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Old 09-04-2015, 10:16 AM   #26
Keith Larman
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

Regardless, please don't let me keep you from the TIE project. I'm still trying to digest the last one.

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Old 09-04-2015, 11:00 AM   #27
Erick Mead
 
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

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Peter A Goldsbury wrote: View Post
Intention is certainly connected to action, in the sense that actions can be termed intentional or unintentional. They might also be 'centre-driven', whatever this means. This is a metaphor that needs to be unpacked, for its meaning is not intuitively clear.
There are three objective classes of relationship between intention and action , as I see it

1) The body does act on its own -- without intervention of conscious decision or "intent". These are reflexes -- of several classifiable kinds - some involving one neural connection others involving two or more -- the more, the longer the latency time between prompt and action. If anything qualifies as "center-driven" I would propose this as candidate.

2) The body can be trained to habituate certain patterned actions that are derived from conscious training, but which act in the event without substantial conscious control, other than initiating, and which verge on the upper latency range of some truly reflexive actions.

3) Then there are deliberate actions actively guided by conscious intention.

Most combat occurs in the range of classes 1 & 2, mainly because of the severe time limitations involved, on the order of 50-200 ms latency for prompt v. response

All attacking behaviors occur on the range of class 2, or 3.(100-300 ms latency or greater). Trained defending behaviors occur on the range of 2 and can approach the 100 ms latency barrier of true reflex.

A certain class of reflexive defending behaviors of extremely short neuro-muscular response times (25-50 ms) occur in the range of class 1. This cannot be trained directly -- it is neurological -- not cognitive in nature.

However, what one does to capitalize on these behaviors once they occur -- that can be trained -- and as counterattacks, can be devastating due the immediate and inherent desychronization of the longer attacking pulse frequency or latent rhythm between the attacker's prompt and action. In other words, sente is largely irrelevant in this mode of action.

To analogize -- one cannot make a wave break, but one can learn to see and be where the wave breaks, and be trained and so postured to act effectively to use its power once it has broken.

This kind of relationship between training, intention and action, in my view, is inherent in aiki. But there is an additional factor -- one can train to act in ways in class 2 of actions, and which do actually prompt certain class 1 reflexive actions in others, and this is also inherent in aiki. Lastly, one can train to posture the body so that reflexive actions are deployed upon interaction with an attacker -- one can effectively become the breaking wave.

And if you have ever been caught inside on a breaking wave, well -- it is all just ineffective flailing in chaos and a desperate hope for air ...

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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Old 09-04-2015, 11:53 AM   #28
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

Quote:
Erick Mead wrote: View Post
There are three objective classes of relationship between intention and action , as I see it

1) The body does act on its own -- without intervention of conscious decision or "intent". These are reflexes -- of several classifiable kinds - some involving one neural connection others involving two or more -- the more, the longer the latency time between prompt and action. If anything qualifies as "center-driven" I would propose this as candidate.

2) The body can be trained to habituate certain patterned actions that are derived from conscious training, but which act in the event without substantial conscious control, other than initiating, and which verge on the upper latency range of some truly reflexive actions.

3) Then there are deliberate actions actively guided by conscious intention.
3) might not actually be a thing that ever happens though.

http://www.rifters.com/real/articles...Soon_et_al.pdf

Quote:
There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.
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Old 09-04-2015, 12:30 PM   #29
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

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3) might not actually be a thing that ever happens though.

http://www.rifters.com/real/articles...Soon_et_al.pdf
Then we jail too many people for crimes since they are automata, and not moral agents.

But when we have dangerous dumb creatures that are difficult to put under control we either put them down or corral them.

Given that the result is the same on either premise -- I am not sure it makes much of difference, really.

But then I am apparently not deciding to write this, I am just justifying ex-post an a priori compulsion created by your writing ...

Damn you .....

Cordially,

Erick Mead
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Old 09-04-2015, 02:04 PM   #30
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

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Then we jail too many people for crimes since they are automata, and not moral agents.

But when we have dangerous dumb creatures that are difficult to put under control we either put them down or corral them.

Given that the result is the same on either premise -- I am not sure it makes much of difference, really.

But then I am apparently not deciding to write this, I am just justifying ex-post an a priori compulsion created by your writing ...

Damn you .....
I bet you that the law is pretty robust in this regard - whether or not we are all automatons, there is a physical being you can lock up in jail if its objective behavior violates the laws.

But when you (automaton or not) are trying to develop new skills and behaviors in yourself, I think some consideration of what's going on inside might be worthwhile. I'm a big advocate of drilling behaviors into myself and seeing how that changes my game sometime down the line, for me the idea that it's all a bunch of reflexes seems to reinforce my ideas.
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Old 09-04-2015, 04:22 PM   #31
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

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But when you (automaton or not) are trying to develop new skills and behaviors in yourself, I think some consideration of what's going on inside might be worthwhile.
FWIW -- my 3-part hierarchy is, in addition to tracking my own observations, basically a parallel for kinematic processing of the same scheme laid out in Korzybski's General Semantics. Read it if you dare -- difficult, dense and demanding -- but profound and largely confirmed in modern research.

A diagram of his four-part schema of three "Silent" levels and one "Verbal" level is here:

Korzybski's level I "Happening", is what I describe as a "prompt" and his levels II, III and IV track roughly with my classes of action 1) being monosynaptic or very basic polysynaptic reflexes, in which actuation precedes or coincides with awareness of the prompt causing it; class 2) where there is awareness of prompt and actuation and process modification is possible through prior process training, but not by immediate in situ modification of the processing; and 3) where in situ processing modification is part of the immediate actuation, what we would consider conscious expressive movement.

Last edited by Erick Mead : 09-04-2015 at 04:28 PM.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
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Old 09-06-2015, 02:06 PM   #32
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

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The issue with referring to these high-level issues of "self" when talking about martial arts is: volitional movement is way downstream of high-level consciousness stuff. Let's say there is no free will. There is still such thing as "volitional movement" even if that is a misnomer. "Intent" as used in martial arts terminology just refers to a part of volitional movement-- a small part that precedes alpha motoneuron activation, and functions to alter force input/output in an observable way. It's downstream of any discussion of self or free will. It's part of the puppet's functionality rather than something to do with the puppet master. I don't know maybe it is beside your point. My point is that it is an obervable aspect of motor behavior that we can use just as much as we can learn to ride a bike or wiggle the ears.

BTW, I agree that the current research is consistent with free will being an illusion. Fun idea but it is far from settled. My point is that it doesn't matter, because the fact is, we can pick up a coffee cup, open a door, throw a punch, etc, and intent is a part of those observable behaviors.

ps I have similar interests as you I guess. Based on my reading, I think the older conception of self in Buddhism (if you take Therevada as being representative of a closer to "original" Buddhist POV) is something metaphysical that is upstream of all aspects of mind anyway-- consider that one of the beings you can be reincarnated as is a being with no mind, just body. It's one of the creatures in a higher realm than our world. It can live and die and produce effects in the world, thus can accumulate karma. But has no volition at all! That supposedly can be one of the past or future lives of any of us, but the "self" is something that is equally at home in there, or in our body, or in an ant's! Wacky stuff.
Jonathan,

What do you mean by 'upstream' and 'downstream' in this post? You are using a metaphor here, but I think you need to substitute something else. Otherwise the problem of méconnaissance can arise, explained in TIE 27.

Best wishes,

PAG

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Old 09-06-2015, 02:16 PM   #33
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Talking Re: No intention, center drives everything?

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Keith Larman wrote: View Post
Well, 30 years ago, but yes. I started reading her books as a result of my interest in Wittgenstein. I must admit I'm much more happy with Wittgenstein and then Austin and Searle, however, when it comes to these topics. I may have to find my old copy of intention by Anscombe, though, now that you mention it, as I don't think I really gave it a proper chance when I read it way back then.

Regardless, IMHO even Anscombe's discussion (as I remember it) only scratches the surface of the myriad of things being talked about in this thread (or are being implied by various posts). There seem to be notes of "intention" as a physiological phenomena ("mental" intent driving subtle physical changes), intent in the sense of a mental state of purpose, intent in the sense of the "meaning" (or future intent?) of the physical action, and so on. And the "scientific approaches" seem to be some special cases of some of those things. Anyway, I do tend to glaze up fairly quickly when the topic comes up as I find that most are speaking right past each other with very different ideas as to the details of what they're discussing. Now that I think about it discussions like these are why I was so attracted to Austin, Peirce and Searle. After a while reading these philosophers it's quite easy to find yourself tossing up your hands and walking out the room muttering "oh, whatever, we'll never get anywhere on this."

Which is how I felt reading some of the posts on this thread.

So, as I said before, carry on. It's all good. And it's got me digging out some old favorites again. I just keep ending up feeling like my ability to understand even common language and hence my reality is diminishing daily. At some point, I'm just going to be a blithering idiot muttering non-sequiturs in the corner (although I'm sure some think I've already attained that level here).
Well, as a famous actor once stated in a famous film, "I know exactly what you mean."

PAG

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Old 09-06-2015, 07:41 PM   #34
Keith Larman
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

And it just keeps coming no matter what you do. Take care.

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Old 09-07-2015, 08:44 PM   #35
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

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Peter A Goldsbury wrote: View Post
Jonathan,

What do you mean by 'upstream' and 'downstream' in this post? You are using a metaphor here, but I think you need to substitute something else. Otherwise the problem of méconnaissance can arise, explained in TIE 27.

Best wishes,

PAG
Hi, I haven't read the whole thread but just to reply-- I was using the terms in the biology sense (considering the neuroscience angle from Cliff), but maybe misplaced here.
The generic idea being that signal transduction (any cascade of changes that occur due to some initial event) procedes in a certain direction. So with reference to any point in the cascade, there is an upstream and downstream direction. It's just the direction of causality, like in a line of falling dominos.

What I meant specifically:
A volitional movement has such a cascade, like

Plan/goal-->desire to act-->cortical premotor activity-->APA-->alpha motoneuron firing-->muscle contraction

Now we don't know for sure what "intent" is but it is most likely in the region of APA above. That is to say, it is close to activation of the motor units necessary for the volitional movement, but separate from it (and before it). But you can see it is downstream of the desire/idea of doing the movement. "Xin" would be the desire above, and "yi" would be the intent that we are talking about that is between desire and motor unit activation.

My point was that the feeling of volition is at the beginning of this cascade, whereas motor intent is more downstream. So that means the "who" in the question of who is calling the shots is a separate, and bigger, question from how intent works to manage force in the motor system.
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Old 09-08-2015, 10:55 AM   #36
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

How does the chain for non-volitional, reflex responses differ?

My (crude) understanding, is that many of the "magic" effects seen in high-level aikido come from interrupting the volitional chain with something that causes a non-volitional response.

Katherine
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Old 09-08-2015, 02:13 PM   #37
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

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Katherine Derbyshire wrote: View Post
How does the chain for non-volitional, reflex responses differ?

My (crude) understanding, is that many of the "magic" effects seen in high-level aikido come from interrupting the volitional chain with something that causes a non-volitional response.
I summarized some of this, with some studies available way back when. A couple of links are expired but the Wayback Machine is a mighty ally ...

Visual discrimination tasks are on the order of 500-2000ms,with wide variation.

Volitional latency without discrimination is anywhere between 125-300ms centered on about 215ms.

Highly trained actions push the 90-100ms boundary.

Monosynaptic spinal reflexes clock in at between 10 and 40ms depending on the strength of the stimulus. Nikkyo and sankyo clearly deploy these as do the more subtle aiki sage and aiki age, respectively.

Cortically processed sensations (vice the nociceptor reflexes) are about 50-60ms one-way. Polysynaptic postural recovery signals are also on this order of latency.

So by the time the volitional brain has caught up to a triggered spinal reflex action, about five other things may have happened, and the sensation of what happened arrives at about the same time as the postural recovery signal of the reflexive reaction to the disturbance and there is complete confusion on what is happening, and in what order, much less what to do about any of it other than flailing about.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
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Old 09-08-2015, 04:32 PM   #38
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

Quote:
Katherine Derbyshire wrote: View Post
How does the chain for non-volitional, reflex responses differ?

My (crude) understanding, is that many of the "magic" effects seen in high-level aikido come from interrupting the volitional chain with something that causes a non-volitional response.

Katherine
So this is more regarding the uke then, as opposed to the nage role that I think the OP focused on. I agree this is highly pertinent to aiki.

Well, there is at least 2 main types of involuntary movement to mention.

The spinal reflexes (sensory receptor-->alpha neuron-->muscle contraction) are fast and subconscious, but less interesting I think. They are interesting for striking, but as yet I don't believe these are in aiki age/sage etc. Joint locks like nikkyo I could believe trigger a reflex but I wouldn't expect it to be a reflex that contributes to the "shape" of the technique. (The sankyo variation that omits hand/wrist manipulation works fine as taijutsu, though it would not trigger any stretch reflex in the wrist muscles.)

More interesting is the other kind of involuntary movement, the type that involves the brain. The introduction and refs in the embedded link (click "APA") in my above post looks like a good start for this. I haven't had time to finish reading it myself though!

Upshot there is that in general, all volitional movements need some associated involuntary motor actions to go along with them. These are mainly to stabilize posture during the movement, and beyond that maybe they're also for making power available. In terms of the order of the "chain" of signals, that is exactly what is being debated in the linked paper. These may be co-triggered by your attempt to do a movement, like a line of dominos that has a fork in the road, but maybe not.

Beyond APAs, volitionally-initiated or volitionally-motivated movements include subconscious action within themselves-- motor control simply isn't entirely conscious. The cerebellum for instance is certainly involved in your movements all the time, yet none of its processing is "visible" to consciousness. It stops your movements from being jerky/out of control, and keeps you from overshooting your reach/gait, etc. Sounds familiar...

Basically my working hypothesis is:
There is a fairly independent sensorimotor control system that is not conscious, and it involves the cerebellum, muscle spindles, and other sensory receptors. It's function would be to continuously make sure volitional action is possible by providing prerequisite stability and strength. It's like 2 parallel rows of dominos (with some crosstalk of course). One is your volitional movements, the other is this system. Your body can talk to this system fairly directly through the language of tension in the soft tissues of the body, and through manipulation of where weight is positioned. So if you can influence this system enough, you can restrict or influence the options that the conscious mind has to choose from. And, you can do it dynamically, so that your influence stays a step ahead of his ability to choose to act.

Ultimately, I would hope that you could use this system to produce a complete throw, regardless of what his conscious mind is trying to choose to do. He would fall without knowing why.
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Old 09-08-2015, 05:11 PM   #39
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

Quote:
Jonathan Wong wrote: View Post
Basically my working hypothesis is:
There is a fairly independent sensorimotor control system that is not conscious, and it involves the cerebellum, muscle spindles, and other sensory receptors. It's function would be to continuously make sure volitional action is possible by providing prerequisite stability and strength. It's like 2 parallel rows of dominos (with some crosstalk of course). One is your volitional movements, the other is this system. Your body can talk to this system fairly directly through the language of tension in the soft tissues of the body, and through manipulation of where weight is positioned. So if you can influence this system enough, you can restrict or influence the options that the conscious mind has to choose from. And, you can do it dynamically, so that your influence stays a step ahead of his ability to choose to act.

Ultimately, I would hope that you could use this system to produce a complete throw, regardless of what his conscious mind is trying to choose to do. He would fall without knowing why.
And I would imagine that the secondary system is trainable, and that in fact most motor skills involve training it to some degree. Certainly an NBA player isn't consciously thinking out the steps in a pick-and-roll or a jump shot, any more than a senior aikidoka thinks through the irimi-tenkan footwork or the mechanics of a forward roll.

The "fall without knowing why" experience is pretty common in aikido. Sounds like you're on the right track to me.

Katherine
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Old 09-08-2015, 06:11 PM   #40
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

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Katherine Derbyshire wrote: View Post
And I would imagine that the secondary system is trainable, and that in fact most motor skills involve training it to some degree. Certainly an NBA player isn't consciously thinking out the steps in a pick-and-roll or a jump shot, any more than a senior aikidoka thinks through the irimi-tenkan footwork or the mechanics of a forward roll.

The "fall without knowing why" experience is pretty common in aikido. Sounds like you're on the right track to me.

Katherine
Certainly, and there is already literature on plasticity/learning of APAs for instance (I think it's called acquisition of APA, as in, acquisition of a good, fast, and robust APA that can be executed as a unit). I think a big part of what people mean by "muscle memory" is the learning that occurs in this subconscious support/power system.

I guess any motor skill that is not purely "fine motor skill" involves learning in this system.
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Old 09-08-2015, 09:19 PM   #41
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

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Hi, I haven't read the whole thread but just to reply-- I was using the terms in the biology sense (considering the neuroscience angle from Cliff), but maybe misplaced here.
The generic idea being that signal transduction (any cascade of changes that occur due to some initial event) procedes in a certain direction. So with reference to any point in the cascade, there is an upstream and downstream direction. It's just the direction of causality, like in a line of falling dominos.

What I meant specifically:
A volitional movement has such a cascade, like

Plan/goal-->desire to act-->cortical premotor activity-->APA-->alpha motoneuron firing-->muscle contraction

Now we don't know for sure what "intent" is but it is most likely in the region of APA above. That is to say, it is close to activation of the motor units necessary for the volitional movement, but separate from it (and before it). But you can see it is downstream of the desire/idea of doing the movement. "Xin" would be the desire above, and "yi" would be the intent that we are talking about that is between desire and motor unit activation.

My point was that the feeling of volition is at the beginning of this cascade, whereas motor intent is more downstream. So that means the "who" in the question of who is calling the shots is a separate, and bigger, question from how intent works to manage force in the motor system.
Yes, I see. Your use of cascade continues the water metaphor. Your use of 'signal traduction' (which I gather relates to cell biology and the responses produced in response to a signal) seems to mean the same as the domino effect, though I suspect that it is more complicated. So, we have a cascade and things occurring upstream and downstream, but I think it is a further step to state or suggest that they are causally related and I also doubt whether causation adequately explains intentional action without a lot more qualification.

To see what I mean, consider a set of scenes in the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. At some point Benjamin (Brad Pitt) receives a telegram to the effect that Daisy (Cate Blanchett) has had a serious road accident. Benjamin goes to Paris and as he climbs the stairs in the hospital he thinks out loud and gives an account of what happened. He gives a lengthy sequence of discrete events that culminated in the accident and notes that if only one thing had happened differently, the accident might not have happened. However, it will not do to state that this chain of events simply caused the accident.

Of course, you might respond that your concerns, as expressed in your posts, are quite different from the issues relating to intentional or unintentional action, but both accounts are highly relevant to the rather absolute claims made in the thread title.

Best wishes,

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Old 09-09-2015, 02:42 PM   #42
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

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So, we have a cascade and things occurring upstream and downstream, but I think it is a further step to state or suggest that they are causally related and I also doubt whether causation adequately explains intentional action without a lot more qualification.
OK I see the problem-- I am only familiar with some of the neuroscience aspect of this picture, not with the philosphy background.

Science seeks to eventually reveal causality in the nature of events in the universe, so I typically take it as given that the world has causality. I think it is fair to suggest that causality exists in each and every event in the universe, even if causality can only be described as a requisite change in probabilities (a kind of "causal influence" rather than determinism). "Difference that makes a difference" and all that. If this sort of basic, understandable causality was not thought to underlie nature, there would be no hotly debated "black hole information paradox" in physics that has gotten press for a while. And, most of biology would lose its momentum, since teasing apart causation and mere correlation is such a major driving force in the field.

My posts presuppose that:

1. A series of events that is sequentially causal does exist between when an animal decides to make a motor action and when the movement takes place
2. The series of events includes some neural activity in the brain "upstream" of events in the periphery
3. Some of the brain events constitute neural correlates of mental states
4. The feeling of consciousness may be a neural phenomenon that includes part of the chain.

We know for instance that muscle fibers contract as a result of alpha motor neuron firing, in a demonstrably causal way. We know of areas of the brain (motor cortex) that contain neurons which project onto those motor neurons, which can cause them to fire. We know that those premotor neurons in turn receive their own projections, etc. We don't have everything mapped out, but some amount of a causal chain appears to exist.

At any rate, if "intent" in the martial arts sense were to be found (through experiments using imaging, recording, stim, etc) to mean something like "activation of coordinated sets of gamma motoneurons, which is to be paired with activation of the alpha motoneurons appropriate for the movement in question," then we don't need to get too crazy about metaphysical issues... it's just a part of how the brain controls the body. Very mechanical and much removed from questions about free will, consciousness, etc. Also I realize may be interpretting the word "intent" differently than others!
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Old 09-09-2015, 06:09 PM   #43
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

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OK I see the problem-- I am only familiar with some of the neuroscience aspect of this picture, not with the philosphy background.

Science seeks to eventually reveal causality in the nature of events in the universe, so I typically take it as given that the world has causality. I think it is fair to suggest that causality exists in each and every event in the universe, even if causality can only be described as a requisite change in probabilities (a kind of "causal influence" rather than determinism). "Difference that makes a difference" and all that. If this sort of basic, understandable causality was not thought to underlie nature, there would be no hotly debated "black hole information paradox" in physics that has gotten press for a while. And, most of biology would lose its momentum, since teasing apart causation and mere correlation is such a major driving force in the field.

My posts presuppose that:

1. A series of events that is sequentially causal does exist between when an animal decides to make a motor action and when the movement takes place
2. The series of events includes some neural activity in the brain "upstream" of events in the periphery
3. Some of the brain events constitute neural correlates of mental states
4. The feeling of consciousness may be a neural phenomenon that includes part of the chain.

We know for instance that muscle fibers contract as a result of alpha motor neuron firing, in a demonstrably causal way. We know of areas of the brain (motor cortex) that contain neurons which project onto those motor neurons, which can cause them to fire. We know that those premotor neurons in turn receive their own projections, etc. We don't have everything mapped out, but some amount of a causal chain appears to exist.

At any rate, if "intent" in the martial arts sense were to be found (through experiments using imaging, recording, stim, etc) to mean something like "activation of coordinated sets of gamma motoneurons, which is to be paired with activation of the alpha motoneurons appropriate for the movement in question," then we don't need to get too crazy about metaphysical issues... it's just a part of how the brain controls the body. Very mechanical and much removed from questions about free will, consciousness, etc. Also I realize may be interpretting the word "intent" differently than others!
My initial post on this topic took up your use of water metaphor to explain what you think is happening when someone does something or intends to do something. I do not think anyone would deny that nature, understood in a broad sense, is believed to exhibit causality; I certainly do not. I was more concerned to make clearer what you assumed or took for granted in your use of the water metaphor: what you thought was involved in a causal explanation, whether in 'hard' theoretical science or in other areas where intention or intentional action is displayed.

This article, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/w...c-explanation/, presents some issues involved.

Best wishes,

P A Goldsbury
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Old 09-10-2015, 01:16 AM   #44
JW
 
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

Thank you! Looks like my "want to read" list is getting longer still! I'm moving to a new city but maybe after, I'll have time for things like this. That link looks to be a few paragraphs shorter than the average TIE, but even harder to digest.
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Old 09-10-2015, 01:29 AM   #45
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

Don't mention it.

The following deal with related subjects, but at a less technical level.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/explanat/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/int-ext/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/int-ex-ml/

This will give you some idea of how Keith Larman and I tend to approach the subjects of this thread.

Best wishes

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Old 09-10-2015, 08:42 PM   #46
Erick Mead
 
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

Quote:
Jonathan Wong wrote: View Post
The spinal reflexes (sensory receptor-->alpha neuron-->muscle contraction) are fast and subconscious, but less interesting I think. They are interesting for striking, but as yet I don't believe these are in aiki age/sage etc. Joint locks like nikkyo I could believe trigger a reflex but I wouldn't expect it to be a reflex that contributes to the "shape" of the technique. (The sankyo variation that omits hand/wrist manipulation works fine as taijutsu, though it would not trigger any stretch reflex in the wrist muscles.)
For reference: http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s3/chapter02.html

Basically, as I see it, aiki age and aiki sage do not so much exploit the activation aspect of the spinal reflex on the triggered muscle group as they do in triggering the reciprocal inhibition of the opposing muscle group, creating an unbalanced force condition. It reads "weird" to the person affected because the reactive stability signals to the reciprocal groups are stymied but those to the activated groups are unimpeded, and the result doubles down on the error.

Applied in-phase -- this results in fairly spectacular pops and drops. Out of phase, it locks uke up. Since the insertions of the muscles are along spiral paths, this both causes and is particularly sensitive to axial torques. Sankyo and nikkyo illustrate this reciprocal torque relationship. Sankyo torques one way resulting in a "pop" of the extensors causing a rise to the toes; Nikkyo torques the other way resulting in a "drop" as the flexors fold the legs. Kotegaeshi does this as well - but nikkyo isolates the focus with reinforcing torques applied from both ends of the limb segment.

Last edited by Erick Mead : 09-10-2015 at 08:50 PM.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
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Old 09-11-2015, 05:12 PM   #47
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Re: No intention, center drives everything?

You guys are smart
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