the most part, of all the sensory taking place all over your body where you clothes are making contact with your flesh. However, a trigger, as I'm calling it, would be a strong itch. It jumps from the background into conscious thought and you scratch it, satiating the itch.

Also, about items controlled outside of the conscious/subconscious labels: those would primarily executed in the brain stem: the primitive portion of our brains. Now, the processes "working" in the main portions of our brain (ie frontal, occipital, parietal, and temporal lobes and so forth) can certainly affect the processes run primarily by the medulla oblongata such as the "conscious" perception of danger. So, your heart is not a subconscious or conscious action: it is external of those constructs and is, instead, an automated process. However, the conscious can affect those lower brain functions, but almost always not in a detrimental way. There's "fail safes" to protect against the conscious, or as you put it: explicit awareness.

And, yes, my example of itches were bottom-up. And, from what I understand about cognitive neuroscience, you're heavily steeped in that type of study because you do research into visual cortex and psychology.

Originally posted by inimalist
... what is "subconscious" and what is "autonomic"? is your heart rate part of "subconscious processing"? normally not, but if your heart rate is elevated, and you don't have an immediatly available response, the simple fact can lead you to become anxious or whatever. Basically, your brain says "oh, the heart is racing, there must be a reason, I can't think of one, but there must be, I must be anxious!" ... In this instance, the heartrate caused the anxiety, so is the heart part of your subconscious mind?

Originally posted by Mindship
The 'subconscious' is not an undifferentiated domain. Autonomic functioning can be said to comprise the body-unconscious, or the embedded unconscious.

but I don't see how those terms are any less problematic

my point is that this "line" between different "types" of processes doesn't really exist, and in fact, what we experience as our "conscious" self, is much more a construct from things as seemingly unrelated as autonomic function, than it is a unitary "thing".

There is no difference in our sensory cortex between data that becomes conscious and that which does not. You can't look at a brain and know what it is that a person is paying attention to... and I'm not certain this is just a matter of our tools being insensitive to it at this point, and even then, "attention" (which, I should probably say, in a very well controled study, you might be able to infer from fMRI if a person is attending to, say, one of 2 possible objects) is not a good measure of "consciousness", as things which we never become aware of can have a huge impact on how we think.

ugh, before I get rambling, the simple message is this: Body, mind, environment, society, genes, all of these things, and infinitely more, do not comprise seperate "things" that interact with eachother, but rather, compose a singular system through which each acts upon the other. I'm not trying to say, "oh, look, your heart is part of your subconscious mind", but rather, that any distinction you try to make between these "autonomic" and "cognitive" systems will, in the end, be entirely arbitrary and anthropic. I do want to address ddm more too, but sort of related is, yet another reason I don't like "top down" and "bottom up", as it implies there are two different "types" of "thinking" going on, that which originates at the "top" [re: consciousness, only don't call it that, because we are serious scientists, sic!] and that from the bottom, when in reality, neither of these comprises a closed system of information processing distinct from the next.

Originally posted by inimalist
Body, mind, environment, society, genes, all of these things, and infinitely more, do not comprise seperate "things" that interact with eachother, but rather, compose a singular system through which each acts upon the other.

Then the distinction between individuals must be how well they self-program. I agree with you on everyone and everything being forced to respond to the circumstances at hand. Obviously people have shown enough ability to control their impulses that it is expected in most civilizations. When individuals fail to be able to control impulses that society deems extremely dangerous they should be presented as either responsible or not responsible enough to be held solely accountable. I have to admit though that there's no denying the connection in the "Tiller the baby killer" murder. Also the connotations concerning the term " Take them out " are unmistakable. That's f***ed up.