How best to see outside your own culture, beyond the ideas in vogue?

[Obvious Leo]

he'd have to eat, shit, and piss.

No he wouldn't. Herodotus didn't have the benefit of modern life support systems but it would be a routine matter to have machinery perform these functions.

[Hobbes' Choice]

he'd have to eat, shit, and piss.

No he wouldn't. Herodotus didn't have the benefit of modern life support systems but it would be a routine matter to have machinery perform these functions.

The thought experiment was done to ask questions about languages.

So you are proposing a silent heart beat too?
Like your duck fantasy - You have not really thought this through have you?

Are you talking about a brain in a vat?

[Obvious Leo]

Keep your shirt on, Hobbes. I was simply correcting you on a matter of fact because I know how warmly you appreciate it when people do that for you.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Keep your shirt on, Hobbes. I was simply correcting you on a matter of fact because I know how warmly you appreciate it when people do that for you.

So, you do know I have a BA in ancient history and archaeology and know that machinery for taking the piss out of a person was not available to Herodotus?
So why the fuck were you being patronising to tell me?

So, answer the question - are we talking about a completely disembodied brain in a vat. Because if we are not then this kid is going to feel something whether you like it or not.
And if we are talking about a brain in a vat, then this kid ain't fucking normal.
So what are you talking about?

[Obvious Leo]

machinery for taking the piss out of a person was not available to Herodotus?

On the contrary. It's a very long time since I read Herodotus but I seem to recall that he was quite an accomplished piss-taker.

I didn't exactly have the brain in a vat in mind because I regard cognition as embodied, so I acknowledge that he would experience some internal bodily sensation, such as a guts-ache or a headache from time to time. A mind is an information processing network and I'm wondering how a mind might process such internal information without any input from an external referential frame. Would this in fact be possible?

[Hobbes' Choice]

machinery for taking the piss out of a person was not available to Herodotus?

On the contrary. It's a very long time since I read Herodotus but I seem to recall that he was quite an accomplished piss-taker.

I didn't exactly have the brain in a vat in mind because I regard cognition as embodied, so I acknowledge that he would experience some internal bodily sensation, such as a guts-ache or a headache from time to time. A mind is an information processing network and I'm wondering how a mind might process such internal information without any input from an external referential frame. Would this in fact be possible?

Your claim was that the kid would have no mind. SInce you are now admitting to some sensory information, that would mean the brain had something external to it to work on.
It could be possible in these circumstances, in the absence of all that external sensory noise that the brain could adapt and learn how to understand, even control the bodily systems.
I think your model seriously misunderstands the extent of the human sensory network, which is capable of forming a 3D model of itself without the need for external stimulus . Proprioperception.

[Greta]

Greta - I'm really interested in this case - is it documented anywhere. I'd like to read more about it. There are so many questions: How did she 'crack the language barrier' ? Why would anyone assume that an autistic person has no mind or awareness? If there was such an underlying intelligence and perception that would have shown in her eyes, would it not?

Yes, Carly is astonishing! There's an excerpt from the documentary on YT, "Autistic Girl Learns To Communicate Using Computers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xsfNrG5Bnw

[Greta]

Aside from being completely impossible I still disagree. He would still hear his own heart, and he'd have to eat, shit, and piss. All these basic functions would give him a dialogue with his environment.
It is certainly true that the life of the mind would not be 'normally' developed. But your idea is tantamount to saying he'd not have skin because he could never feel it.

If the environment had stable chemistry, temperature and bacterial content (all very hypothetical) then the person's interactions with environment would be less than that of a worm. Yet, there would be that brain. Nice to think that the human brain would organise its limited inputs as best as it could. Maybe he would gradually fine tune his body's internal operations, gaining more control, processing the energy inputs ever more effectively? Still, it seems more intuitively likely to me that much of the person's brain would just atrophy with disuse, akin to muscle wastage.

Would that be a mind? How could self awareness form? An infant is normally born into an overwhelming cacophony of light, coldness and sound, and from there the (hopefully) long journey of teasing out what goes on in that cacophony follows. Our hypothetical child would have remained in darkness without transition from the womb (I'm guessing ... @ Leo?). If so, then the person would lie in permanent gestation, largely just existing in potentia. The longer the person lay in a dormant state the more he would mentally waste away like any machine that is not used, as per above.

[Obvious Leo]

Still, it seems more intuitively likely to me that much of the person's brain would just atrophy with disuse, akin to muscle wastage.

My intuition tells me the same thing. "Use it or lose it" has been shown to be much more than a glib slogan and almost all of this person's embodied cognition would have no information to operate on. It has already been shown that if a child acquires no verbal language by adolescence then he never will because the neural mechanisms needed for this function can no longer develop. Neurons that fire together wire together and if they never fire they'll never wire.

An infant is normally born into an overwhelming cacophony of light, coldness and sound, and from there the (hopefully) long journey of teasing out what goes on in that cacophony follows.

It is well known that human infants become aware of the existence of other humans beings long before they become aware of their own existence. This obviously opens up a debate about what constitutes awareness and what we mean by the "self" but this is the the perspective generally adopted by the theorists in early childhood learning.

Our hypothetical child would have remained in darkness without transition from the womb (I'm guessing ... @ Leo?).

I hadn't really given much thought to the birthing process but in order to keep sensory input to a minimum I guess a C-section would be the way to go.

[marjoram_blues]

Greta - I'm really interested in this case - is it documented anywhere. I'd like to read more about it. There are so many questions: How did she 'crack the language barrier' ? Why would anyone assume that an autistic person has no mind or awareness? If there was such an underlying intelligence and perception that would have shown in her eyes, would it not?

Yes, Carly is astonishing! There's an excerpt from the documentary on YT, "Autistic Girl Learns To Communicate Using Computers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xsfNrG5Bnw

Just watched this piece. And it doesn't really fit with what you said earlier in response to Leo's thought experiment:

OL wrote: Try this as the most gruesome of thought experiments. A child is born and is in every sense "normal" as we commonly understand the term. The child is immediately placed into the most extreme of sensory deprivation environments and simply hooked up to life-sustaining equipment and raised to adulthood. He can't hear anything, see anything, move or feel anything etc.

Greta : Agree. To start there's no language, nor any need for it. What level of sentience can be achieved when only internal processes can be perceived?

There's a somewhat related case, where an autistic girl finally cracked the language barrier in her teens, communicating with one finger typing. Until then, everyone including her parents assumed that she had no mind. It turned out that she was every bit as aware as any other child. Shockingly so. She was actually bright, perceptive and wise beyond her years. Her father tearfully remembered all the times he'd spoken about her in front of her as though she wasn't aware. A touching understanding between them followed.

It is not 'somewhat related' in the slightest. Carly had every imaginable therapy and sensory input that her parents could afford. They knew that she was intelligent - her eyes showed 'naked intelligence' ( c. 2.23 mark). She was often read to. Without this input and awareness she would not have been able to spell out the words on the computer. Her parents did not 'assume that she had no mind' but they did think that she was 'dumb' - ie unable to talk.

Still, it is a remarkable tale and one which offers much insight into Carly and how she explained her autistic behaviour to others. She was most fortunate in having such a caring and well-funded family and to be given all the opportunities so missed by others...
And to have it all recorded...
Thanks for sharing.

[Greta]

It is not 'somewhat related' in the slightest. Carly had every imaginable therapy and sensory input that her parents could afford. They knew that she was intelligent - her eyes showed 'naked intelligence' ( c. 2.23 mark). She was often read to. Without this input and awareness she would not have been able to spell out the words on the computer. Her parents did not 'assume that she had no mind' but they did think that she was 'dumb' - ie unable to talk.

It's not related in that sense, no. I just figured that there was a lot more going on inside Carly's head than one might have imagined. So, in the thought experiment, perhaps there would be more going on in the theoretical person's head than one might imagine too? Maybe shockingly so? We can't be sure due to the opacity of our minds to others.

[Greta]

My intuition tells me the same thing. "Use it or lose it" has been shown to be much more than a glib slogan and almost all of this person's embodied cognition would have no information to operate on. It has already been shown that if a child acquires no verbal language by adolescence then he never will because the neural mechanisms needed for this function can no longer develop. Neurons that fire together wire together and if they never fire they'll never wire.

Yes, and our cultural lenses are formed in that time too, which makes it that much harder to overcome cultural bias. It's partially physiological. Those with multicultural lineage would seem less likely to be brainwashed during their formative years.

Earlier someone mentioned that study of anthropology could act to reduce cultural conditioning. I'd add the study of nature too. I find that trying to see the ape in people makes them not only more understandable but more interesting and endearing. At times we behave in absolutely human ways, at other times we are dead ringers for our simian cousins, and usually somewhere in between.

[Obvious Leo]

Yes, and our cultural lenses are formed in that time too, which makes it that much harder to overcome cultural bias.

"Give us your boy by the age of seven and we've got him for life". This a paraphrase of a quote from Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, more commonly known as the Jesuits. I was one of their failures, only because they didn't get me early enough, but it's a succinct notion which can easily explain the hard-wired nature of religious belief. In neuroscience this is thought of in terms of brain plasticity, which is critically important in the first dozen or so years of life when our neuronal highways are being cemented down through the tabula rasa of a cognitive wilderness. What we think obviously changes throughout our lives but the mechanisms by which we think what we think develop very early and change very little, particularly if they are continuously reinforced by repetition and ritual. This would explain why apostasy is nowadays widespread amongst those nominally raised in the Christian tradition but remains rare in Islam. A priest once told me that Christianity in the west was doomed after always saying grace before meals became unfashionable, and I can see what he meant in terms of brain development. Three times a day people were being reminded how to think the world. In Islam this happens five times a day from a very young age and it's not hard to see how such constant conditioning would be hard to penetrate.

Religious practice is mostly regarded in my country as a quaint historical curiosity indulged in by only a small minority and I'm certain this is the reason. You've got to give it to them with their mother's milk and keep pumping it into them relentlessly until adolescence. Otherwise they'll slip the net.

[marjoram_blues]

It is not 'somewhat related' in the slightest. Carly had every imaginable therapy and sensory input that her parents could afford. They knew that she was intelligent - her eyes showed 'naked intelligence' ( c. 2.23 mark). She was often read to. Without this input and awareness she would not have been able to spell out the words on the computer. Her parents did not 'assume that she had no mind' but they did think that she was 'dumb' - ie unable to talk.

It's not related in that sense, no. I just figured that there was a lot more going on inside Carly's head than one might have imagined. So, in the thought experiment, perhaps there would be more going on in the theoretical person's head than one might imagine too? Maybe shockingly so? We can't be sure due to the opacity of our minds to others.

It's clear to me that our knowledge of people who fall under the Autism umbrella has increased enormously; attitudes have changed and there are hopefully less assumptions about the lack of mind or intelligence. This relates to the OP in that elsewhere... at other times, such sufferers would have been thought of as having devils in them. Attempts would have been made to drive the evil spirits out. Perhaps that still happens in more barbaric societies. So, what would it take for them so 'see' outside their culture and their current worldview? Well, I don't think that sitting them down with a book on anthropology would do it. Nor the study of nature. For them, nature might be God - and should not be questioned.

Rather, it takes time, curiosity and knowledge brought in from outside. And perhaps some parent with the will and courage to dare oppose the spiritual healer ( go 'beyond the idea in vogue' ) who ventures forth...all the better to widen perspective. With the aim of real healing and helping. Even in a society with knowledge, there is always more to learn and prejudices to overcome.

So, to answer the OP - perhaps the best way to see outside our own culture - is quite simple.
It is to keep an open mind and challenge our own thoughts and beliefs first. Then, we can set an example...to family, friends and --- through the internet. Why not take on the ones who would have us all at war...not by talking of them as idiots and jokers, but by active sensible confrontation. To not be swayed by hateful and divisive rhetoric. Violence, guns and war should not be seen as an acceptable and customary first choice.
Question who really wins in any war. There are no winners but those who make the rules,the prisons,the guns. Follow the money.
In the war of minds, which ideas and values need to win through...for the sake of the world. How best to do this...
Philosophy? Which one, which kind?
Yup...that is the question...

[Hobbes' Choice]

Aside from being completely impossible I still disagree. He would still hear his own heart, and he'd have to eat, shit, and piss. All these basic functions would give him a dialogue with his environment.
It is certainly true that the life of the mind would not be 'normally' developed. But your idea is tantamount to saying he'd not have skin because he could never feel it.

If the environment had stable chemistry, temperature and bacterial content (all very hypothetical) then the person's interactions with environment would be less than that of a worm. Yet, there would be that brain. Nice to think that the human brain would organise its limited inputs as best as it could. Maybe he would gradually fine tune his body's internal operations, gaining more control, processing the energy inputs ever more effectively? Still, it seems more intuitively likely to me that much of the person's brain would just atrophy with disuse, akin to muscle wastage.

Would that be a mind? How could self awareness form? An infant is normally born into an overwhelming cacophony of light, coldness and sound, and from there the (hopefully) long journey of teasing out what goes on in that cacophony follows. Our hypothetical child would have remained in darkness without transition from the womb (I'm guessing ... @ Leo?). If so, then the person would lie in permanent gestation, largely just existing in potentia. The longer the person lay in a dormant state the more he would mentally waste away like any machine that is not used, as per above.

He would necessarily be aware of the sound of his own body, and the feelings associated with breathing, balance, heartbeat, blood pumping, and all other bodily processes. These inputs would be his world. He would also be capable of feeling his way around his environment, and would build a virtual "image" of his limited world like any blind person would. Presumably the nervous system associated with sight would never develop.
I can see not a single hint of a reason to deny he would have a mind.

The womb analogy is interesting, as we know the life of a foetus is more complicated and interactive than we used to think.