JARS V15 N2 - December 2015

[Roger Bissell]

In re post 72:

Sounds like someone's jealous.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Groarke was not using "impose" in any of the senses listed above.

I didn't say he was. Indeed, I explicitly said he used it metaphorically.

Both the quotes I offered previously are good clear statements of the Objectivist position that consciousness is interactive.

I disagree with such a blanket statement. If I look at the sun, my doing so has no effect on the sun. If I hear a train whistle, it has no effect on the train. If I smell bread baking, my smelling it has no effect on the bread. Touch and taste are different. So I will address touch.

When we interact with the ball (via its tactile contact with our skin or via the light waves that flow from it to our eyes), it impresses its nature upon our sense organs, and our sense organs impress their nature upon the bundle of energy extending from the ball to us.

There is an interaction here, but the effects are of different kinds. As I've shown, it cannot be extrapolated to all perception.

That's a loose use of "impress" (after the "and"). Suppose it's a rubber ball and I squeeze it. Is it my sensory organs changing the shape of the ball? No, it is my hand, and not the sensory nerves in my hand either.

The main 2 types of nerves are sensory nerves and motor nerves:

1. Sensory nerves also known as afferent nerves, carry impulses from sensory receptors towards the brain.

2. Motor nerves also known as efferent nerves, carry impulses away from the brain to muscles and glands.

Each type is one-way. The first is why I say perception is one-way.

"Perception is necessarily a process of interaction: there is no way to perceive an object that does not somehow impinge on one's body. Sense qualities, therefore, must be effects." (Peikoff, OPAR, page 47)

That is one way. He says nothing about an effect in the opposite direction, which would make it two-way. So I take his "interaction" with a big grain of salt.

Thank you. I've always felt pity toward (and therefore revulsion of) hapless Cousin Leonard.

[Roger Bissell]

By contrast, I admire Leonard greatly, while also feeling mild to moderate irritation with him at times.

That's because I don't regard him as pathetic or repulsive or even basically wrong-headed, just bumbling at times or zig-zaging the wrong direction at times. I've learned a lot from him, because he is a very clear expositor of ideas and a great lecturer.

[merjet]

There is an unbroken causal chain involved in every process in the universe. There is an unbroken causal chain from the sun to our skin to our brains - or from a tree to our retina to our brains - or from a physical object touching us to sensory neurons in our skin to our brains - or from our brains to our motor neurons to our muscles to the objects we touch.

So what? That doesn't make an action two-way for sight, smell, or sound.

If someone stands in the path of an arrow shot by an archer, he is interacting with the arrow and affecting its nature, just as it affects his.

That doesn't make an action two-way for sight, smell, or sound.

Perception of a star, say, cannot be one-way any more than the sun's causing sunburn is one-way. Neither process is able to happen except by some thoroughly interactive causal means.

I disagree and take your use of "interactive" with a big grain of salt, like I did for Peikoff.

So, Peikoff is entirely correct. Save the salt shaker for some of his more dubious comments, OK?

I disagree and have plenty of salt for both Peikoff's dubious comments and yours.

[Wolf DeVoon]

It just dawned on me why Bissell is spouting bald rubbish, like Peikoff and Kelley. He doesn't like causation, because it puts him on the spot, morally. Everyone else is partly to blame for his actions. You can see it clearly enough in Peikoff, the second-hander, nothing without Ayn Rand. Kelley's case is a little less obvious, as in closeted.

Perception of a distant star somehow changes the star? Mistakes of that magnitude are not made innocently.

[anthony]

It just dawned on me why Bissell is spouting bald rubbish, like Peikoff and Kelley. He doesn't like causation, because it puts him on the spot, morally. Everyone else is partly to blame for his actions. You can see it clearly enough in Peikoff, the second-hander, nothing without Ayn Rand. Kelley's case is a little less obvious, as in closeted.

Perception of a distant star somehow changes the star? Mistakes of that magnitude are not made innocently.

Far from not liking causation, I would have thought it's clear Roger made the extreme case for physical causation, which is precisely what some are faulting. To further say he implies "everyone is partly to blame for his [RB's]actions" - is apposite and ridiculous. As with perception changing the star...

C'mon.

For all I don't appreciate Peikoff's earlier doings and pettinesses, and some later silly pronouncements, he has had a long career and large output which (I gather from only my few readings) has had several high points - after she had left the stage. So? Rand wasn't perfect either. And to be an intellectual second hander to Rand, can't be so bad. In the end I can't assess anyone's totality of life by their low points alone, if I knew enough to judge at all.

[Brant Gaede]

Tony, you need a better understanding of "second-hander." There is the Eddie Willers kind which is off level of ability. There is the Peter Keating kind which is moral which in turn corrupts one's ability. I think Peikoff maxed out on his ability with his productive work, assuming philosophy is his true passion. OPAR is a worthy work on Objectivism. There is no more one book on the philosophy really worth reading. (Return to Reason by Paul Lepanto is an exception worth reading after you read most of the other material as a way to inversely study Objectivism by filling in all the blanks in his rendition. A kind of cud chewing.) So, Leonard is to Ayn as Eddie is to Dagny. Okay, just note the big difference in the real brain power to the fictionally depicted. You can't write smarter than you are and Rand was smarter than any of her characters. John Galt did not write Galt's speech (much less spend two years on the project.)

--Brant

[Roger Bissell]

In re #80:

The causal effects of an object's action are just as real as the action itself.

If you roll a bowling ball down the alley, the ball's rolling down the alley is part of your action, an extension of that action, just as surely as if you had carried the ball down the alley to hit the pins directly, or walked down the alley and kicked the pins with your foot.

If I walk in front of the bowling ball, I am interacting with, interfering with, you and your action, just as surely as if I had stepped out in front of *you* and prevented you from going as far as you might have. (Or I might miscalculate or not be strong enough to stop you or the rolling ball. etc.)

By being where I am in relation to the sun, I am preventing its action (i.e., the extension of its action of emitting photons) from going as far as it might have, so I have interfered with the sun's action. The same for the photons coming from the distant star, when my eyes intercept some of its emitted photons. Just because my relatively much smaller magnitude of output in the interaction doesn't turn the sun blue or cause the star to stop twinkling doesn't mean I'm not interacting with them.

ADDED: If I'm not engaged in two-way interaction with the bowler by stopping or diverting his bowling ball from its path down the alley, how about if I pick up the bowling ball and hurl it at him? Does it only count as two-way if I actually cause an effect on his body, rather than just on the extension of his body, which his action is? How about if he flinches and avoids the ball I throw at him? Is that two-way interaction, even though I didn't actually touch him? What about if he doesn't notice and so doesn't flinch, but I miss him? Is that *not* two-way interaction?

All along the way, I am doing something, whether in retaliation or not, which interferes with the bowler's action. Is there any of it that is *not* interacting with him? Or are were divorcing actions and their effects from their causes, the entities that initiate them?

As for perception being interactive, I don't see how it *can't* be. We've got a bundle of energy from the object perceived, and that bundle's nature includes its encoding a raft of information about the object's nature - and we've got sense organs with their nature, which includes how they receive and repattern the energy from the bundles. The bundle and the sense organ interact, and each of them changes the other, the causal result being that the object appears to the perceiver as a certain content of awareness and (equivalently) the perceiver perceives the object in a certain form of awareness. (Like a collision, a state of awareness is a relational thing, an interactive product. Content and form of perception are not separable except by conceptually distinguising them. They're just two sides of the same coin, as it were.)

Neither I nor the object are necessarily doing something *directly* to the other, when it appears to me and I perceive it. But its emitted energy bundle and my sensory organs are the *means,* the *intermediaries,* by which we interact with one another causally during a process of perception. They are *how* the object and I interact, and the causal result of our interaction (via intermediaries/means) is a state of perceptual awareness. This is a lot of chewing, but I take it as essential what Rand et al are getting at in their analysis of perception. (See Kelley's Evidence of the Senses and the previously mentioned lecture by Peikoff, neither of which remotely resembles bald rubbish.)

In re #65:

I didn't say there was a "chain reaction backward." I said that the front car interacted "remotely" (I used the phrase "remote control") with the rear car by interfering with the effects of its action. If the front car hadn't been where it was, the car immediately behind that position would have been bumped further forward, etc., which itself would have then been the furthest forward causal effect of the rear car's action. In either case, the front cars - and all the others in between - were interfering with and thus interacting with the rear car by in some way changing what its motion and causal effects would have been if no cars had been in front of it.

Also, the fact that photons get absorbed and later re-emitted is a detail and a very cool thing to understand, but it doesn't change the analysis essentially. If a body of gas absorbs photons and then re-emits other photons, this is basically similar to car #2 (in the middle) absorbing mechanical energy from car #3 (in the rear) and then transmitting it to car #1 (in the front).

Despite its magnitude, I take this gap in ES's comments to be innocent. Going forward, I hope she will take responsibility, as I do, for seeing that an analysis of cause-effect is as complete as is needed for adequate understanding. To whatever extent that this is virgin territory, it may take repeated efforts to get it clearly worked out, and that's fine. But we don't need to misrepresent each other's attempts by obvious distortion or moral accusation (as in #80).

[Guyau]

. . .

[...] when you begin to explain Newtonian mechanics to the novice saying A body continues at rest or in uniform motion unless acted upon by a force. And the novice sensibly asks, Well if thats the way it works, how come a picture on the wall falls to the floor even though it was subject to the same force of gravity while at rest on the wall and while moving to the floor? Newtons scheme will be gotten for it with some further explanation.

Make that "acted upon by a net force," and the novice will have less reason for being confused.

Ellen

Yes, and sooner or later "Always draw the 'free-body' diagram. The picture fixed to the wall has the force of gravity pulling it down and the force of the wall pushing it up. When the picture falls, the upward force has been removed." A novice like me probably went easily along with the story; after all, in this mechanics, if the picture is staying in place there has to be an opposing force holding it up, otherwise according to this scheme it would fall. But for belief based on serious physical understanding, it might help to talk about materials under stress being different than materials not under stress, about that being a real, physical difference; the force holding the picture up is not just a placeholder in a scheme. Often it's mentioned that the felt pressure under one's feet when standing shows as real the force of the earth holding one up against descent due to gravity. I rather think corroboration and integration of that with observations (or report of observations) of body-to-body relations in and out of stress, where neither body is animate or capable of perception, sets one more securely in the right frame of mind for right physics thence metaphysics.

[Brant Gaede]

There is no countervailing force to gravity holding up the picture. There's only an obstruction to gravity pulling the picture down. If you hold up the picture in your hands you are providing a countervailing force. Whether the picture is dropped or hung it is affected by the same amount of force only to two different effects.

--Brant

I may have missed a point Stephen is making; it's hard for me to penetrate dense language (I have the same problem with Roger)

[Guyau]

No, you’re reading that post fine, Brant. The Newton set sees the obstruction as an opposing force. Similarly, a weight scale using a spring under the platform has a force being applied by the compressed spring opposing (and equaling) the gravity force on the weighed body.

[Brant Gaede]

No, you’re reading that post fine, Brant. The Newton set sees the obstruction as an opposing force. Similarly, a weight scale using a spring under the platform has a force being applied by the compressed spring opposing (and equaling) the gravity force on the weighed body.

This seems to give force two dimensions: epistemological (obstruction) and metaphysical (use of the spring).

I don't think the first is transferable for it's not dynamic. The object itself has to be transferred. (I also don't think it's all that important, practically speaking.)

--Brant

[merjet]

How far does Roger's notion of "two-way interaction" stretch?

Tuesday night I watched part of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game on tv. I saw LeBron James take a shot at the hoop. Apparently my seeing this event was a "two-way interaction" with LeBron James. Moreover, every tv viewer in the world who saw the shot "two-way interacted" with LeBron James. In each case there was a long causal chain from LeBron James shooting the ball to the viewer seeing it. So, regardless of the number of intermediaries, DSL/fiber optic cable/satellite dish, energy transformations, signal processing, even encryption and decryption, et cetera, there were millions and millions of "two-way interactions" between viewers and LeBron James.

interact

2. if two or more things interact, or if one thing interacts with another, they affect or change one another in some way

What discernible effect all us viewers had on LeBron's shot in this "two-way interaction" is way beyond my comprehension.

This is a lot of chewing, but I take it as essential what Rand et al are getting at in their analysis of perception.

So, when Ayn Rand analyzed perception, she considered X watching Y on tv and considered it "two-way interacting". Oh, my. Can Roger can cite anything where Rand said a person merely seeing, hearing, or smelling affects or changes the source object?

[Wolf DeVoon]

Worse: he swallowed Russell's set theory whole and uncritically. About as Objectivist as New Math.

[Roger Bissell]

In re:

I base my writings on logic on Rand's discussion in ch. 1 of ITOE of units as being things regarded as members of a group of similar things. Is that what you mean by set theory? Does it become Russellian or New Math when I substitute the word "class" for the word "group," or when I use the word "member" as Rand did? I'm not talking about arbitrary collections of things with nothing essential in common. Sorry, your smear is way off base.

[Roger Bissell]

In re #88:

The direct, immediate interaction - as I have repeatedly taken pains to point out - is between a bundle of energy that interacts with sense receptors on our bodies. They each affect each other. This is straight out of Rand, Peikoff, and Kelley. Our states of perceptual awareness are the product of the interaction between patterned energy and our sensory receptors. Both the bundles of energy and our sense organs contribute to the resultant perception - they jointly "impose" their natures on the product, just as two automobiles jointly impose their natures on the resultant collision. (Again, this is a Rand-approved Peikoff lecture example. If you don't like it, take it up with Rand - oh, sorry, I forgot, she assumed room temperature several decades ago. Well, listen to the lectures and write Peikoff if you still disagree.)

No, the bundle of energy does not *directly* affect our brains, and our sense receptors do not *directly* affect the television or orchestra or tree or apple that we perceive. What our sense receptors *do* affect is the *trajectory of the action* of the apple - i.e., of its reflecting light waves of a certain character. They are affecting (interacting with) a causal effect of the apple, just as surely as if the apple were thrown at one's eye, and the eye being in the way affected (interacted with) the action of the apple, which is also a causal effect of the apple.

If tendrils of the apply reached out and touched my eye, that would be a two-way interaction - but light waves reflected from the apple and touching my eye are not?

If I'm in car A (front of the pileup caused by car Z's rear-end collision with car Y), and my car prevents car B from occupying that space, which prevents car C from occupying that space, etc., then have I not interacted with car Z (rear of the pileup) by preventing it from occupying that space? I never touched car Z, did I - yet I balked both his action and the effect of his action, which would have been to propel car Y through the space that my car A occupies (not to mention the others in between).

Indirect effects? Yes. Two-way interaction? Yes.

[Wolf DeVoon]

I base my writings on logic on Rand's discussion in ch. 1 of ITOE of units as being things regarded as members of a group of similar things. Is that what you mean by set theory? Does it become Russellian or New Math when I substitute the word "class" for the word "group," or when I use the word "member" as Rand did? I'm not talking about arbitrary collections of things with nothing essential in common...

Slippery as grease.

Bertrand Russell spoke of doing an “inventory” of a class to see if such and such was a member of it – sort of a mental inspection, like looking in a classroom to see if a particular student is there. It is a useful, simple way of evaluating the truth-value of a proposition

Let's end it here. Zero respect for you after the dictionary farce, interaction, and now Russell.

[Roger Bissell]

In re #92:

Does this mean you won't be commenting on my posts any more?

[Wolf DeVoon]

In re #92:

Does this mean you won't be commenting on my posts any more?

More than that. I'm out.

[Roger Bissell]

Hallelujah - one down! (I love it when they self-destruct.)

[merjet]

If I'm in car A (front of the pileup caused by car Z's rear-end collision with car Y), and my car prevents car B from occupying that space, which prevents car C from occupying that space, etc., then have I not interacted with car Z (rear of the pileup) by preventing it from occupying that space? I never touched car Z, did I - yet I balked both his action and the effect of his action, which would have been to propel car Y through the space that my car A occupies (not to mention the others in between).

Indirect effects? Yes. Two-way interaction? Yes.

Some does not imply all or even most. That is, cases of object #1 hitting object #2, which then hits object #3. Graphically your example is Z --> Y --> A. I use "resists" to refer to force in the opposite direction of the arrows, i.e. Z's motion. A resists Y and Y resists Z. But that does not imply A resists Z in every similar case. Spacing may prevent that. Another example makes it even clearer. A batter hits a home run and 450 feet away the baseball bounces and then hits a trash can. Does the trash can resist the batter? No, it resists only the ball. There is no "two-way interaction" between the trash can and the batter.

Notice how Roger conveniently side-steps addressing my example of watching LeBron James on tv. His example proves nothing about merely seeing, hearing, or smelling.

[Roger Bissell]

I never said our sense organs *directly* interact with a tree or ball we are perceiving, any more than the target *directly* interacts with the archer that fires the arrow into it - or, your example, that the trash can *directly* interacts with the batter who slugs a ball into it. I realize that it may be hard to see those two other letters there ("in"), but maybe some new reading glasses?

The trashcan interacts with and affects the *causal consequence* or effect of the batter, namely, the ball he hit toward the trash can - just as the target interacts with and affects the causal consequence of the archer, namely, the arrow - just as my sense organs interact with and affect the causal consequence of LeBron James, namely, the program's light and sound waves striking my retina and eardrum.

My sense organs' and the target's and the trashcan's causal effects on the tail-end of the causal consequences of the archer's and LeBron's and the baseball batter's actions may seem inconsequential to you, but we are talking here about a *system* of interacting entities, not just one over here and another one over there.

Partly, also, this is a lack of imagination or perception. Just like we often have no way to observe and thus verify the gravitational effect of one object which is very small in relation to, or far away from, another does not mean that there is no gravitational interaction between them - and especially it does not mean that the very small one does not exert *some* influence on the other.

Consider the baseball-trashcan example again. Suppose instead of simply blocking the further motion of the causal consequence of the batter's action, the trashcan bounced the ball back at the batter and it hit him. Would that be the trashcan interacting with the batter? Suppose the rebound fell short? Would that *not* be the trashcan interacting with the batter? Just because the rebounding ball does not reach the batter?

The ball is an *extension* of the batter and his action. It is part of a dynamic system involving the batter and the trashcan, and it's governed by Newton's Law - equal and opposite reaction. In interacting with the batter, the trashcan does something to the *system* (of entities), of which the batter is part. The batter himself may escape unaffected, but his causal consequences - viz., the trajectory of the ball - do not.

Like the rays from the sun - the sun does not *directly* interact with us, but we *do* interact directly with its causal consequence, the ray of light that strikes our eyes. Or, I could say, the sun's causal consequence does interact directly with us. The nature of our eyes and the nature of the sunbeam *together* produce the cognitive product of a visual perception. They both impose their natures on the product. This is not Kant. It is Aristotelian causality.

The sun is acting to make light go in a certain distance, which it will do forever, if not prevented by an "outside force," which in this case happens to be the retina of our eyes, or the surface of our skin. We are changing/affecting something the sun is trying to do. Even if a little sunbeam seems inconsequential in the cosmic or physical scheme of things, it is an extension of the sun, and we do affect the sun thereby. (Thereby, meaning via its causal extension.)

There is no such thing, causally speaking, as "merely seeing, hearing," etc. They all involve causal interaction. They do not happen no-how, and they do not happen via one-way causality (there is no such thing). That is something I would expect *you* not to "conveniently sidestep." (Hope springs eternal.)

REB

[Brant Gaede]

Let's say, Roger, there is no controversy. Where does all this act, react and interact in-our-heads then lead too?

--Brant

[Roger Bissell]

It started with accusations that I had misquoted (via a bracketed substitution) Groarke, and that Groarke was misrepresenting Aristotle, in claiming that our awareness is the product of an interaction between our organisms and something in the world. Even producing Kelley and Peikoff quotes to support the Objectivish-ness of this idea did not satisfy some that the interaction between energy bundles and sense organs produces a conscious experience whose nature is contributed to by both the world and our organisms.

The word "impose" seemed to set them off because Rand only used that word in regard to Kant (our categories imposing structure on the world) or statists (politicians and bureaucrats imposing their will on us). Glossary wars, very unproductive and unnecessary.

Where does it lead? To anyone unable to let go of the discussion, interminable circles I guess. But to me, this is just common sense, science, Aristotle, and Ayn Rand, and it explains a lot not only about mind-body and free will, but also perception, introspection, concepts, propositions, and syllogisms. I like clarity, understanding, explanation, and integration, and each of my JARS essays is an attempt to push the envelope on all of these.

The other side seems caught up in scientism and some notion of pristine consciousness that miraculously grasps the world no-how. No doubt, they will reply that I am slippery and conveniently sidestepping and distorting and muddling. That is their stock set of replies. They can stay enmired in that worldview and strawman picture of me, if they choose. They are a minor speed bump in my pathway, not an insurmountable obstacle.

Onward and upward and ta-ta for now.

REB

[Ellen Stuttle]

Roger,

Regarding your response in post #83 to my post #65:

No go.

(Merlin makes much the same points in his post #73.)

The absorption of photons by your retinas or skin doesn't affect the sun's activities.

Consider a much bigger example: cloud cover. Clouds reflect back to space some of the photons which reach the upper atmosphere, hence preventing those photons from penetrating into the lower atmosphere. But this "blockage" of its emitted photons doesn't affect the sun's activities. The sun goes right on doing its things irrespective of what's happening to emitted photons beyond the near vicinity of the sun's corona.

Nor does your apple example (post #91) hold up. You aren't affecting the apple's activities when your retinas absorb photons reflected from the apple.

Depending on circumstances, you might be affecting the apple in other ways. Air molecule disturbances you produce with your breathing and with other bodily motions might reach the apple, and/or the apple might be jostled by vibrations which your bodily motions produce in a surface on which the apple is resting. For instance, if the apple's in a wood-doored cupboard or in the refrigerator, you can produce some amount of jostling the apple by walking through the kitchen without seeing the apple at all.

You can also affect the apple in the process of perceiving it with other modalities than sight. For instance, if you squeeze it to assess its firmness, or pick it up to assess its weight, or bite into it to enjoy its taste. But it isn't your perceiving which is having the effect in these cases. It's your actions which alter the apple's structure and position.

Maybe this wording - bold added - is a clue to your mix-up:

The sun is acting to make light go in a certain distance, which it will do forever, if not prevented by an "outside force," which in this case happens to be the retina of our eyes, or the surface of our skin. We are changing/affecting something the sun is trying to do. Even if a little sunbeam seems inconsequential in the cosmic or physical scheme of things, it is an extension of the sun, and we do affect the sun thereby. (Thereby, meaning via its causal extension.)

The sun isn't "trying to do" anything. I assume that you didn't mean that literally, imputing intention to the sun. But apparently you think that photons which have been emitted by the sun are still somehow part of the sun, and so what happens to them happens to the sun itself.

Ellen