For a change of pace, I think it’s useful to talk about behaviorism.
In this context, we’re interpreting positions like “behaviorism” or “computationalism” as strategies for responding to the question “what are the differences that make a difference to my self?”
The behaviorist answers that the differences that make a difference are those that impact my behavior. But secretly, behaviorism is a broad class of strategies for answering, because what’s “my behavior,” anyhow? If you have a choice to put either a red dot or a blue dot on the back of my head, does that make a difference to my self even before I could possibly know what color the dot was, because if you make one choice me turning my head will be a “moving a blue dot behavior” while if you make the other choice it will be a “moving a red dot behavior”?
Your typical behaviorist will say that which color dot you put on my head has not caused a meaningful change. A description of my behavior isn’t intended (by this hypothetical behaviorist) to be a complete description of all the atoms in the universe, or even all the atoms of my body. Instead, “my behavior” should be described in an ontology centered on what information I have access to through my senses, and what affordances I use to exhibit behavior. In such a blinkered and coarse-grained ontology, the “moving a blue dot behavior” and the “moving a red dot behavior” have identical descriptions as a “turning my head behavior.”
This is useful to talk about, because the same song and dance still applies once you reject behaviorism.
Suppose some non-behaviorist answers that the It’s not just my behavior that matters, but also what’s going on inside. What’s “what’s going on inside”, and why how’s it different from “my behavior”?
Does “what’s going on inside” require a description of all the atoms of my body? But that was one of the intermediate possibilities for “my behavior”. And again, suppose I have some cells on the back of my head, and you can either dye them red, or dye them blue—it seems like that doesn’t actually change what’s going on inside.
So our typical non-behaviorist naturalist will say that a description of what’s going on inside isn’t intended to be a complete description of all the atoms in my body, instead “what’s going on inside” should be described in an ontology centered on...
Well, here as someone with computationalist leanings I want to fill in something like “information flow and internal representations, in addition to my senses and behavioral affordances”, and of course since there are many ways to do this, this is actually gesturing at a broad class of answers.
But here I’m curious if you’d want to fill in something else instead.
For a change of pace, I think it’s useful to talk about behaviorism.
In this context, we’re interpreting positions like “behaviorism” or “computationalism” as strategies for responding to the question “what are the differences that make a difference to my self?”
The behaviorist answers that the differences that make a difference are those that impact my behavior. But secretly, behaviorism is a broad class of strategies for answering, because what’s “my behavior,” anyhow? If you have a choice to put either a red dot or a blue dot on the back of my head, does that make a difference to my self even before I could possibly know what color the dot was, because if you make one choice me turning my head will be a “moving a blue dot behavior” while if you make the other choice it will be a “moving a red dot behavior”?
Your typical behaviorist will say that which color dot you put on my head has not caused a meaningful change. A description of my behavior isn’t intended (by this hypothetical behaviorist) to be a complete description of all the atoms in the universe, or even all the atoms of my body. Instead, “my behavior” should be described in an ontology centered on what information I have access to through my senses, and what affordances I use to exhibit behavior. In such a blinkered and coarse-grained ontology, the “moving a blue dot behavior” and the “moving a red dot behavior” have identical descriptions as a “turning my head behavior.”
This is useful to talk about, because the same song and dance still applies once you reject behaviorism.
Suppose some non-behaviorist answers that the It’s not just my behavior that matters, but also what’s going on inside. What’s “what’s going on inside”, and why how’s it different from “my behavior”?
Does “what’s going on inside” require a description of all the atoms of my body? But that was one of the intermediate possibilities for “my behavior”. And again, suppose I have some cells on the back of my head, and you can either dye them red, or dye them blue—it seems like that doesn’t actually change what’s going on inside.
So our typical non-behaviorist naturalist will say that a description of what’s going on inside isn’t intended to be a complete description of all the atoms in my body, instead “what’s going on inside” should be described in an ontology centered on...
Well, here as someone with computationalist leanings I want to fill in something like “information flow and internal representations, in addition to my senses and behavioral affordances”, and of course since there are many ways to do this, this is actually gesturing at a broad class of answers.
But here I’m curious if you’d want to fill in something else instead.