You have special hardware for simulating others’ cognition. Neurologically, imagining how someone feels is a completely different thing from imagining a collection of 35 apples.
I can’t tell what context you’re getting this from, but I’ve seen “You don’t understand how I feel!” used as bad epistemology.
My sister’s a heroin addict, and she’ll use the fact that I’ve never been addicted to heroin or experienced opioid withdrawals as a debate tactic. It goes something like:
Only plans to kill my sister’s addiction that account for my sister’s feelings will work.
Only my sister can fully account for my sister’s feelings.
Therefore, only my sister can invent successful plans to kill her addiction.
As a corollary, anyone else’s plans to kill my sister’s addiction will fail.
It is known that heroin addicts invent good-looking plans for killing their addictions, but do not invent good plans for killing their addictions. By this argument she can ensure that all plans to kill her addiction will always eventually fail.
The epistemically correct response, even if it’s not necessarily persuasive in this form (for otherwise I would have persuaded her), is to say that I don’t actually need to experience what she has to come up with good plans for killing addictions. “Not knowing what it’s like to be an addict doesn’t make me bad at making decisions about addictions,” pattern-matches to, “I don’t empathize with you,” and, if she really wasn’t listening, “I claim to know more about your own phenomenal experiences than you.”
Sometimes how someone feels really doesn’t matter, in really specific cases. That is, sometimes it’s not necessary for an argument to follow. If you let people conflate this specific and useful objection with a more general sort of paternalism where you always ignore the relevance of everyone’s feelings, then you might flinch from being right or doing right.
Eek, I’d be really really careful with arguments like that.
If she doesn’t agree that this is one of those cases where what she feels doesn’t matter, why doesn’t she? Maybe when she sees you as being insufficiently empathetic, it’s on this level, not on the object level of how much her feelings about specific plans matter?
If she doesn’t give her stamp of approval to your description of her thoughts, how would you know if you had it wrong? How would you notice if you were missing something important?
I get the kinds of things that you’re talking about, but we’re strictly talking about the argument “If Gram had been a drug addict, then he would know what kind of plan I actually need.” Even if we take as an assumption that I have been a drug addict, then it does not follow that I am better at making plans that turn addicts into nonaddicts. If anything, I probably get the epistemic advantage from not being wireheaded. This is not about saying that there are times when someone’s feelings don’t have instrumental or moral weight. This is about saying that sometimes, people will make you think that an argument that includes knowledge of someone’s values as a proposition is itself a value judgment, making something that should not be off limits into something that is off limits. I can say, “No, I would not be better able to help you if I became a drug addict. That argument can be false even if its premises are assumed true.” If I stop talking about logical validity, which is always free game, and start being someone who blows off other people’s feelings for no good reason, then cut my head off.
It’s perhaps worth mentioning that this was a short encounter after a long separation, so this was an urgent situation where you cannot allow an addict to argue for credibility from expertise.
Let me know if this doesn’t address your concerns in any way.
I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m not saying that you can afford to let logically invalid arguments go unchallenged as if there was nothing wrong with them. Or that emotions ought to be free from criticism or something. Or that you haven’t earned your confidence or that her listening to you wouldn’t be massively beneficial for her. And I certainly don’t see you as someone who blows off other people’s feelings for no reason—in fact, a big reason I wanted to respond to your comment was because I got the exact opposite impression from you. I’m sorry if it came across otherwise.
If you want I can try to explain more carefully what I was getting at, but I certainly don’t want to drag you into a conversation like this if it’s not something you want to get into here or now. I’m actually in a somewhat similar situation myself so I’m well aware that it’s not always the time for that kind of thing.
I’m sorry to hear about your sisters addition. That must be hard on you too.
You have special hardware for simulating others’ cognition.
Yes, but that to what degree of fidelity? You also have special hardware to simulate objects. The question is one of fidelity and I understood the example thus. After all his analogy wasn’t between emotions and objects but between amount of emotion and number of objects.
Sometimes how someone feels really doesn’t matter, in really specific cases.
Yes, but that doesn’t strike at the core of the matter, namely to what degree “you have no idea how I feel!” can be true.
The epistemically correct response … is that I don’t actually need to experience what she has to come up with good plans...
True—and as you say often not persuasive.
What would be a persuasive or emphatic way to nudge her?
Yes, but that to what degree of fidelity? You also have special hardware to simulate objects. The question is one of fidelity and I understood the example thus. After all his analogy wasn’t between emotions and objects but between amount of emotion and number of objects.
I don’t know enough to say much, but I am wary about any speculation that glosses over social cognition as a very special kind of imagination that can seem identical to the other kind of imagination if you don’t know that they happen in different places anatomically. It seems to make it harder to believe that any analogies will hold.
Yes, but that doesn’t strike at the core of the matter, namely to what degree “you have no idea how I feel!” can be true.
I meant to link this to the part of the article that says that can feel like a challenge. Sometimes things feel like a challenge because someone’s started counting points instead of writing down facts. Now that I reread it though, it doesn’t seem like he was being very serious about the feeling of challenge. It probably means my original comment seemed less relevant than I thought it did.
I am wary about any speculation that glosses over social cognition as a very special kind of imagination … It seems to make it harder to believe that any analogies will hold.
Granted. That’s true.
I meant to link this to the part of the article that says that can feel like a challenge.
Thanks that you point this out. Indeed I didn’t see that part so clearly.
Only plans to kill my sister’s addiction that account for my sister’s feelings will work.
False. I assume that plans like “kidnapping her and keeping her in a private prison without access to heroin for a few months” would also work. Illegal and unethical perhaps, but still technically possible.
But I guess in real life it means something like “if she will not like the approach, she will sabotage it”, which is probably true. :(
Only my sister can fully account for my sister’s feelings.
Other can still make a guess, and maybe guess incorrectly, and maybe guess correctly.
You have special hardware for simulating others’ cognition. Neurologically, imagining how someone feels is a completely different thing from imagining a collection of 35 apples.
I can’t tell what context you’re getting this from, but I’ve seen “You don’t understand how I feel!” used as bad epistemology.
My sister’s a heroin addict, and she’ll use the fact that I’ve never been addicted to heroin or experienced opioid withdrawals as a debate tactic. It goes something like:
Only plans to kill my sister’s addiction that account for my sister’s feelings will work.
Only my sister can fully account for my sister’s feelings.
Therefore, only my sister can invent successful plans to kill her addiction.
As a corollary, anyone else’s plans to kill my sister’s addiction will fail.
It is known that heroin addicts invent good-looking plans for killing their addictions, but do not invent good plans for killing their addictions. By this argument she can ensure that all plans to kill her addiction will always eventually fail.
The epistemically correct response, even if it’s not necessarily persuasive in this form (for otherwise I would have persuaded her), is to say that I don’t actually need to experience what she has to come up with good plans for killing addictions. “Not knowing what it’s like to be an addict doesn’t make me bad at making decisions about addictions,” pattern-matches to, “I don’t empathize with you,” and, if she really wasn’t listening, “I claim to know more about your own phenomenal experiences than you.”
Sometimes how someone feels really doesn’t matter, in really specific cases. That is, sometimes it’s not necessary for an argument to follow. If you let people conflate this specific and useful objection with a more general sort of paternalism where you always ignore the relevance of everyone’s feelings, then you might flinch from being right or doing right.
Eek, I’d be really really careful with arguments like that.
If she doesn’t agree that this is one of those cases where what she feels doesn’t matter, why doesn’t she? Maybe when she sees you as being insufficiently empathetic, it’s on this level, not on the object level of how much her feelings about specific plans matter?
If she doesn’t give her stamp of approval to your description of her thoughts, how would you know if you had it wrong? How would you notice if you were missing something important?
I get the kinds of things that you’re talking about, but we’re strictly talking about the argument “If Gram had been a drug addict, then he would know what kind of plan I actually need.” Even if we take as an assumption that I have been a drug addict, then it does not follow that I am better at making plans that turn addicts into nonaddicts. If anything, I probably get the epistemic advantage from not being wireheaded. This is not about saying that there are times when someone’s feelings don’t have instrumental or moral weight. This is about saying that sometimes, people will make you think that an argument that includes knowledge of someone’s values as a proposition is itself a value judgment, making something that should not be off limits into something that is off limits. I can say, “No, I would not be better able to help you if I became a drug addict. That argument can be false even if its premises are assumed true.” If I stop talking about logical validity, which is always free game, and start being someone who blows off other people’s feelings for no good reason, then cut my head off.
It’s perhaps worth mentioning that this was a short encounter after a long separation, so this was an urgent situation where you cannot allow an addict to argue for credibility from expertise.
Let me know if this doesn’t address your concerns in any way.
I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m not saying that you can afford to let logically invalid arguments go unchallenged as if there was nothing wrong with them. Or that emotions ought to be free from criticism or something. Or that you haven’t earned your confidence or that her listening to you wouldn’t be massively beneficial for her. And I certainly don’t see you as someone who blows off other people’s feelings for no reason—in fact, a big reason I wanted to respond to your comment was because I got the exact opposite impression from you. I’m sorry if it came across otherwise.
If you want I can try to explain more carefully what I was getting at, but I certainly don’t want to drag you into a conversation like this if it’s not something you want to get into here or now. I’m actually in a somewhat similar situation myself so I’m well aware that it’s not always the time for that kind of thing.
I’m sorry to hear about your sisters addition. That must be hard on you too.
Yes, but that to what degree of fidelity? You also have special hardware to simulate objects. The question is one of fidelity and I understood the example thus. After all his analogy wasn’t between emotions and objects but between amount of emotion and number of objects.
Yes, but that doesn’t strike at the core of the matter, namely to what degree “you have no idea how I feel!” can be true.
True—and as you say often not persuasive. What would be a persuasive or emphatic way to nudge her?
I don’t know enough to say much, but I am wary about any speculation that glosses over social cognition as a very special kind of imagination that can seem identical to the other kind of imagination if you don’t know that they happen in different places anatomically. It seems to make it harder to believe that any analogies will hold.
I meant to link this to the part of the article that says that can feel like a challenge. Sometimes things feel like a challenge because someone’s started counting points instead of writing down facts. Now that I reread it though, it doesn’t seem like he was being very serious about the feeling of challenge. It probably means my original comment seemed less relevant than I thought it did.
Granted. That’s true.
Thanks that you point this out. Indeed I didn’t see that part so clearly.
False. I assume that plans like “kidnapping her and keeping her in a private prison without access to heroin for a few months” would also work. Illegal and unethical perhaps, but still technically possible.
But I guess in real life it means something like “if she will not like the approach, she will sabotage it”, which is probably true. :(
Other can still make a guess, and maybe guess incorrectly, and maybe guess correctly.
I specifically described this as bad epistemology.