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RichardKennaway comments on The Blue-Minimizing Robot - Less Wrong
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Comments (159)
But then again...
See also.
I take this to be an elliptical way of suggesting that Yvain is offering a false dichotomy in suggesting a choice between the notion of thoughts being in control of the processes determining behavior and the notion of thoughts being a byproduct of those processes.
I agree. Thoughts are at one with (are a subset of) the processes that determine behavior.
I'm not so sure. Using the analogy of a computer program, we could think of thoughts either as like the lines of code in the program (in which case they're at one with, or in control of, the processes generating behavior, depending on how you want to look at it) or you could think of thoughts as like the status messages that print "Reticulating splines" or "50% complete" to the screen, in which case they're byproducts of those processes (very specific, unnatural byproducts, to boot).
My view is closer to the latter; they're a way of allowing the brain to make inferences about its own behavior and to communicate those inferences. Opaque processes decide to go to Subway tonight because they've heard it's low calorie, then they produce the verbal sentence "I should go to Subway tonight because it's low calorie", and then when your friend asks you why you went to Subway, you say "Because it's low calorie").
The tendency of thoughts to appear in a conversational phrasing ("I think I'll go to Subway tonight") rather than something like "Dear Broca's Area - Please be informed that we are going to Subway tonight, and adjust your verbal behavior accordingly - yours sincerely, the prefrontal cortex" is a byproduct of their use in conversation, not their internal function.
Right now I'm just asserting that this is a possibility and that it's distinct from thoughts being part of the decision-making structure. I'll try to give some evidence for it later.
If you make the old mistake of confusing thoughts in general with analytic, reflective, verbal, serial internal monologue, I'm going to be sad.
I find this rather alien. Some processes are opaque, but that kind definitely isn't. Something (hunger, time, memory of previously made plans, whatever) triggers a reusable pick-a-sandwich-shop process; names and logos of nearby stores come up; associated emotions and concepts come up; weights associated to each shift - an image of those annoying health freaks who diet all the time upvotes "tasty" and downvotes "low calorie"; eventually they stabilize, create an image of myself going to Subway rather than somewhere else, and hand it over to motor control. If something gets stuck at any point, the process stops, a little alarm rings, and internal monologue turns to it to make it come unstuck. If not, there are no verbal thoughts at any point.
Probably time to start being sad; I'm mostly going to use "thoughts" that way. But I think what I'm talking about holds for any definition of "thought" where it's a mental activity accessible to the conscious mind.
I recognize different people use internal monologue to a different degree than others, but whether you decide with a monologue or with vague images of concepts, I think the core idea that these are attempts to turn subjective processes into objects for thought, usually so that you can weave a social narrative around them, remains true.
You may have missed a subtlety in my comment. In your grandparent, you said "people's thoughts and words are a byproduct ...". In my comment, I suggested "Thoughts are at one with ...". I didn't mention words.
If we are going to focus on words rather than thoughts, then I am more willing to accept your model. Spoken words are indeed behaviors - behaviors that purport to be accurate reports of thoughts, but probably are not.
Perhaps we should taboo "thought", since we may not be intending the word to designate the same phenomenon.