Noam Chomsky - Psychic Continuity I

[@asderc1]

This is taken from a Michael Goundrey's film "Is the man who is tall happy". Check it out.

[@vampireducks1622]

Thanks for the reference. The most useful comment on here.

[@redlady935]

Thank you

[@HoHo-jx1yu]

HOLY SHIT. AFTER REPLAYING THIS VIDEO LIKE 20 TIMES I FINALLY REALIZED WHAT CHOMSKY MEANT. AND WHEN I FINALLY DID IT FELT INSANE

[@kennethgutman3465]

I've been a fan of Chomsky ever since I found out about his invalidation of Skinner's claim to have reduced children's acquiring their native language to Pavlovian conditioning alone. BUT ... I strongly suspect he occasionally indulges in sheer blarney just for the sport of it -- especially hearing avid fans trying to grasp the sense of such nonsense. It might be his favorite recreation.

[@hotstixx]

@@kennethgutman3465 He is not self indulgent at all..quite the opposite.

[@samdelahunty1506]

It took me psychadelics and it clicked in a massive way!

[@hoogmonster]

Welcome to the matrix...

[@madmanga64]

He missed the point of Chomsky example of the moon illusion but at the same time proved his point you can know every aspect of what is causing the moon illusion but your brain still interpreted it as being bigger at the horizon even though you know it's not because the brains capacity in terms of Viewing has a fixed scope ....so what else in the brain has a fixed scope ? 🤔

[@jones1351]

Damn, this shit is deep. The ability/willingness to be curious about things we've been taking for granted. Powerful. It says (to me anyway) that true A.I. is a long, long way off. We don't have much of a clue about how we do it. We're barely asking the right questions. So, how can we program a machine to do it. HBO's 'West World' is turning out to be some good interesting fiction. But, it's just that - fiction.

[@masonainsworth]

This reminds me of the Buddhist conception of the Two Truths and the premise of "ultimate reality" as "emptiness", a rarified technical philosophical description where "consciousness" plays a profound role as a collaborative integrated element of this "ultimate reality".

[@nicholasdarraugh7626]

Thank you! Thank you very [very] much!

[@peterandjoycevanbreemen600]

Listen to Psychic Continuity II before you decide what Chomsky means.

[@johmhelen6191]

After understanding Chomsky, Im just creeped out.

[@coreycox2345]

I had a similar metanoia that changed my world view. Who would trade such a thing, Johm Helen?

[@ridicule1313]

@@coreycox2345 wow dope ass word Im gonna use that now

[@bntagkas]

if im understanding it correctly, this could tie to the fact that some experiment showed that people born with fewer limbs, still felt the same sensation as people who lost a limb in some later point in life, called phantom limb syndrome

[@ItinerantIntrovert]

Time, space, gravity, words. All follow the structure of our minds.

[@joshbedford4889]

The problem with listening to intellectuals like Chomsky is that they are often speaking within the parameters of a very narrow context, and it takes a while to tune in to what they are talking about. Glad I stuck I stuck it out though, once I found my way to the same page it was quite edifying.

[@morbidbushido]

Exactly...i watched this over and over before i could tune in. Well, i think thats also becasue it was a bit difficult to comprehend for me

[@saintofconsequence]

Exactly.

[@useraccout1635]

No, because you're listening to a small excerpt to a specific topic which includes many others that aren't directly referenced in this excerpt. Of course you're gonna get lost if you take word for word everything in this video. Chomsky has countless works published regarding this topic and that is what you should check out instead of relistening to a small excerpt he gave in regards to an interview question.

[@saintofconsequence]

Looked up the donkey book he's talking about. Written by same guy who wrote Shreck.

[@antoniolewis1016]

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble?

[@annebronte4]

Why did you keep trying to put music under the speech? It is distracting.

[@jeremywalker6200]

What's with the sound effects under the interview track?

[@10xSRK]

Most likely these are interviews were used in a documentary and this audio is ripped from that.

[@dsignart]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/maeZZ6t8eZymbck

[@skiphoffenflaven8004]

@@10xSRK Exactly.

[@santosd6065]

Not sure I am following what he's saying correctly. Does he mean that we have an internal representation of the world in our heads (so when we "see" a tree, we're actually "seeing" our representation of the tree, rather than the tree itself)? And that that mental representation follows rules that are internal to our minds, rather than properties inherent in the exterior world itself? So we superimpose psychic continuity on to the a world where no such pattern of continuity actually exists?

[@maxschlepzig641]

In a sense, you're correct. We are "internally pre-programmed" to perceive "the world" in a certain way. That doesn't necessarily mean we are seeing our representation of our object instead of the object itself. It means we have pre-conceived notions of the "external" world. If true, frighteningly reveals a lot about our attempts at epistemology. What he is basically indicating is, that we are no different in the way we act and perceive the world as is any other lifeform, whether it be a mosquito or a human.

[@santosd6065]

I once heard an exchange between Chomsky and a critic who argued Chomsky's theory couldn't possibly be right, because it would mean people living 60,000 years ago would have had to already possess the concepts "bureaucrat" and "carburetor". Chomsky's reply was "Yes, that's exactly right. It DOES mean people 60,000 years had those concepts already in their minds." It's been years, but I always remember that. What he seems to mean is that our minds come equipped already with a pretty complex and detailed stock of notions, concepts and relationships. These mental structures are so intricate that they can reproduce the external world down to minute detail (ie, "bureaucrat" and "carburetor"), like my three year old building a replica of the world with lego blocks. I have no idea why that notion would be so controversial in philosophy, psychology or linguistics.

[@ewanhawkins2010]

I've been puzzling over this too, do you think its kind of like a Kantian limit on the way we can interpret the world?

[@MercyNeverheardofit]

Check out some of Carl Jung's work on archetypal representations. Man and his Symbols might be a good one.

[@Achrononmaster]

+"Max Schlepzig" you are not quite right. Chomsky clearly notes that human perception is qualitatively different to other animals. Animals can recognize symbols as referents. And they react appropriately. Human children know the fiction, and can recognize symbols for what they are, fictional referents. Other animals cannot. This is an amazing ability beyond any animal capability, and Chomsky is saying that it is quite mysterious and has so far not been explained by science in any satisfactory way. Chomsky does not put his finger on the critical point, but alludes to it: which is that humans have a "mental paint" capacity, to borrow a term of art coined by Ned Block. This mental capacity is unexplained by all known science. The fact many psychologists and cognitive scientists think they can explain mental capacity is exactly the falsehood Chomsky is talking about. All of their "explanations" are explanations for animal behaviour abilities. None of it actually explains the human mental abilities, which is the taboo to which Chomsky refers. Many claim they can explain human mentality, but if you read their work carefully you will see they are mistaken. All they can explain is the type of abilities other animals have. Humans have these abilities too, but we have demonstrably and qualitatively much higher cognitive powers, the ability to think not only symbolically, but also completely abstractly, without reference to physical ideas. the fact we can do this (apparently) with our physiological wetware brains is the remarkable and wholly unexplained thing.

[@GrantTarredus]

Of the countless videos I’ve seen on this channel, this is the only one with distracting music or sound effects behind Chomsky’s voice. What is that?

[@louiswilliamson5937]

Would this correctly be perceived as criticism of eliminative materialism? It seems that Chomsky is indirectly referring to qualia, but I don't think that's completely it, judging from his anecdote about his grandchildren and story about the donkey. He seems to be referring to a more concrete idea that there are universals(?) that are predicated within us all. I am not sure I got it entirely, since my understanding is that qualia is subjective.

[@miroljubful]

Is there scientific paper where he discuss this further? Word-object reference.

[@sixpoint3130]

Here he tacitly demolished Darwenistic myth 🤣

[@danthefan5378]

Always Fascinating to read the different Imprinting & Reality Tunnels in Noam related comments.

[@johnstockwellmajorsmedleyb1214]

IMHO Psychic ability lies within our DNA. Perhaps if Noam could access his DNA and fully use its knowledge, could fly, build massive pyramids, line them up across the globe with stars, make a calender accurate 1k years beyond his own civilization. Much love to all life, priceless in every way.

[@EclecticSceptic]

This has nothing to do with being 'psychic'.

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

Chomsky states that if humans do not rely on the "I-thought" then they could, develop the abilities of other animals. So Chomsky in that instance is admitting the possibility of paranormal abilities indeed since nonwestern meditation alchemy is based on rooting out the I-thought.

[@aspergianheteroclite3014]

So the physical phenomena that exist externally to our mind are not physical? How does this make sense? Is it because we have no completely objective way of proving one external physical objects is different from the other, like the tree analogy? Instead we rely on common sense observation (physic continuity) that fills in the gaps in our lack of understanding? I've listened to Chomsky's lectures on this and still find it quite confusing.

[@excitedaboutlearning1639]

It took me a while to understand what he means. Let me try to explain it to you. Chomsky points out that are concepts are not limited by their physical properties. For example, Star Trek, the characters teleport from one place to another. Is the person who went in a teleport the same person that came out? Every child will say yes. You might've seen movies where someone is cloned and the characters wonder who the real person is. In this case the "physical" properties of the clones are identical to the "real" person, but the psychic continuity is not. Psychic continuity refers to imposing on the world a notion that X is X even if X becomes Y. E.g. The prince is still a prince even if his physical properties change completely (into properties of a frog). Here you couldn't say the frog is the prince without psychic continuity. According to Chomsky, princes, rivers, frogs etc are mental constructions that don't exist in the world as such. If you talk about buildings, for example, the same building can be a school in one instance and a hospital in another. The exact same physical properties (the concrete used to build the building) can represent to different entities, namely, a hospital and a school. We impose the concept of school or hospital on this concrete structure that we see. The "hospital" or "school" don't exist in itself.

[@landongonzales1143]

So I’m confused.. @ 12:20 is he saying the Charles River is actually not the same river? Or is he saying that’s the way we see or interpret it?

[@lucasrandel8589]

same thing. That we even have a concept of the Charles River has to do with how we see or interpret the world.

[@Lucan47]

There's a quote about how when you cross a river a second time, neither you nor the river are the same. We impose continuity over things and entities but really everything is constantly becoming something else.

[@briansalzano4657]

I think Chomsky is saying that psychic continuity is part of the interpretation we impose on the world that identifies the objects that are around us. And the words we use don't correspond to the objects we see in space, but instead reflect a subjective projection we apply to our environments. The problem I have is that though I think I have a grasp of what he's saying, I can't understand it in very much detail. I know that triangles are innate concepts and that we don't see triangles in space, but close approximations of triangles. But how can the same thing be true of a dog ? It's like he's saying the word dog doesn't have an actual referent because our concept of dog comes with experience and not from it. LIke take the word "chair", it can be a range of sizes, shapes, and colors, but there has to be some universal concept that we have to recognize all the different particular instances of chairs. Philosophers call this the problem of universals. So, if that much is true, then just the form of a dog has to fit in some predetermined linguistic mesh inside our heads. I could be totally off base, but this is as close as I can get atm of understanding him.

[@nitewalker11]

you are indeed totally off. this is a very platonic idea that u have here, a very classical understanding of the world, but you are still reducing things to their physical characteristics which chomsky is very specifically advocating against in this video. chomsky argues doing away with "form" as a concept. take the dog as camel illustration - we understand that the thing which takes the form of a camel is still a dog, despite having none of the traits that we would associate with a dog, no projection of a dog from your mind (other than, perhaps very base level things, but we could take the example further and have the dog transform into something completely unlike it and would still understand that it is a dog). this concept of "psychic continuity" argues *against* the universal model, saying that we understand our environments not in terms of comparing a thing to our mental model of it, but in understanding a thing relative to what it itself was before and what it will be in the future.

[@briansalzano4657]

@@nitewalker11 Your response is word salad; if you want me to respond you're going to have to be more concise.

[@nitewalker11]

@@briansalzano4657 well, i wish you luck in your continued attempts to understand chomsky then.

[@briansalzano4657]

@@nitewalker11 Chomsky is saying the human genome determines characteristics about human cognition. One of those aspects is the fact that language and geometry are innate. Nobody is reducing anything; what's being discussed is that there is a correlation between our genes and our apriori concepts that help us make sense of the world. Plato talked about it, Descartes talked about it, Kant talked about it and now it's a fact in the cognitive sciences. Psychic continuity is how human beings personify. Our concept of self is continuity, which is temporal, not about form or shape. You're nothing more than a troll pretending to know things you clearly don't.

[@nitewalker11]

@@briansalzano4657 i don't know what has inspired so much bitterness in your comments! you seem very eager to prove your knowledge. can i ask you a question - if you believe that chomsky's view here is indeed in line with plato, kant, et al., then why does he say at 5:11 "every work on philosophy or linguistics says exactly that, it just happens to be false"?

[@thecasualfront7432]

Why is every Chomsky video borderline inaudible?

[@DonCYHaute]

What's the music?

[@veroman007]

man is a mechanistic being who does not know he is a mechanistic being. no free will. is that basically it?

[@neohumanist8181]

No, what he is saying is that our mechanistic view of the world is a mental construct that fails to give a full account of the mind's capacity to apprehend the reality.

[@carlosneira5537]

¿When a channel in Spanish? Pliiiisss. :'(

[@redlady935]

12:48 summary

[@fabio2634]

Why the stupid music on min 2?? I thought it was someone playing the flute on the tube…

[@FuaConsternation]

the pity about this guy's channel is he delights in adding distractions like those stupid flute background tracks. that and splicing the worst possible quotes as answers to the most trollish questions.

[@cloisterene]

I agree with nearly everything he says and can see that he sincerely seeks truth and genuine knowledge. But don't make the same error as Spinoza (whom I also admire greatly as one of the most sublime minds that ever lived) -- don't assume that simple things like rocks, water, and trees (or the universe as a whole, primarily) do not possess consciousness simply because they do not communicate the same way that we do with human language. They don't have hearts to pump blood, but neither will we when our time is up, in this form. We mustn't assume things we can't prove. *If* consciousness actually is latent and/or integral (included as part of a whole rather than supplied separately) within the universe as a whole, for us to perceive, understand, and enjoy -- then the universe is God. And God is not just some impassive object but a thinking, feeling, omnipotent and omniscient being which is eternal, infinite and righteous (or infallible). Matter is not destroyed, only transformed. That's why I always say: They can hate or deny God, but they can't kill Him.