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Aswad -> RE: Indoctrination (11/16/2012 9:51:48 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
Thank you for asking, Aswad - I mean that. [:)]
You're cordially welcome, of course.
quote:
It's, 'At what point does a simple stimulus-response, or an instinct, sensation, feeling, or even an intuition, become a "concept"? Beneath that is my view that there's some difference between a 'concept' and an 'instinct' (etc). Or does the difference even matter?
The difference certainly matters, certainly, but the terms are not directly anchored to anything objective. And, incidentally, note that it is very rare to find strict stimulus to response coupling without some degree of state, which is one order of complexity higher, even in the few systems where the inputs and outputs don't include other stateful systems.
Practically speaking, without far more knowledge of how the brain works, we have to speak of the order of complexity, which is what the Model of Hierarchial Complexity focuses on. Unlike continuous figures of merit, such as IQ, the MHC deals with discrete stages, or orders of complexity. Each stage is such that you're either able to deal with that order of complexity or not, and if you are, then you're also able to deal with each previous order. Stimulus response pairing is the zero order, while concepts are third order and words are fourth order. The tenth order, formal complexity, is where Piaget called it a day (though it should be noted that Piaget also didn't deal with the strictest sense of complexity). Most adults are capable of formal tasks, but a significant number are not (when you see people unable to grasp the most basic statistics, for instance, that is a failure to reach the formal level). Some adults also go beyond the formal, with the fourteenth order- metaparadigmatic complexity- as the highest degree of complexity (and, implicitly, abstract thinking) currently recognized as being humanly possible.
So it's not a binary distinction between concepts and other things. Those are only conventions. Instead, there are a series of steps from a zero order direct computation (e.g. the balance weight is a zero order complexity machine, as its output is a direct function of the weights and nothing else) to the most abstract levels of thought, where entire paradigms are but building blocks in a greater whole.
The analogy with using sugar cubes to illustrate volume and area comes to mind: a sugar cube is the lowest order, invariant; a row of cubes is a linear thing, variable; columns of rows of cubes form an area, bivariable if dense; planes of columns of rows of cubes form a volume, trivariable if dense. A volume of 1dm³ takes 1000 cubes of 1cm³ each, but if you can deal with volumes, it's a single large unit, not a thousand small units.
Language being a consensus thing, and somewhat constrained by the fact that it's an inherently linear form of transmission with very few reliable degrees of freedom, yielding about 5 bits per syllable of real information, is essentially a formal order tool by its very nature. To boot, humans can only keep a certain number of units in mind at any given time, regardless of whether those units are small or large. If expressing a complex idea, it's like using a handful of people to carry a pyramid, stone by stone, while a few supervisors keep track of which stones go where instead of actually carrying any. Possible, of course, but not always viable. (For CS folks: any machine that is Turing complete can perform any arbitrarily complex task in infinite time with infinite resources, but not every machine is suited to doing a specific complex task with the time and resources available.) Prescriptive linguistics also prevent any shift toward agreement on denser, more complex uses of language, by the way.
Similar constraints apply to listening or reading.
Note, higher complexity doesn't mean higher accuracy: a kid that can multiply can make as many mistakes as a kid that can only add. At, current best guess, either thirteenth or fourteenth order of complexity, leaning toward the latter, I happen to be the kid that can invent arbitrarily complex operations and apply them to anything I can think about, including- to a large extent- my own thought processes, but I can make as many mistakes as anyone else in doing so, don't work much faster, and rely as much as anyone else on the correct input to arrive at the correct conclusions. However, the kid that can't multiply can't multiply, period, not until he's learned that he can emulate it with addition, and how to do so.
When I wonder how the average person from New Guinea can tie their shoelaces, it's with great humility, admiration and reverence, even though that doesn't always show. Simply put, I have some idea of the complexity that goes into such a thing, and have recently gained an understanding of what the difference in level is. And for the same reason, I decry people with moderate capacities that consider others stupid for their beliefs: most of the time, the gap between the attacker and the attacked is a single order, while to me they are both several orders of complexity lower. This gap also allows me to envision the possibility, indeed probability, that there could be several orders of complexity above what I can possibly grasp. A perspective that necessarily affords some humility, just not an egalitarian sort (I'm consistent, though, in that I'm quite aware of my own inadequacy, and that there's thousands of people out there who are smarter than me, maybe even millions).
My concept of deity is necessarily different from, if qualitatively similar to in its shape and texture, the concept which is prevalent among those that insist on reading various religions' texts in a linear, literal manner. For me, those texts are the results of formal adults editing texts that are the product of postformal, enlightened adults trying to convey their ideas down through the ages for the benefit of a future listener that can reassemble those ideas into the original thought. And I'm constantly amazed at both how mangled the text is and in fact also at how well the original authors had managed to incorporate ideas for every level of understanding in those texts (though a lot of the lower level ideas are now beginning to seriously show their age).
So, yeah, a "concept" is a fluid term; and, no, language is not the sole enabler of abstract thought, structurally.
Where you draw the line is quite arbitrary, though arguably important.
Hope this answered some of your question(s).
IWYW,
— Aswad.
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