When (and how) to argue

65. After my brother joined the military, my mother began forcing my father and I to go to church as part of a ‘family activity.’ They bribed, lied, and cheated to get me to go. So I went, reluctantly. It’s funny, because at the time, I hadn’t been a Catholic in 6 years, so my going there only served to drive us further apart as I reacted like a teenager and sulked.

I get into arguments on a fairly regular basis. I suspect the reason for this is that I like to make grandiose claims and Nobody catches on to my tongue-in-cheek, finger-wagging spectacles. EVER.

But as often as I argue, I used to argue much more regularly. In my youth, I used to really like arguments. Sometimes I would argue positions I didn’t support just because I liked seeing people fluster as they tried to explain to me why slavery was wrong or why clothing was not optional. I’m actually a bit ashamed of that now.

But as I grew and matured (read: grew tired of bickering), I stopped seeking out arguments. Then I stopped continuing arguments even when they came to me. This went on to such a point that now I only ever argue for two reasons:

1. To disavow someone of their ignorance. ((I only do this if their ignorance is particularly damaging to themselves or others. It’s not my duty to make sure nobody has a false belief, but it is my duty if that false belief will soon have some sort of disastrous consequence.))
2. To get to the truth of the matter.

The second reason is the reason I prefer. There’s nothing worse than arguing with a smug-faced bastard who’s just humoring you by pretending to listen to your point with no intention of even analyzing his own. Believe me, I’ve seen that from every angle: it happens a lot when dealing with smart people.

But arguing ((Perhaps the word ‘debate’ would be more apt than ‘argue,’ but I’m using ‘argue’ in the technical sense. An argument is a series of sentences which lead to a certain conclusion. So arguing, in this case would be attempting to test the soundness of these sentences, so ‘argue’ is more appropriate than ‘debate.’ … man, I should have just said I didn’t feel like it.)) shouldn’t be that way. A true argument should be between people that have opposing beliefs, or rather, one person that believes something and another that does not (yet) buy into it.

Take a conversation that I recently had with my friend Trumpet Rob. I switch positions back and forth because I want to get to the truth and so does he.

Trumpie
Yo los. What’s up?

Pixelation
Not much, and you?

Trumpie
your test. Do you think consciousness would be a mechanism to communicate not with other people, but with onesself?

Pixelation
As in between mental processes? hm.

Trumpie
I mean, communication with others is definitely an advantage

Pixelation
Yeah, agreed. The question is whether that was the driving advantage

Trumpie
I’m not sure you’d be able to separate those in an experiment

Pixelation
yeah. I think the ‘shareability’ theory is unfalsefiable. Which is like the death blow to any good scientific theory

Trumpie
pretty much

Pixelation
*sigh*

Trumpie
And I’m not sure we can really control our unconscious

Pixelation
Not fully at least. The tricky part is that there are some processes: breathing, feeling, etc. that can be controlled by either unconscious or conscious processes.
Why have two systems that do the same thing?
It makes no sense.

Trumpie
Well, it does. For example, you can control your breathing to stop from inhaling water

Pixelation
True. But those could be two separate unconscious mechanisms. There’s no need for consciousness to come along at all.

Trumpie
But if something goes wrong, your body recognises changes in pCO2 and forces you to breathe Whether there is water there or not. No, because you need to have consious control over breathing. Your body wouldn’t know from experience that smoke is bad. Unless you experience it… there wouldn’t be a genetic basis for an automatic response

Pixelation
It might: all you need is some classical conditioning, a brain stem, and repeatable sensory perception.

Trumpie
It’s easier to learn. Maybe that’s why?
To learn from experience?
On a different level perhaps?

Pixelation
I don’t doubt that it’s easier, and I don’t doubt that it helps in experiences and makes things better, but none of these are necessary. I can imagine a creature doing the same thing without consciousness.
Indeed, you don’t know if I have consciousness, yet I’m typing this as we speak
But I think I agree with you.
I just can’t come up with a way to say that so that my objections don’t poke holes in it.

Trumpie
You might be under the misconseption that things are necessary. “Why did we need to evolve this?” The answer is that we didn’t… But the evolution of such a thing gave us a BETTER selective advantage

Pixelation
Yeah, Jamieson has a thing where he says ‘for something to evolve, it has to be available, reliable, and efficient.’ But unconscious processes were already available, so consciousness had to be more reliable and efficient in order to evolve. Which… makes sense, but is hard to prove. See, if shareability is the root of consciousness, then it makes sense to suggest that humans would be more ‘conscious’ than the non-speaking apes.
If the others are the root… then non-speaking creatures should be just as conscious

Trumpie
I’m wondering if apes are the right branch. They might be more consious than we know. Their lack of verbal comunication hurts

Pixelation
Yeah, agreed, but that’s almost impossible to find out
Weeeelll…. What about Amy the gorilla? She could combine concepts to come up with other concepts when she was taught language. That should be evidence of previously unshareable consciousness, no?
Or a form of proto-consciousness anyway. She came up with a word for ‘duck’ by combining ‘water’ and ‘bird’, which was shocking to a lot of people at the time.

Trumpie
Well, looking at amy, wouldn’t that provide evidence of consciousness outside of humans?

Pixelation
Sort of. With her, then the definition of consciousness comes into question.
In fact, just by considering her, we sort of have to analyze what we mean at all by this enterprise.
I’m thinking about how to give a good definition of consciousness that doesn’t assume what you’re trying to prove in the first place.
Would fMRI techniques show whether ‘self-aware’ thought was going on?
Do you know any cognitive psychologists?
Because they would be the people to ask

Trumpie
You picked one hell of a topic

Pixelation
yeah, no kidding. It’s interesting as all hell, but about as impossible as the grand unified theory

Trumpie
” Okay, so basically the problem is why we experience consciousness and what the role of conscious emotions is.”

Pixelation
exactly

Trumpie
Well, that’s what you wrote

Pixelation
Which is why I think it’s brilliant

See tomorrow’s post for my motivation behind today’s post.

65. After my brother joined the military, my mother began forcing my father and I to go to church as part of a ‘family activity.’ They bribed, lied, and cheated to get me to go. So I went, reluctantly. It’s funny, because at the time, I hadn’t been a Catholic in 6 years, so my…