Shared feelings aren't odd at all. They are, we think, quite common.
Not only do I often think I share the feelings that other people have, but I also think that what is evident to me about a shared situation is also evident to other people (and they most likely think this about their own thoughts).
But that is odd, after all, because we can't actually figure out what's going on in other people's heads. We can only extrapolate from what we think is going on there. And if what we think is going on there is only a function of a combination of physical twitches, then maybe we don't quite share as many essential experiences with other people as we thought we did.
"...we can't actually figure out what's going on in other people's heads. We can only extrapolate from what we think is going on there."
ReplyDeleteHow can you possibly extrapolate from "what you think is going on?" Extrapolation works only if your starting point is a known quantity or function.
"...if what we think is going on there is only a function of a combination of physical twitches, then maybe we don't quite share as many essential experiences with other people as we thought we did."
That's a non sequitur if I've ever seen one. Unless of course you think you're the only human being whose mental experiences are not based on physical processes.
You extrapolate from a guess. You don't know for sure. You go on what you deem reasonable, intuitively, based on what information is available. But you'll never know for sure.
ReplyDeleteI mean physical twitches in the sense that they serve as a basis for a guess as to someone's thoughts. Read that way, I'm not sure what your point is.
OK, I with respect to extrapolation, I withdraw my point (that "extrapolation from a guess" abuses the definition of the word "extrapolation") because it's somewhat petty. My broader disagreement with the post is that I think (and I may be wrong in this) that by far the most common way we use to figure out what's going on in other people's heads is to extrapolate from what's going on in our own heads in similar situations, in which case we're extrapolating not from a guess but from a known variable.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to the second point, I completely misunderstood what you were saying so my original objection is invalid. (What confused me was your saying that "what's going on in other people's heads is a function of a combination of physical twitches", whereas from the explanation in your comment it's apparent that you meant it the other way around. Because the sentence I quoted above says that the physical twitches are the cause of what's in people's heads.) Again though, coming back to the main idea, I don't think observing people's body language is the only way of figuring out what they may be thinking. Explicit analysis of the sort "what would I be thinking if I were her right now?" is at least as useful.
In short, we might, when self-reflexively asking ourselves to supplant our thoughts of what the situational "read" is into another person's head, simply still just privilege our own particular read, being that we consistently favor our own interpretation of anything and ultimately want to win out at any interchange.
ReplyDeleteOf course, that might always happen.
Still, I'm not sure we're quite as in touch with what's going on in our own heads in a given situation as we might think, in that much of what we think went on is possibly decided after the direct experience.
Your claim isn't false, but you're making it way too general. It is demonstrably true that there are situations in which we are able to systematically guess what other people are thinking with 100% accuracy, simply by starting off with the working assumption that most people are instrumentally rational. Those situations aren't rare, either. Game theory explicitly describes how they come about. Nash equilibrium, for example, is a situation in which people's beliefs about what everyone else is thinking are mutually self-enforcing and therefore correct. In other words, whenever people converge on equilibrium behavior, everyone knows exactly what everyone else is thinking, without the need of verbal communication. Game theory shows that sometimes other people's thoughts are accessible to us by pure deduction.
ReplyDeleteCorrection: In my previous comment, the sentence about Nash equilibrium should read "Nash equilibrium is a situation in which people's beliefs about what everyone else is thinking are mutually enforcing and therefore correct." ("Mutually self-enforcing" is gibberish.)
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if it is worth distinguishing strategy from thought process (you're not doing this, but in trying to think about this, i am). No doubt someone's strategy as related to their primary objective, is potentially knowable, and I may not be better off, given knowledge of your strategy, by changing my strategy. There are other tangential thoughts, nevertheless, that I may consider, even manically, before I decide on what to do, many of which may provide you more information about how I view you (i.e. your status as related to mine, or whether you may want certain objects in the future that I wasn't aware of, or simply, how you view yourself separate from the most immediate point of contention).
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely not making a distinction between strategy and thought, and neither is game theory. On the contrary, the game-theoretic meaning of the word "strategy" is, more or less, "a plan of actions plus a belief about other people's plans and beliefs." So when game theory says other people's strategies are knowable, it says, explicitly, that other people's thoughts are knowable. And not just approximately knowable; 100% accessible. Note that I am only talking about situations where participants of some interaction have converged on a set of equilibrium strategies. If it were in principle always impossible to correctly infer other people's thoughts, then convergence on a game-theoretic equilibrium play could never be observed empirically. Which it was. Observed, that is.
ReplyDelete