Zombies

A continuation of the exquisite solution of the mind/brain problem, begun in the preceeding entry. So far, no comments/arguments/rants yet. Come ON!!

At a friend's birthday recently, I became involved in an extended discussion of whether zombies walk with their hands held out in front of them, or at their sides, awkwardly. I forget which view prevailed. I remember that we all were aware that we were talking about zombies as if they were known entities, and that one of us might encounter a zombie some time in the next few days, and the issue would be settled.

It made me think of an observation common among hypnotists: If you ask young children what somebody who is hypnotized does, they immediately put their arms straight out in front (zombie style??) close their eyes and walk very slowly, but elegantly -- unlike zombies, who, we all know, are clumsy. This knowledge of how hypnotized people behave seems to be acquired mainly from cartoons; there are probably other sources, hard to identify.

The tricky thing is, when the kids are "doing" hypnotized, their minds are doing hypnotized, too -- their thoughts get concrete, they are compliant, they lost any sense of humor, and so on.

Alert Reader will quickly connect to my previous post. Hypnosis is an ongoing interaction between the subject and the ...well, hypnotizer. This conversation constitutes the "mind" of the subject. Again, a transaction that is normative to the construction of experience.

You get the point. Computational and narrative models of the mind are wrong-headed; mind is a kind of talk, a set of directions which structure how to be in the world. Hey, just like I said last time. Alva Noe is working on too small a scale, but Noe is a biological type, and I am an ordinary language type.

Complexity trumps reductionism, every time. The brain is more than the sum of it's cells. Mind, who knows? Mind is more than the sum of a person's interactions We do bring to the table other parts of us. Eyes, noses, emotions. Whoa, there ....emotions?? How about choices? What are we talking about, anyhow???

More to come. A work in progress.