VIEWS OF THE MINDForum: Digital Mind
davide
As said in the introduction, at the basis of this forum lays a mix of interests in psychology and cyber culture. As I have made some references to behaviourism before, I would like to bring to your attention what John B. Watson wrote in his book Behaviourism (he is the founder of the homonymous psychological school): "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in, and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors." (Watson, 1930, p.104)
He thought it would be the same as baking cakes... that, as we all know, is not that simple neither. Nevertheless the idea had a huge impact - and still has - on American culture. We now know that it is not a simple matter of choosing a fact, rather of creating the conditions (context) that make this fact more or less likely to happen. The child that you wanted to be a thief, one day goes in a house, steals a book about medicine... and decides to become a doctor. Structuralism & Functionalism E. B. Titchener following the steps of W. Wundt, considered as the founder of modern psychology, brought structuralism to prominence around the end of 19th-centuary - beginning of next one. Fortunately nowadays it cannot be described as a very popular current of thought. I say fortunately because I find the all matter rather boring, so much indeed as to mention only that it tries to discover the nature of the elementary elements of conscious experience - that is, to analyse consciousness into its component parts and thus determine its structure... whatever.
Functionalism followed the cultural revolution brought about by the discoveries of C. Darwin. You know, all that stuff about the evolution of the species (with apologies for creationists). Usual quote: "The type of conduct that reflects mental activity may be termed 'adaptive' or 'adjustive behaviour' [...] An adaptive act is a response on the part of an organism in reference to its physical or social environment of such a character as to satisfy its motivating conditions" (H.A. Carr, "Psychology", 1925, p.1) Gestalt
Here is something about the Gestalt school of though in psychology. I find 'Gestalt' particularly interesting as it deals with human perception in relation to patterns and structures. "The perception is a whole, a Gestalt, and any attempt to analyse or reduce it to elements will destroy it." "To begin with elements is to begin at the wrong end; for elements are products of reflection and abstraction, remotely derived from the immediate experience they are invoked to explain. Gestalt psychology attempts to go back to immediate experience... and it insists that it finds there not assemblages of elements, but unified wholes; not masses of sensations, but threes, clouds, and sky. And this assertion it invites any one to verify simply by opening his eyes and looking at the world about him in his ordinary everyday life." (HEIDBREDER, 1933, p.331) "In the Gestalt view, the organism must be able to see the relationships among the various parts of the problem before insight can occur." "The details of a problem should be considered only in relation to the total situation, and that problem solving should proceed from the whole problem downward to the parts, not the reverse." Humanistic psychology
Skipping psychoanalysis, which we all know what is about, in this part I would like to introduce you to the mysteries of a different school: HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY (or humanic).
1) an emphasis on conscious experience
Mhhh, sound suspicious, but actually the school had a very rigorous and scientific attitude and introduced important ideas in psychology.
Problem is that it also gave rise to the spreading of pseudo-psychology, whose consequences have been at times... well, tragic. Seriously: many people where actually badly damaged by self-promoted therapists.
Studies of after after-effects of participation in encounter groups revealed psychological casualty rates of up to 50% in some cases. (Hartley, Robach & Abramowitz, 1976)
Going back to humanistic psychology in its academic tradition: Cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology focuses on the process of knowing and on how the human mind structures and organises experiences. Finally we are brought to the very core of the question: here the computer is clearly used as a metaphor of comparison for the human mind, and this use appears fully developed and conscious. To give an idea of how the parallel between computers and psychology can be drawn, I will quote two striking examples, showing to which extent language has been influenced by this cultural paradigm of the 20th-centuary: "The goal is to discover that library of programs the human has stored away in memory - programs that enable the person to understand and produces sentences, to commit certain experiences and rules to memory, and to solve novel problems" (Howard, 1983, p.11). "Computer programs, which are essentially sets of instructions for dealing with symbols, may be said to function similarly to the human mind. Both the computer and the mind receive and digest large amounts of information (stimuli or data) from the environment. They process this information, manipulating, storing, and retrieving it, and acting on it in various ways. Thus, computer programming is the pattern for the cognitive view of human information processing, reasoning and problem solving" (Schultz & Schultz, 1996, p.452).
hiroko
quote:
Currently I have been trapped by the word 'virtual'. Normally when we say virtual we refer to some sort of phenomenon or entity expressed by means of computerised technology. But sometimes it might have some other meanings, i.e. immaterial and/or illegible and/or almost real. I want to know what do you mean by 'a virtual phenomenon' here.
davide
quote: By 'virtual' I normally refer to three general concepts, depending on the context: a) of phenomena whose essence is non-physical or immaterial, such as the mind, even though those might be inextricably tied to the world of matter; b) of phenomena that take place or are expressed in cyber space; c) a mediated representation of reality attempting to reproduce some of its general features or at least achieving a sense of coherent environment.
hiroko
So, your definition a) is already implying the mind is virtual because of its non-physicality... And in the precise sense that it is 'non-physical', you can say things in cyberspace are virtual (your definition b) as well. Then, what you call 'virtual mind' has double meanings: the mind in general (=your definition a), and something existing in cyberspace (definition b) or in simulation (definition c).
quote: Well, I think there's something more than the process of knowing e.g. emotions, intuitions, etc. As you say, the mind itself is not clearly defined anywhere. Each psychological school has treated the mind as an object you can observe and analyse. davide Moderator
Originally posted by hiroko
And in the precise sense that it is 'non-physical', you can say things in cyberspace are virtual (your definition b) as well.
Then, what you call 'virtual mind' has double meanings: the mind in general (=your definition a), and something existing in cyberspace (definition b) or in simulation (definition c). |