What is a lie?

[Frederick M. Dolan]

Miles,

It's been a while since you posted this. I can only hope you resumed breathing despite the absence of a response. Just in case you haven't, though, I'll email you some notes that may enable you to inhale.



Willie,

Surely you don't confuse predation with affection? Unless you reduce it to the affection I just felt for an Italian Sausage Sandwich from Andorno's?

Now in the case of egg laying insects who use mammalian hosts for incubation, I suppose you might have a point. But that's a kind of reproductive "Love" I can do without!


Fred,

Topic Schmopic! Don't be such a tease! What is a form of realism that is intellectually respectable? Putative realists are waiting with bated breath!!! And I provisionally include myself in their number...


"Mad" Miles

:burngrnbounce:


P.S. "The Great Debaters" kicks butt! Three film revue in the offing. Common theme? WAR!

[Braggi]

The truth/reality conflation may indeed be a source of misunderstanding for me, because the two terms have very different meanings in my eyes.

[big snip]

But given the Davidsonian anti-realist account, one would have to say such things somewhat ironically, knowing that in fact the idea of things as they are in themselves is incoherent.


Fred, first, welcome to Waccobb. I appreciate you're willing to take the time to share some of your, er, thinking.

However, I have to refer to my previous post in the Global Warming thread: you fill up my digest with your posts, but you don't teach me anything. Do you actually live here in the reality most of us do? or are you simply existing in your mind, separate from the reality that feeds and nurtures you? Do you have a life outside of argument?

I haven't learned a thing from your posts. The one word that keeps coming up for me is "bullshit." You must have a PHD in philosophy because I can't think of a single reason to waste (what appears to be) your clever mind on such ... useless verbiage except to earn a piece of paper that declares you've done it. What you are posting does not enlighten or inform me. Perhaps I'm just too stupid to get beyond my actual physical experience of life with all it's messy chemicals and juices and solid things I keep bumping into.

You've made a lot of posts, some of them quite long, but I've yet to find a single point that sticks for me or helps me navigate the actual, solid reality I live in. Speaking of that, I think I'll make myself some French toast. Not a construct in my mind, but some actual French toast with real maple syrup. Yum!

I'll keep reading for a while, but I await some real practical wisdom from you. I'm sure you have some.

-Jeff

[Clancy]

...you fill up my digest with your posts, but you don't teach me anything....

With far less than 1% of waccos participating in our discussions, please don't run off any colorful newcomers. His posts are polite, and, to me, very interesting. As far as I can discern, being teach-able isn't a requirement for participation here.

[Braggi]

... As far as I can discern, being teach-able isn't a requirement for participation here.

:):

Obviously, as I'm still here.

I'm not trying to run Fred off, quite the opposite. I'm trying to get him to think before he posts, or perhaps it's not think before he posts, so something practical issues forth.

His writing is interesting enough that I read searching for a bottom line. Since I haven't found anything but argument for the sake of argument, I find his posts quite empty although they are full.

With the clever mind and articulate expression Fred is clearly in possession of, I keep hoping for him to deliver the goods, that's all.

-Jeff

[Clancy]

With the clever mind and articulate expression Fred is clearly in possession of, I keep hoping for him to deliver the goods, that's all.

-Jeff

And he may be hoping you appreciate the goods he IS delivering. We're overflowing with people dispensing 'practical wisdom' on wacco, why not just let Fred be Fred?

[Frederick M. Dolan]

Braggi,

Thanks for the warm welcome!

I'm new to the community, and perhaps I'm also guilty of not having done enough homework, but I wasn't aware that this community restricts its discussions to matters of practical concern only. Wisdom, or anything that helps us to navigate the solid reality we live in, is a precious commodity. I share your wish that I had more of it to offer.




Fred, first, welcome to Waccobb. I appreciate you're willing to take the time to share some of your, er, thinking.

However, I have to refer to my previous post in the Global Warming thread: you fill up my digest with your posts, but you don't teach me anything. Do you actually live here in the reality most of us do? or are you simply existing in your mind, separate from the reality that feeds and nurtures you? Do you have a life outside of argument?

I haven't learned a thing from your posts. The one word that keeps coming up for me is "bullshit." You must have a PHD in philosophy because I can't think of a single reason to waste (what appears to be) your clever mind on such ... useless verbiage except to earn a piece of paper that declares you've done it. What you are posting does not enlighten or inform me. Perhaps I'm just too stupid to get beyond my actual physical experience of life with all it's messy chemicals and juices and solid things I keep bumping into.

You've made a lot of posts, some of them quite long, but I've yet to find a single point that sticks for me or helps me navigate the actual, solid reality I live in. Speaking of that, I think I'll make myself some French toast. Not a construct in my mind, but some actual French toast with real maple syrup. Yum!

I'll keep reading for a while, but I await some real practical wisdom from you. I'm sure you have some.

-Jeff

[Willie Lumplump]

If neuroscientists find a concept of modeling of any use in the study of brain function, I would presume they are defining it in a way that doesn't raise these sorts of issues.I think this is so. When I talk about modeling reality . . . well, let me give an example. People who are born blind but somehow gain sight as adults see the same shapes and colors as we do, but their brains didn't ever develop the wiring required for incorporating shapes and colors into a model of reality. All these unfortunate people see are chaotic, meaningless shapes and colors, and no amount of experience in seeing ever improves their abilities. On the other hand, a person raised by wolves who had no contact with any human culture would develop the necessary wiring, and he would be able to construct models of reality that were as accurate as ours. If such a person saw a hammer, of course his interpretation of the image would be different from ours, but he would see clearly the outline of a hammer and note its various colors and estimate its size, and, if it were thrown at him, he would be able to dodge it just as well as you or I.

[Willie Lumplump]

OMG, this is one of the funniests posts I've ever seen on wacco.Sure, easy for you to say, but you're not the one who awoke with so much unwanted company. Even worse, the company was diversified, with some wandering freely and others narrowly restricted to my pilose nether regions. Expecting female company shortly thereafter, I was reduced to frantic picking, combing, and squishing, hoping all the while that I had not already become a reproductive substrate. But I must admit that such stressful encounters with the arthropod world did toughen me up and prepare me for major confrontations with my own species. Later, remembering my brief but successful campaign against my uninvited hitch-hikers, I was possessed of enough confidence to face down an entire squad of armed soldiers and make my way back to the safety of home. But that's another story for my book.

[Frederick M. Dolan]

If I redescribe your illustration as follows, is anything important left out?

People who are born blind but somehow gain sight as adults see the same shapes and colors as we do, but they didn't develop the skills for coping with the visual world possessed by those who were sighted from birth. All these unfortunate people see are chaotic, meaningless shapes and colors, and no amount of experience in seeing ever improves their abilities. On the other hand, a [sighted, I presume] person raised by wolves who had no contact with any human culture would acquire skills for coping with visual reality that were just as robust as ours. If such a person saw a hammer, of course it would not be available to him as a tool as it would be for someone socialized into our culture, but it would be available to him as an affordance with potential utilities of some sort based on its size, weight, color, etc., and if it were thrown at him, he would be able to dodge it just as well as you or I.

Clearly, the brain has a lot to do causally with whatever enables us to develop practices for coping with visual phenomena, as evidenced by the fact that there are practices that, if they are not acquired at the right developmental moment, can never be acquired. But what is gained by speaking in terms of models of reality (which I assume are representational, intentional content of some sort) rather than in terms of skills and practices by means of which we cope with the world?



I think this is so. When I talk about modeling reality . . . well, let me give an example. People who are born blind but somehow gain sight as adults see the same shapes and colors as we do, but their brains didn't ever develop the wiring required for incorporating shapes and colors into a model of reality. All these unfortunate people see are chaotic, meaningless shapes and colors, and no amount of experience in seeing ever improves their abilities. On the other hand, a person raised by wolves who had no contact with any human culture would develop the necessary wiring, and he would be able to construct models of reality that were as accurate as ours. If such a person saw a hammer, of course his interpretation of the image would be different from ours, but he would see clearly the outline of a hammer and note its various colors and estimate its size, and, if it were thrown at him, he would be able to dodge it just as well as you or I.

[Willie Lumplump]

But what is gained by speaking in terms of models of reality (which I assume are representational, intentional content of some sort) rather than in terms of skills and practices by means of which we cope with the world?The term "skills" takes in a lot of territory. "Model building" (or some similar term) describes the particular skill of assembling raw sensory data into a coherent representation of external reality. Once in a while something happens to prevent a person from constructing a workable model. Dyslexics see letters in an order that isn't there on the page. Schizophrenics see nonexistent bugs scurrying across the floor. Color-blind people see black-and-white images that lack information about wave-lengths of light impinging on their retinas. But it seems a little far-fetched to describe not seeing bugs as a skill, or seeing color images as a skill. And how about feeling that you're inside your own body? Is that a skill? Stimulate a particular part of the brain with electrical current, and suddenly a person has the sensation that he is outside his body. Sensing that you're outside your own body is not an accurate representation of reality because that's not where you are really located.

[Frederick M. Dolan]

The idea that raw sensory data is primary and is then organized by the mind into something coherent is precisely the assumption being questioned. We don't assemble raw data into bugs and hammers, we just cope with them by swatting one and putting the other back on the shelf. Being able to relate to each as appropriate, treating the bug AS a bug and the hammer AS a hammer, is certainly a skill. Naturally, if you start altering people's brains their coping skills are going to be affected, because clearly the brain is causally involved in acquiring and carrying out those skills. But that doesn't imply that the problem is that it's no longer organizing raw data correctly.

Of course, if people find it useful to use the metaphor of organizing sense data into a coherent image to study how the brain functions, that's all well and good. But I guess I don't see how that sheds light on brain function. Nor do I see how talking about the mind in terms of brain function is going to shed any light on the former. They strike me as two quite different things. Someone turns on the radio in order to hear some music. Mentalistically, an intention to act was formed and that intention explains the action, i.e. the radio got turned on because someone did so in order to hear some music. It is also the case that some neural networks were activated and there should be a neuroscientific description/explanation of the processes involved. These are not two different events; it is the same event under two different descriptions. However, the former description (explanation of action appealing to intention of actor) is not reducible to the latter (description of neural function). Describing our intentional actions in terms of neural function is not going to enable us to make any more sense of them -- it only enables us to explain the brain function. (I can see that there will be some important technological implications to figuring out which parts of the brain relate to which capacities for action. The description of brain function will make possible new treatments, etc.)



The term "skills" takes in a lot of territory. "Model building" (or some similar term) describes the particular skill of assembling raw sensory data into a coherent representation of external reality. Once in a while something happens to prevent a person from constructing a workable model. Dyslexics see letters in an order that isn't there on the page. Schizophrenics see nonexistent bugs scurrying across the floor. Color-blind people see black-and-white images that lack information about wave-lengths of light impinging on their retinas. But it seems a little far-fetched to describe not seeing bugs as a skill, or seeing color images as a skill. And how about feeling that you're inside your own body? Is that a skill? Stimulate a particular part of the brain with electrical current, and suddenly a person has the sensation that he is outside his body. Sensing that you're outside your own body is not an accurate representation of reality because that's not where you are really located.

[Willie Lumplump]

We don't assemble raw data into bugs and hammers, we just cope with them by swatting one and putting the other back on the shelf.Before you swat a bug, you have to know where the bug is located in three dimensions, and you have to have a mental search image (which itself is a part of a model) so you can recognize a bug in the first place, and you have to know where you are located in space relative to the bug. None of this information arrives at the brain in an immediately useful form. Rather, it arrives as waves of neural depolarization that don't remotely resemble a bug or a human or anything else. For these electrical impulses to mean something, the brain has to invest them with meaning, and this it does by assigning colors and forms and right-left and up-down locations and distances as judged by parallax. In other words, before the brain can act on reality, it has to construct a model that corresponds closely in important ways to the reality to be acted upon. But even some correspondences involve arbitrary sensations (like color) that have no analog in external reality. All this may be controversial among philosophers, but like religion, philosophy must adjust itself to conform with scientific findings whenever a subject deals with empirical fact.
Describing our intentional actions in terms of neural function is not going to enable us to make any more sense of them -- it only enables us to explain the brain function.But we cannot be separated from our brain functions; they are us, and we are they. We are one and the same.

[Zeno Swijtink]

To tell the truth is to be willing to give an account of the grounds on which I assert X that is satisfying to my interlocutor. Truthfulness is a social practice, a relationship between individuals.

This cannot be correct. It would make truth telling too contingent, too much dependent on who who my interlocutor is. I am also not clear why you say "willing" or why for every truth telling I should be able to give grounds. There must be an end of ground giving when you push me sufficiently.

[Frederick M. Dolan]

Before you swat a bug, you have to know where the bug is located in three dimensions

The question is what it means "to know where the bug is located." One answer is that the knowledge is in the mind/brain in the form of images, information, etc. Another is that the knowledge is in the practices by means of which we treat bugs as bugs, etc.


All this may be controversial among philosophers, but like religion, philosophy must adjust itself to conform with scientific findings whenever a subject deals with empirical fact.

This isn't a question of empirical fact. Nobody has ever observed a model of reality in the brain.


we cannot be separated from our brain functions; they are us, and we are they. We are one and the same.

I agree that we can't be separated from our brain functions, but the way in which we make sense of neurophysiological processes is very different from the way we make sense of what people do in everyday life. This is possible because the same event can be regarded under a variety of descriptions. Thus, my hearing the doorbell ring and opening the front door is the same event as some activity in my neurons that will be isolated and described by neuroscience. But under one description of this event, my action in opening the front door is explained by my intention to do so, while under another description it is explained by the neural processes. The neural explanation is great when the aim is to make predictive statements about neural function in the scientific sense. But it's not at all to the point if the aim is to understand an individual's behavior with respect to ordinary everyday life, which requires talk of aims, intentions, desires, etc. The two language games, ordinary life versus scientific explanation, are parallel but non-converging.

[Frederick M. Dolan]

This cannot be correct. It would make truth telling too contingent, too much dependent on who who my interlocutor is.

Would it reduce the contingency enough if I specified that the interlocutor is presumed to be rational, so that spelled out more fully “satisfying” means satisfying the interlocutor’s demand for a rational justification of the assertion? In other words, truth is the coherence among beliefs that can be achieved through intersubjective justification leading to agreement, which at least is not contingent upon any one particular interlocutor.

Or, (and not to put words in your mouth, but) is your objection rooted in a sense that a concept of truth must include some sense of “getting it right” about an objective, independently existing reality – the idea that we are answerable not only to one another but to the world (McDowell’s formulation) because the world is something more than intersubjectivity? So even the most widely-shared and rigorously achieved intersubjective agreement possible would still not qualify as truth?

[Zeno Swijtink]

Would it reduce the contingency enough if I specified that the interlocutor is presumed to be rational, so that spelled out more fully “satisfying” means satisfying the interlocutor’s demand for a rational justification of the assertion? In other words, truth is the coherence among beliefs that can be achieved through intersubjective justification leading to agreement, which at least is not contingent upon any one particular interlocutor.

Or, (and not to put words in your mouth, but) is your objection rooted in a sense that a concept of truth must include some sense of “getting it right” about an objective, independently existing reality – the idea that we are answerable not only to one another but to the world (McDowell’s formulation) because the world is something more than intersubjectivity? So even the most widely-shared and rigorously achieved intersubjective agreement possible would still not qualify as truth?

I don't want to pin myself down on any particular metaphysical account. :):

In reasoning don't we assume some logic of the concept of truth, like that two contrary statement cannot both be true so that people who disagree in that way cannot both be right? And cannot two rational people disagree?

What's rational anyway?

[Willie Lumplump]

The question is what it means "to know where the bug is located." One answer is that the knowledge is in the mind/brain in the form of images, information, etc.These images and this information are a model of reality.
Another is that the knowledge is in the practices by means of which we treat bugs as bugs, etc.How we treat bugs has nothing to do with the model of physical reality that our brain constructs from raw data.
This isn't a question of empirical fact. Nobody has ever observed a model of reality in the brain.Nobody has ever observed . . .? That is ALL we EVER observe! The models our brains create contain all we can ever know about external reality. How the brain operates to construct these models is a popular subject of investigation through the use of positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging.
I agree that we can't be separated from our brain functions, but the way in which we make sense of neurophysiological processes is very different from the way we make sense of what people do in everyday life.I think you've missed the point here. The very act of making sense of something is a neurophysiological process, and that process goes on constantly in everyday life. Intentions are entirely a neurophysiological process. Aims and desires are neuorological processes. Action of any kind involves a neurophysiological process. Whenever you talk about mental functions of any kind, including constructing models of reality, you're talking about neurophysiological processes. Our behavior, of course, is based on our interpretations of reality, and those interpretations are contained in models. We don't need to talk about models every time we talk about human behavior, but every time we talk about models we do have to talk about neurophysiological processes.

["Mad" Miles]

Willie,

Which came first? The Chicken? Or the Egg?

Or in this case, The Model? Or The Mapping?

Or, The Image? or The Experience?

What Dr. Fred is talking about is a way to get at this distinction. What you appear to be saying is that the distinction does not matter.

Isn't a basic part of intellectual inquiry to make relevant distinctions?

Isn't it a form of philistinism to claim that relevant distinctions are nonsense?

Please, elucidate.

Granted my simplistic response is trapped in binary oppositional logic (https://www.waccobb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14716)See Post #59 (look it up (https://books.google.com/books?id=Xeb80itrlRIC&pg=PA336&lpg=PA336&dq=%22binary+oppositional+thinking%22&source=web&ots=RrSIuPbDKt&sig=m5lTQ0onvTbi2q76SeUF5OOC7wI)).

"Mad" Miles

:burngrnbounce:

[Braggi]

Willie,

Which came first? The Chicken? Or the Egg?

Or in this case, The Model? Or The Mapping?

Or, The Image? or The Experience?

What Dr. Fred is talking about is a way to get at this distinction. What you appear to be saying is that the distinction does not matter.
...

Miles, first, that's an easy question. The egg came first. That requires little thought and no debate.

The image and the experience happen simultaneously as far as the person having the experience is concerned. To think otherwise is to waste precious time and mental energy that could be better spent having a nice experience or warding off evildoers.

What Dr. Fred is getting at I'm only beginning to understand, now having been to his website and reading up on him. What a curious education and set of experiences he's had! I apologize to Fred for getting after him when now I realize he's spent decades doing this kind of mental thrashing about. I suppose somebody's got to do it so there can be doctoral courses on how it's done. I'll try to be more patient reading his posts in the future. I also appreciate that some of his more recent posts actually have been more clear to me and do have a bottom line I'm able to understand. I look forward to spending more time on his website and I recommend it to others. If you click on his name on one of his posts follow the link to his profile where you'll find a link to his website. Or click here:https://homepage.mac.com/fmdolan/Home/

And Miles, I think the question was: What is a lie? :wink:

-Jeff

[Willie Lumplump]

Willie,

[quote]Which came first? The Chicken? Or the Egg?This question asks, "Which came first? A juvenile chicken or an adult chicken?" My answer would be that both have the same inheritance, and juvenile traits evolved concurrently with adult traits. I'm not sure what more there is to be said.
Or in this case, The Model? Or The Mapping?I guess I don't know what you mean by "mapping" in this context.
The Image? or The Experience?I'm not sure what you mean. All images are experiences, but not all experiences are images.
What Dr. Fred is talking about is a way to get at this distinction. What you appear to be saying is that the distinction does not matter. Isn't a basic part of intellectual inquiry to make relevant distinctions?It's a basic part of intellectual inquiry to make relevant distinctions, but false alternatives aren't relevant. What if you were to ask me to distinguish between a bird and an eagle? I'd be stumped because that's a false alternative. Perhaps Fred is getting at a real distinction, but so far I'm not able to see it.

Maybe I can clarify my own views. Behavior is a property of life. Life is an emergent property of chemistry. Chemistry is a property of physics. Each of these levels has its own language. Animal behaviorists use terms like "operant conditioning" and "negative phototaxis." Animal behavior is based on the complex chemical reactions of physiology. Chemists don't use the terms of animal behavior or physiology. Rather, they use terms like "molar solutions" and "phosphate bond." Physicists don't use the terms of chemistry. Rather, they use terms like "principle of least action" and "electron volts." Yet, despite the different language needed at each level of inquiry, all levels are seamlessly connected, each level is an outgrowth of the level below it, and all levels are ultimately based in physics. Whenever we experience any part of the outside world, it is a model that we are experiencing, and that model, in principle, ultimately is explainable by physics.

[Frederick M. Dolan]

--APOLOGIA: I'm assuming that since Willie posted these comments, he will tolerate a response to them. I'm a bit nervous about appearing obfuscatory, or making appeals to authority, or being off-topic since we're not actually talking about the definition of a lie. For those who implore me to edit more fully before posting, allow me to say that I omitted a reply to one comment here because I wouldn't have been able to resist citing a thinker (otherwise known as "dropping names").--


Nobody has ever observed . . .? That is ALL we EVER observe! The models our brains create contain all we can ever know about external reality. How the brain operates to construct these models is a popular subject of investigation through the use of positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging.

So far as I'm aware, what OBSERVATION of the brain by PET and MRI reveals are chemical changes (such as variations in the flows of sodium ions), blood-flow and metabolic changes, and fluctuations of electromagnetic fields that result from these activities. It is possible to link specific neural activities in specific regions of the brain thus observed with specific behavioral phenomena such as intentional action, motor control, etc. On the basis of such correlations hypotheses are advanced that rely on the metaphor of a model of reality in the brain, but that's quite different from observing a model of reality in the brain.


I think you've missed the point here. The very act of making sense of something is a neurophysiological process, and that process goes on constantly in everyday life. Intentions are entirely a neurophysiological process. Aims and desires are neuorological processes. Action of any kind involves a neurophysiological process.

Forgive me, but I still think YOU'RE missing the point. The description of neural activities makes sense of a causal process involving electrical and chemical mechanisms. But the way we make sense of the flow of sodium ions is not the way we make sense of why Joe opened the door after the door bell rang. Yes, the events are one and the same, and we can imagine a complete mechanical description of how Joe's ears, muscles, bones, and brain acted in concert in answering the door after the door bell rang. But that's a different order of description than another equally valid descriptive vocabulary that we use to interact with one another (as opposed to explaining neural activities) -- the one in which Joe upon hearing the doorbell forms an intention to open the door to find out who's there, and which Joe deploys when I ask him, "Why did you open the door?" We're dealing, if you like, with two narrative genres, a scientific one useful for purposes of prediction and control and a social one useful for purposes of interaction and intersubjective understanding.

[Frederick M. Dolan]

Maybe I can clarify my own views. Behavior is a property of life. Life is an emergent property of chemistry. Chemistry is a property of physics. Each of these levels has its own language. Animal behaviorists use terms like "operant conditioning" and "negative phototaxis." Animal behavior is based on the complex chemical reactions of physiology. Chemists don't use the terms of animal behavior or physiology. Rather, they use terms like "molar solutions" and "phosphate bond." Physicists don't use the terms of chemistry. Rather, they use terms like "principle of least action" and "electron volts." Yet, despite the different language needed at each level of inquiry, all levels are seamlessly connected, each level is an outgrowth of the level below it, and all levels are ultimately based in physics. Whenever we experience any part of the outside world, it is a model that we are experiencing, and that model, in principle, ultimately is explainable by physics.

I know that the concept of an emergent property has developed somewhat differently in the sciences versus philosophy, so I may not understand you correctly, but an important aspect in the literature I've followed is that the emergent property, while it arises from its constituents, is not reducible to them. (E.g., the face that emerges from the spots of color on the canvas wouldn't exist but for the spots but isn't reducible to them; the melody that emerges from the succession of notes wouldn't exist but for the notes but isn't reducible to them.) In this sense, the emergent phenomena aren't "ultimately explainable" by physics, depending of course on what is meant by ultimate and explainable (or "based"?).

That aside, you'll acknowledge that the idea of a model of reality doesn't follow from the idea of emergence.

When Miles speaks of distinctions, I think he's referring to distinctions among various descriptions, narrative genres (what you called "languages") which are used for different purposes, e.g. prediction and control in science, mutual understanding in everyday life. None of these trumps the others in terms of "reality" or "truth"; they just play different roles in our lives. The narrative genre we call "scientific explanation" is appropriate if we're trying to predict the behavior of neural networks, but if someone asked me why I opened the door and I said "Because the synapses in sector XY-2 of my brain were stimulated" it wouldn't accomplish much in the way of mutual understanding. Equally, my willingness and ability to articulate my intentions, desires, hopes, and dreams with others won't make any contribution to neuroscience, but it will draw my friends closer to me (I hope!). Contra SonomaMark, measurements of the sun's temperature are no more "real" than interpretations of Mahler's 5th. But they do serve very different purposes and are adjudicated in very different ways.

[Willie Lumplump]

I know that the concept of an emergent property has developed somewhat differently in the sciences versus philosophy, so I may not understand you correctly, but an important aspect in the literature I've followed is that the emergent property, while it arises from its constituents, is not reducible to them.In the sciences, "emergent property" is defined as a property that is not predictable on the basis of more fundamental levels of operation. For example, if you had total knowledge of biochemistry, that knowledge still wouldn't enable you to predict animal behavior. However, in looking from higher (emergent) levels back down to fundamental levels, it's clear at all times that each level is rooted firmly in the next lower level, and all levels are ultimately rooted in physics.
That aside, you'll acknowledge that the idea of a model of reality doesn't follow from the idea of emergence.I think everyone would agree that consciousness is an emergent property of life and that models of reality are an important part of consciousness.
if someone asked me why I opened the door and I said "Because the synapses in sector XY-2 of my brain were stimulated" it wouldn't accomplish much in the way of mutual understanding.It depends on the context. There are contexts in which that answer would be totally appropriate.
Equally, my willingness and ability to articulate my intentions, desires, hopes, and dreams with others won't make any contribution to neuroscienceI see no justification for this belief. Neuroscience is already dealing with related parts of the human personality.
Contra SonomaMark, measurements of the sun's temperature are no more "real" than interpretations of Mahler's 5th. But they do serve very different purposes and are adjudicated in very different ways.Somewhere along the way I must have missed this post.

[Willie Lumplump]

So far as I'm aware, what OBSERVATION of the brain by PET and MRI reveals are chemical changes (such as variations in the flows of sodium ions), blood-flow and metabolic changes, and fluctuations of electromagnetic fields that result from these activities.I think I may have been playing a little fast and loose with the language. There is no little homunculus in our brains observing (i.e., experiencing) the models that we create of external reality. Rather, our models are themselves experiences; the experiences are us, and we are they. But those experiences are not the same as reality, they are merely simulations of, or approximations of, reality. That's why they are called "models."
But the way we make sense of the flow of sodium ions is not the way we make sense of why Joe opened the door after the door bell rang. Yes, the events are one and the same, and we can imagine a complete mechanical description of how Joe's ears, muscles, bones, and brain acted in concert in answering the door after the door bell rang. But that's a different order of description than another equally valid descriptive vocabulary that we use to interact with one another (as opposed to explaining neural activities) -- the one in which Joe upon hearing the doorbell forms an intention to open the door to find out who's there, and which Joe deploys when I ask him, "Why did you open the door?" We're dealing, if you like, with two narrative genres, a scientific one useful for purposes of prediction and control and a social one useful for purposes of interaction and intersubjective understanding.I guess I'd agree with all that.