Breathing fire into the equations of time and mind
by Hugh Deasy
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Steven Pinker's book 'The Blank Slate' offers a fairly humane picture of
human nature. The later chapters are unobjectionable in their liberal slant
regarding feminism, politics, child development etc. It is in the first few chapters
where Pinker bares his teeth, as he lays out the scientific argument for his
stance.
His arguments here are mainly directed against the three obstacles to what
he sees as a scientific view of human nature, namely The Noble Savage (NS),
the Blank Slate (BS) and the Ghost in the Machine (GIM). It is in these
'scientific' chapters that he curiously expresses himself in a more forceful manner,
reserving especial disdain or even contempt for the third (GIM) of these
offending ideas. At times the vehemence of his criticisms of the GIM is
possessed of an unexpected force bordering on bitterness. This is
reminiscent of a similar vehemence encountered in Dennet's 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea'
regarding what he sees as 'sky hooks' or any hint of deviation from a purely
materialist/mechanist view of human nature. According to Dennet, natural
selection is an acid that eats through all resistance, ruthlessly
destroying any vestige of the 'sky hook' mentality.
Pinker's argument that 'Our incomprehension of sentience does not impede
our understanding of how our mind works' is indicative of his desire to ignore
the GIM or anything falling outside the reductionist understanding of the
brain. Admittedly reductionism has produced all the wonders of technology and
modern science in a relatively short time, namely the 3 or 4 centuries since
Galileo, Copernicus and Newton initiated the modern scientific revolution. Paul
Davies in 'The Mind of God' talks of the 'god of the gaps' as losing more and more
ground as the scientific revolution explained more and more of the mysteries or
gaps in our understanding of nature. Thus Newton himself removed the 'magic' from
the dynamical behaviour of objects, and thinkers such as Descartes used the
resulting equations of motion to imply that all living creatures were
machines.
For Descartes the gap had shrunk to the human mind or soul which
interacted with the body via the pineal gland. Later scientists and philosophers would
close off more gaps ? Darwin that of biblical creationism and modern neuroscientists
many of the functional details of the brain-mind system. However, while many
of the gaps spanned by modern science were considerable, they pale in comparison
with the 'explanatory gap' of modern philosophers of consciousness. This is
Chalmers' 'hard problem' of how subjective experience arises from the objective
neural processes we may detect via CAT scans, NMR, EEGs etc. But even Chalmers'
'easy' problems are still beyond the ability of modern science to solve, and
include many of the processes associated with cognitive functions like
intelligence, memory, thinking etc. Pinker also admits that many aspects of abstract
thought are far beyond any of the achievements of Artificial Intelligence. For
example, neural networks, while good at recognizing certain patterns, need
complex steering algorithms to make sense of the real world. Pinker indicates that
some of these steering algorithms come from information in the genome. Though
Malik criticises the tendency to see a brain module for everything as a modern
form of phrenology, Pinker does cite considerable evidence for at least some
modules, such as those for seeing, hearing, social restraint etc. Malik points out
that for example in the case of the 'theory of mind' needed for us to make
sense of the actions of others, the modular approach is faulty as the module has
to change with time as understanding of others' actions grows. Malik also
points out that this theory of mind first arises around the age of three, at
exactly the same time as linguistic ability reaches sufficient proficiency to
allow the expression of grammatically complex sentences. Thus the theory of mind is
more likely a corollary of increasing linguistic ability. So the inherent
linguistic 'module' first mooted by Chomsky may support the development of many
cognitive abilities without the need for further inherent modules.
Pinker points out that:
"Some theorists believe that there are indeed certain questions that
humans are incapable of answering because of our evolved nature. Our minds
evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters
to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness or to answer any question
we are capable of asking. We cannot hold ten thousand words in our short-term
memory.
We cannot see ultra-violet light. We cannot mentally rotate an object
in the fourth dimension. And perhaps we cannot solve conundrums like free
will and sentience."
Malik sees things very differently - he points out that we have solved all
kinds of problems:
"from the structure of DNA, to the physical composition of the sun
despite our evolutionary legacy, not because of it. It is true that the
development of science requires mental skills, many of which are evolved
adaptations, but science has enabled us to go well beyond those adaptations. We can do
science only because we can transcend our evolutionary heritage and act as
subjects, rather than as objects"
i.e. the standard issue kit typically consists of rudimentary
modules. But Einstein's brain had a big math centre and musicians develop bloated
music centres, but neither neccessarily have big ones to start with - it's
interest, will power and use that develop the skill - use it or lose it.
Pinker's discussion of the brain-mind system steers clear of such
quandaries as the subject. He also avoids mentioning the binding problem, or how the
image on the retina, once dissected into its myriad features such as colour,
motion, lines of different slant etc. all processed in different parts of the
brain, comes together in our subjective awareness as an integrated image. The
problem of qualia or subjective feel of red, c-minor, Chanel nr. 5, etc. is also
not addressed. But coming back to the scientific arguments against NS, BS and
GIS, in many instances bald statements are made without sufficient backing.
For instance, qualitative arguments are presented of the ability of the
information in the genome to specify largely the functions of the brain, not to
mention the 11 physiological sub-systems of the body. But these arguments are vague
or imprecise. For example he repeatedly refers to 34,000 genes, but currently 30,000
seems to be an upper limit. At other times he refers to the 780 Megabytes in
the genome specifying the body and brain, ignoring the fact of 95% junk DNA,
much of the latter being repeats, viral or other non-coding DNA. Then he quotes
James Watson as saying "Imagine watching a play with 30,000 actors. You'd get
pretty confused" in support of the ability of the 15 Megabytes of actual gene DNA
(and non-protein-coding RNA) to generate so much complexity. However this
comparison is somewhat disingenuous, as each of the actors in such a play would be
a complex subjective being, while the genes are just strips of chemicals
with on average 1000 'letters' of the amino acid alphabet. And to say that
multiple copies of the genome is comparable to re-arranging the alphabet to produce
the works of Shakespeare is similarly specious, as the comparison is more
with chopping up multiple copies of 30,000 paragraphs, tossing them into a hat
and hoping that Hamlet will somehow emerge. Protein folding origami tucks
away many of the codons to leave only a few active sites on the protein surface.
Its information content might be thought of now as appreciably lessened: just
the ability to dock at a receptor site or block the action of some other
protein of the proteome - Later splicing will produce a few variation on the protein
theme, but no fundamentally independent new shapes. Take for example a corkscrew
shaped protein and a wavy one. By splicing we get a cross between a corkscrew
and a wave, but the chance of this being useful is not very high. Granted,
evolution will have streamlined things so that such combinations may find a use, but
by its nature that use is unlikely to vary from those of the parent
proteins. Pinker fails to explain how to get around the hard mathematical limit of
15 megabytes - massage that data in whichever way you want, you will always
be limited by the sheer paucity of hard bits. And those who postulate
miraculous feats of genetic coding fail to consider that there is also massive data
loss in protein folding: the latter process, though an amazing bit of origami that
even the most powerful supercomputers have yet to crack in a reasonable time,
neatly folds away masses of nucleotides - all you're left with are a few active
sites and jigsaw bits: you're only using the nucleotides on the surface of a
volume. This is hardly efficient coding. Note also that experiments in cutting
out sections of the mouse genome sometimes failed to affect the normal
development of the mouse; these sections being gene-bearing ones several kilobytes
long.
Looking at some of the higher cognitive functions of the brain/mind,
Malik pointed out that the logic of computers can get at the outside of words,
but not their inside, which metaphor some linguists use to discuss the
difficulty of coding for language. A scene in 'Matrix Revolutions' is reminiscent of
this. The man of the nice Indian couple, who were the manifestations of programs
of some sort, when queried by Neo as to the appropriateness of using the
term 'love' for his software 'daughter', pointed out that Love was just a
word with many connections - now maybe all that neural connectivity is enough to
make various words redolent with associations, but whether that is the same
as meaning is another matter. It might be that since Kant made the
'subject' fashionable the scales fell from people's eyes and they saw the
subjectivity of qualia everywhere - not only in the red of red, but in the meaning of
meaning. It's similar to what Roger Penrose wished to convey with the example of a
chess problem on which Deep Blue came to grief. One might say that he got the
blues for not being deep enough! The idea there was that human players saw the
problem in a flash, as we understood its meaning, but the poor old computer failed
to apprehend the meaning or rather the inside of the problem. Again it's
analogous to qualia ? e.g. in the example of neuroscientist Mary (Chalmers, 2002)
brought up in a black and white environment, who was an expert on roses and the
theory of colour perception, but despite being able to write tomes on the
sensory impressions elicited by a rose, was amazed by the actual redness of the
rose once she'd been let out of her colourless environment. You could say she
just didn't understand the meaning of red - or rather, the 'true' meaning, in
the sense of the subjective impression of colour.
Returning to Pinker's vitriolic denunciation of the ghost in the machine,
one is led to ask:
What had the poor old ghost done to occasion such wrath? Perhaps it has
something to do with the fact that Pinker is a member of CSICOP, the
'PSI-COPs' or thought police of the 21st century. The agenda of the latter
organisation is to 'debunk' anything 'paranormal' or which they see as contradicting the
orthodox materialist/reductionist/mechanist stance of modern science.
This fact might explain Pinker's eagerness to dismiss Alfred Wallace simply because
he committed the sin of seeking the ghost in the machine by joining the
spiritualist movement of the 19th century. Yet he was arguably as
important as Darwin in starting off modern evolutionary theory. On the other hand,
Pinker turns a blind eye to William James' preoccupation with the same subject
matter, whilst availing of the latter's psychological insights. James and Wallace
were aware of the machine like nature of the human body and even then there was
a surprisingly detailed knowledge of the function of different brain
regions. Yet they still saw it worthwhile to pursue the ghost within that machine.
They didn't rage against the machine or against the ghost. But Pinker
definitely does the latter.
Finally, let me conclude with responses to questions I was asked by a friend
who is a fanatic supporter of Pinker:
"I take issue too with Chalmers, quoting Nagel, when he says the 'there is
something it is like to be a conscious organism.' On the contrary:
there is nothing it is like. If there were something it was like, we'd be part
way to knowing what consciousness was. Our experience of consciousness is
essentially one of a kind, and therefore unsusceptible to analogy."
Of course there is something it is like, in the sense of there being an
inner experience of what it's like to be oneself - and we know it better than
anything else - it's our own inner subjective, outward pointing awareness of the
world with all its subjective impressions of sensory and internal processes.
Thus we are part-way to knowing what consciousness is like - as Wittgenstein says,
it's as if we know what's in our box, but can't see into other boxes, or, the
problem of current neuroscience, explain how the objective correlates we see going
on in those other boxes could produce something like it is to be in THIS box
of internal, subjective consciousness. Another point is that the nature of
these subjective feelings or qualia is that they are qualitative feels and
therefore not necessarily ultra-precise. Thus qualitative feelings may change and
transmute without fundamentally changing the subject having those
experiences.
This answers those who maintain that since we can change consciousness by
taking alcohol or other drugs then there is no true subjective consciousness.
Chalmers' main point is that the hard problem is how the water of objective
processes gets turned into the wine of subjective experience, even if that wine can
change its flavour somewhat depend on the state of the water..
"Can't subjective time be sufficiently explained using memory content? I
have the feeling that yesterday is before tomorrow because I have memories
of yesterday and none of tomorrow. This generates the whole (to the
physicist spurious, and rightly so, say I) illusion of an advancing edge of
present at which future becomes past. A creature with no memory can have no sense
of time passing and, setting aside the slight impediment of
comprehensive amnesia, would probably make a better physicist than you or me."
Memory content a la computer data storage ('working memory') is just an
objective correlate of the subjective impression of the recent past fading away
gradually, while we have a stronger
subjective awareness of the present. Simlarly we anticipate the near
future in planning,
but it is not yet present in subjective time awareness to the same extent
as the 'now'. This is really a koan - how time's arrow is subjectively felt. No words
can express it, just as words fail when describing red or C minor. They are ineffable.
Philosophers before Descartes were caught up in the adulation of
rationalism as true thought, and often failed to see the paradox of subjective
experience. The 'koan' of the sound of one hand clapping is nothing compared to the koan
of the subjective impression of red of the scorched palm. An exception might be
Saint Augustine, who in the 4th century already stated the basic paradox of
the subjective nature of the arrow of time:
"What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to
explain it to him who asks, I do not know."
The subjective nature of the arrow of time is not addressed by
thermodynamic arguments such as those of Hawking or the recently deceased Ilya
Prigogine. Such objective processes don't get the point of the arrow - which is again
subjective and a direct corollary of the qualia of the time sense. Husserl describes
the simultaneous holding of different points in a time interval in
consciousness in his analysis of the sense of music - we would have no feeling of music if
we were only ever aware of one note at a time. Somehow the relation between
past and present notes excites us - in this sense music is like a subjective
enjoyment of maths, since the relation of notes and intervals to each
other is essentially mathematical. And music is only subjective - an objective
analysis is dry as dust.
Maybe music is a good example of 'breathing fire into the equations' -
that's a good phrase of Hawking: originally applied, I think to the universe as a
whole - Physics gives us, "no idea of what breathes fire into the equations and
makes there a world for us to describe".
Dr. Hugh Deasy trained as a physicist and astronomer and is
currently working as flight dynamics consultant
at the European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany.
References/ Bibliography
Barbour, J., 1999: 'The End of Time', Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Chambers, David, "The Puzzle of Conscious Experience", Scientific
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Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex,
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Dawkins, R. (1976) 'The Selfish Gene' p 197 - 198 Oxford University Press,
UK
Dennett, D.C. (1995) 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea' p 515 - 517, Penguin, UK
Hawking, S., 1996: 'A Brief History of Time', Bantam
Heidegger, M., 1997: 'Being and Time', State Univ of New York Pr; (October
1997)
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James , W., 1890, 'The Principles of Psychology', New York, Henry Holt
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Malik, Kenan, Man, Beast and Zombie: What Science Can and Cannot Tell Us
About Human Nature, 2000
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Penrose, R., 1995. 'Shadows of the Mind', Vintage (Sep 1995)
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Pinker, Steven, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, 2002
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Sutherland , K., 1997, jcs-online thread:
http://www.imprint.co.uk/online/homuphob.html
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