Index: 237
31 July 2015
26 July 2015
We Need Animal Cognition, Not Neuroscience
Posted by Matthew Blakeway
Neuroscience, it was thought, would tell us many things: what a mind is, whether humans have freewill, or where in the brain we find these things. It would explain consciousness, morality, evil, or why humans tend to believe in prime-moving inter-galactic omnipotent fairies. While there are still philosophers who hold out hope for answers from neuroscience, the failure of progress is striking. An illustration reveals the way in which the arguments typically fail: in his book Freewill, cognitive neuroscientist Sam Harris argued that brain scans revealed a neural blip the moment before a subject was conscious of choosing to act. This, he considered, demonstrated that freewill is a myth, for the reason that the brain acts before we know it. Yet the argument is too easily neutralised. What was the blip? It may just as well have been one part of the brain going, 'OK, Freewill, this is one for your department.'
There are, on the contrary, significant problems that neuroscience has created. For example, its tendency to believe that the mind is nothing but the brain may open it up to a classic problem of logical systems, identified by the mathematical logician Kurt Gödel. Does Gödel's incompleteness theorem imply that the brain is unable to understand itself, so that neuroscience can have no achievable end-goal? Probably! The computer analogy of the brain is an old one, yet it is still useful. We have been inching towards a neuroscientific view that a brain is a biological computing device. Assuming that this is so, the study of the brain may reveal little about how the software works. In moving towards the view that a human mind has no animal spirits or ethereal magic in it, the consequence for neuroscience is that it is ever less in a position to solve philosophical problems – much as we would not have a hope of proving the Church-Turing thesis, or demonstrating why π is an irrational number, by shifting to a study of computer chips.
It may be more helpful for philosophers to turn to animal cognition as their primary input. This field is producing remarkable new finds, and philosophy would do well to absorb their implications. One of its most conspicuous aspects is the study of pro-social behaviour in animals – in contrast with what zoologist Robert Hinde calls 'human aggression in all its deviousness and complexity'. As a case in point, researchers demonstrated that a rat will help another rat in difficulty without needing a reward – if only humans could be relied upon to so act. While the 18th century philosophical view of humankind might be expressed (adopt a tone of pompous bloviation): 'It is the moral sense that separates men from the wild beasts which live in brutal ignorance,' humans do some pretty nasty things. My suggestion is that humans, while they, too, have inherited 'moral emotions', can out-think their own emotions and can manipulate their behaviour tactically. We need to turn the old view of humankind on its head. We don’t need to explain how we are biologically programmed. We need to understand the anomalies.
Such observations promise a rich new vein for philosophy, and it deserves our attentions. By way of illustration, now that we know that rats are compassionate, we may ask why so many bankers and politicians aren’t. Supposing that an economist should persuade bankers and politicians that everybody will become richer if they act in their own self-interest (as has been the case, starting with political philosopher Adam Smith) – then tactically, bankers and politicians may out-think their pro-social inclinations – to the detriment of the poor, and on an alarming scale at that. In this example alone, animal cognition suggests fresh explorations of morality, freewill, and belief, while the answers to the same may explain no less than why it is that our choices polarise all of humanity today.
___________________
Study notes:
Ben-Ami Bartal, I., Decety, J., & Mason, P. “Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats”. Science. 334, 2011. pp 1427-1430.
Hamilton, W. D. “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour”. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1964, 7 (1): 1–16.
The purpose of this post is to introduce a single idea, painted with a large brush: As we see our hopes for answers from neuroscience fading, animal cognition may hold the promise of the future.A generation ago, it was thought that neuroscience held the promise of solving many philosophical problems. Looking back now over those lost decades, we are able to see that it failed to solve a single one, and arguably created a new one or two.
Neuroscience, it was thought, would tell us many things: what a mind is, whether humans have freewill, or where in the brain we find these things. It would explain consciousness, morality, evil, or why humans tend to believe in prime-moving inter-galactic omnipotent fairies. While there are still philosophers who hold out hope for answers from neuroscience, the failure of progress is striking. An illustration reveals the way in which the arguments typically fail: in his book Freewill, cognitive neuroscientist Sam Harris argued that brain scans revealed a neural blip the moment before a subject was conscious of choosing to act. This, he considered, demonstrated that freewill is a myth, for the reason that the brain acts before we know it. Yet the argument is too easily neutralised. What was the blip? It may just as well have been one part of the brain going, 'OK, Freewill, this is one for your department.'
There are, on the contrary, significant problems that neuroscience has created. For example, its tendency to believe that the mind is nothing but the brain may open it up to a classic problem of logical systems, identified by the mathematical logician Kurt Gödel. Does Gödel's incompleteness theorem imply that the brain is unable to understand itself, so that neuroscience can have no achievable end-goal? Probably! The computer analogy of the brain is an old one, yet it is still useful. We have been inching towards a neuroscientific view that a brain is a biological computing device. Assuming that this is so, the study of the brain may reveal little about how the software works. In moving towards the view that a human mind has no animal spirits or ethereal magic in it, the consequence for neuroscience is that it is ever less in a position to solve philosophical problems – much as we would not have a hope of proving the Church-Turing thesis, or demonstrating why π is an irrational number, by shifting to a study of computer chips.
It may be more helpful for philosophers to turn to animal cognition as their primary input. This field is producing remarkable new finds, and philosophy would do well to absorb their implications. One of its most conspicuous aspects is the study of pro-social behaviour in animals – in contrast with what zoologist Robert Hinde calls 'human aggression in all its deviousness and complexity'. As a case in point, researchers demonstrated that a rat will help another rat in difficulty without needing a reward – if only humans could be relied upon to so act. While the 18th century philosophical view of humankind might be expressed (adopt a tone of pompous bloviation): 'It is the moral sense that separates men from the wild beasts which live in brutal ignorance,' humans do some pretty nasty things. My suggestion is that humans, while they, too, have inherited 'moral emotions', can out-think their own emotions and can manipulate their behaviour tactically. We need to turn the old view of humankind on its head. We don’t need to explain how we are biologically programmed. We need to understand the anomalies.
Such observations promise a rich new vein for philosophy, and it deserves our attentions. By way of illustration, now that we know that rats are compassionate, we may ask why so many bankers and politicians aren’t. Supposing that an economist should persuade bankers and politicians that everybody will become richer if they act in their own self-interest (as has been the case, starting with political philosopher Adam Smith) – then tactically, bankers and politicians may out-think their pro-social inclinations – to the detriment of the poor, and on an alarming scale at that. In this example alone, animal cognition suggests fresh explorations of morality, freewill, and belief, while the answers to the same may explain no less than why it is that our choices polarise all of humanity today.
___________________
Study notes:
Ben-Ami Bartal, I., Decety, J., & Mason, P. “Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats”. Science. 334, 2011. pp 1427-1430.
Hamilton, W. D. “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour”. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1964, 7 (1): 1–16.
19 July 2015
Poetry: The Making of Terror
A poem by Chengde Chen
Terrible as terrorism is, should we be so terrified, just as terrorists want?
It’s much less frequent than road accidents that kill hundreds every day; nor scarier than psychopaths’ random attacks that are as unpredictable.
There’re greater chances of being killed by a common cold or diarrhoea.
It is the media that 'turns' a homemade bomb into a nuclear explosion.
It is the government that 'legalises' the fear of it by changing the laws.
It is the trembling public psyche that completes the process of terror –
a religion of fear, jointly founded by enemies in the name of war!
The Americans should invite their 32nd President (Roosevelt) back,
as he understood that 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself'.
Or they might consult successful or unsuccessful actors on Broadway,
who know only too well that a play can’t run long without audience
Readers can find out more about Chengde and his poems here
17 July 2015
12 July 2015
The Art of War? Obama's Machiavellian Foreign Policy
“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.”
- Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)
Is Obama a foreign policy genius - a modern day Machiavelli - or an inept ingénue?
Consider some recent and some ongoing cases.
1. During the US presidential election campaign, Barack Obama mocked his opponent, Mitt Romney for saying that Russia was a threat - opting instead to forgive Russia past transgressions, press the restart button and have 'business as usual' relations. China, he asserted, was the real threat, even as Chinese money kept the US economy afloat.
Yet, as has widely been pointed out, the Russian military interventions in Ukraine, which have led to the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and to the entrenchment of separatist enclaves in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, directly challenge the post-Cold War consensus. Eastern Ukraine follows on other more tentative land-grabs, and in turn will be followed by greater prizes - Estonia, Lithuania… And if incursions there show the NATO lion cannot roar, why not further?
2. In Syria, faced with a choice between supporting the moderate rebels, and leaving the extremists to take over, he opted for the latter policy - with the result that the Assad government recovered lost ground and ISIS became a regional force. Originally, U.S. intelligence saw the terror group as a U.S. strategic asset. Now though, as David Kilcullen, the US military strategist said to have saved Iraq through the 'surge' has put it:
'Western countries have a clear interest in destroying ISIS, but counter-insurgency should not even be under discussion. This is a straight-up conventional fight against a state-like entity, and the goal should be to utterly annihilate ISIS as a state.'Just unfortunate then that ISIS has now become a force that would require a greater military effort than that of the original Iraq war. Your move, Professor!
3. But it is in Ukraine that his judgements seem most dangerous. Obama has apparently decided that there is no strategic significance to allowing Russia to annex parts of the former Soviet Union. Of course, the morality of this do not concern him - a man who says in one of his books that he learned his his ethics from the backs of cereal packets. In pursuit of this policy there have been so substantial sanctions, although there is a possibility that the US was involved in the Saudi policy of lowering the world price of oil - which has hurt the Russians. Under Obama there has been no access to arms and training, leaving the hopelessly amateurish and poorly equipped Ukrainian conscripts to be slaughtered in their thousands by the separatists backed by Russian special forces and the very best equipment that the Russians have.
4. In Egypt, Obama sided with the Egyptian military against the democracy movement, in due course helping to usher in a new and if anything even more vicious regime than that run by the US's client Hosni Mubarak.
5. As for the Palestine-Israel conflict, Obama has managed to present the US as both powerless and inept - threatening responses and laying down red lines which he never has any intention of following through on. The Israeli Prime Minster is encouraged to treat him with contempt.
6. And then, earlier this month, his international trade agenda was left in tatters after even the Democratic minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, voted against his plans to for a new bill, going directly against Obama less than three hours after the president begged his party’s caucus to support it.
7. Not to foget the War in Europe, entirely! The economic policies one between Greece and the Eurozone, that is. Here, Obama weighed in on the side of Greece, ordering the rest of Europe to forgive its trangressions and, well, bend the Eurozone rules a little. Such advice might have been deeeply probematic for the Eurozone if followed - it certainly helped reduce the liklihood of the Greek's seeking a compromise. Result - this week - boom!
The fact is, Obama sees himself as a true Machiavellian Prince, one who presents one face to the world while acting in a quite different way in secret. He sees himself as enhancing US geopolitical and structural power; strengthening the American identity (hence the oft-repeated determination to stop the torture programme and release the extra-judicial prisoners such as those held at Guantanamo, policies he has no intention of genuinely carrying out) and the search for domestic political consolidation.
According to former US national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski:
'He’s not a softy. But he’s a person who tries to think through these events so you can draw some long-term conclusions.'The longterm consequence of policy in the Middle East seems likely to be polarisation - between a US-backed series of kleptocracies and ultra-Islamists. In Europe, it is likely to be a 'hot war' between the Western Europeans and the Russians. In general, Obama seems to be sowing the seeds of global chaos - but a chaos in which perhaps for some it can be imagined that Continental United States will be immune. If that is indeed his aim, it is certainly a piece of cynicism worthy of the Italian master himself.
Further, or is it backwards? reading here
Pluto IS a Planet
STOP PRESS
Posted by Thomas Scarborough
The reaction to Pluto's demotion was 'hectic'. The California State Assembly declared it a 'scientific heresy', while the Illinois Senate ruled it 'unfair'. And when the Hayden Planetarium, in 2000, famously unveiled a new model of the solar system with only eight planets, the ensuing controversy was still making headlines a year later. In 2007, the American Dialect Society chose 'plutoed' as its 2006 Word of the Year – meaning 'to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto.'
In terms of the philosophy of language, the reaction covered the whole gamut of linguistic interpretations. Most basically, there were those who fell in the 'prescriptive' camp – prescribing definitions: 'It's official,' or seeking to prescribe them: 'We've signed a petition to reverse it.' On the other hand, there were those who fell in the 'descriptive' camp – describing words as we already use them: 'I've always called it a planet,' 'It looks like a planet,' 'It's only what some people say,' or 'Ask your heart.' Channel 4 News summed up this dichotomy simply: Some call it Planet X, some call it the ex planet.
This week, for the first time, the New Horizons probe saw the features of Pluto close up. As the … call it, 'object' came closer into view, Alan Stern, lead researcher of the New Horizons mission, gave a nine-fingered salute (a semiotic code, we call it) to indicate that the solar system has nine planets – not eight. @NASA tweeted, 'How about we call Pluto a planet again?' while the New York Post simply described our tour of 'all nine planets'. The 'Twitterverse' erupted in one great chorus: 'It's a planet!' while the prime mover behind the reclassification of Pluto (forbid that we should name him) was no longer said to drive a car, but a 'getaway car'.
Part of the trouble is that, the closer we look at the 'plutoid' definition, the faster it seems to flee away. The definition is dependent on other definitions – above all what it might mean that an object has 'cleared the neighbourhood'. Francis Bacon recognised this difficulty four-hundred years ago. The definitions of things consist of words, and words beget words. For instance, if a planet has cleared the neighbourhood, then what is the neighbourhood? And if Pluto were moved to another neighbourhood, elsewhere in the solar system, would it still be a mere plutoid? The answer is by no means clear. Not to speak of the public suspicion that our definitions are too much what we choose to make them anyway.
The furore, at root, highlights the tension between prescriptive and descriptive definitions in our language. This became a major linguistic problem, for the first time, in recent generations. 'Prescriptive' is something which is prescribed. French and Afrikaans are examples of prescriptive languages (there are language boards which define them), while English is not. English is 'descriptive', in that it gains words and sheds words, the meanings of words morph all the time, and we simply describe what has happened to them. Our English language is no longer the Queen's English (prescriptive) but it is what it is (descriptive).
What is the real difference between 'prescriptive' and 'descriptive'? Prescriptivists will typically say that words have definite features, or components – the International Astronomical Union's definition being an example: a prescriptive definition of a planet says that it has three major features – basta. The descriptive definition is less well defined. Words are what they mean. But what do they mean? Does one know their meanings, too, by their features? Say, a planet is an object which orbits the sun, and is rounded by its own gravity, butit has cleared the neighbourhood.
Someone in the 'Twitterverse' suggested another possibility: words mean what we feel – and we feel that Pluto is a planet. But how might this look, more exactly? Take the example: 'Pluto is a planet. The mountains show it. Geological activity, too. And the atmosphere.' These sentences go hand in glove. We understand them instantly. Yet notice that, after the first full stop, we have made no explicit reference to Pluto. No dictionary definition will show us that a planet has mountains – or geological activity or an atmosphere. These are what we call bridging inferences. The strange thing is, therefore, that without referring to the planet, we all know that we are talking about the planet.
The fact that we know (or feel) that mountains, for instance, belong to a planet is all the more strikingly seen when we use a bridging inference which does not work: 'Pluto is a planet. The gearbox shows it.' This does not fit, simply because we do not ever infer that it does. All the time, in fact, we know what we are talking about only through inference. 'Keep the chicken livers off the table. The cat is in there' – yet one will find few clues about chicken livers in our dictionaries, and none which suggest that cats have anything to do with tables. Or, 'He had an apartment in the Bronx. The karma was bad.' The same applies.
Notice, then, that our descriptive definitions of words – what they really are to us – comprise more than mere features. Rather, they are expansive, innovative, holistic. They explode the limits of dictionary definitions. With this in mind, we might try to imagine a word as something like a spinning, shimmering ball of inferences. Such a conception of words belongs to a new world, which for us has just been coming into view – a world of infinite connections – not a place which is reduced to features and components which are the mechanical world of Newton and the past. Planets and mountains, cutlets and cats, apartments and karma, all intertwine.
We play a dangerous game with our reductions, slashing meanings off words this side and that to reach a hard, prescriptive core. And so we separate science from outcomes, politics from poverty, business from ecology. On our university campuses, moreover, we put the humanities over there, the sciences over here. At stake is not merely the definition of a planet, but the definition of definitions, and the whole way in which we look at our world, our emotions not excluded.
This is why Pluto is a planet.
Posted by Thomas ScarboroughThere has been no small commotion surrounding the reclassification – or demotion – of the former planet Pluto. First to dwarf planet status, then to minor planet, and finally to plutoid. This post explores some of the philosophical aspects of the issue.Following the discovery in the 1990's, that various bodies orbit the sun in the area of Pluto, Pluto was taken off the 'planets' list. The International Astronomical Union, in 2006, ruled that a planet had to be an object which met three basic criteria: 1. it orbited the sun, 2. it was rounded by its own gravity, and 3. it 'cleared the neighbourhood'. Pluto failed on the last criterion. It was one of a crowd, in the Kuiper belt.
The reaction to Pluto's demotion was 'hectic'. The California State Assembly declared it a 'scientific heresy', while the Illinois Senate ruled it 'unfair'. And when the Hayden Planetarium, in 2000, famously unveiled a new model of the solar system with only eight planets, the ensuing controversy was still making headlines a year later. In 2007, the American Dialect Society chose 'plutoed' as its 2006 Word of the Year – meaning 'to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto.'
In terms of the philosophy of language, the reaction covered the whole gamut of linguistic interpretations. Most basically, there were those who fell in the 'prescriptive' camp – prescribing definitions: 'It's official,' or seeking to prescribe them: 'We've signed a petition to reverse it.' On the other hand, there were those who fell in the 'descriptive' camp – describing words as we already use them: 'I've always called it a planet,' 'It looks like a planet,' 'It's only what some people say,' or 'Ask your heart.' Channel 4 News summed up this dichotomy simply: Some call it Planet X, some call it the ex planet.
This week, for the first time, the New Horizons probe saw the features of Pluto close up. As the … call it, 'object' came closer into view, Alan Stern, lead researcher of the New Horizons mission, gave a nine-fingered salute (a semiotic code, we call it) to indicate that the solar system has nine planets – not eight. @NASA tweeted, 'How about we call Pluto a planet again?' while the New York Post simply described our tour of 'all nine planets'. The 'Twitterverse' erupted in one great chorus: 'It's a planet!' while the prime mover behind the reclassification of Pluto (forbid that we should name him) was no longer said to drive a car, but a 'getaway car'.
Part of the trouble is that, the closer we look at the 'plutoid' definition, the faster it seems to flee away. The definition is dependent on other definitions – above all what it might mean that an object has 'cleared the neighbourhood'. Francis Bacon recognised this difficulty four-hundred years ago. The definitions of things consist of words, and words beget words. For instance, if a planet has cleared the neighbourhood, then what is the neighbourhood? And if Pluto were moved to another neighbourhood, elsewhere in the solar system, would it still be a mere plutoid? The answer is by no means clear. Not to speak of the public suspicion that our definitions are too much what we choose to make them anyway.
The furore, at root, highlights the tension between prescriptive and descriptive definitions in our language. This became a major linguistic problem, for the first time, in recent generations. 'Prescriptive' is something which is prescribed. French and Afrikaans are examples of prescriptive languages (there are language boards which define them), while English is not. English is 'descriptive', in that it gains words and sheds words, the meanings of words morph all the time, and we simply describe what has happened to them. Our English language is no longer the Queen's English (prescriptive) but it is what it is (descriptive).
What is the real difference between 'prescriptive' and 'descriptive'? Prescriptivists will typically say that words have definite features, or components – the International Astronomical Union's definition being an example: a prescriptive definition of a planet says that it has three major features – basta. The descriptive definition is less well defined. Words are what they mean. But what do they mean? Does one know their meanings, too, by their features? Say, a planet is an object which orbits the sun, and is rounded by its own gravity, but
Someone in the 'Twitterverse' suggested another possibility: words mean what we feel – and we feel that Pluto is a planet. But how might this look, more exactly? Take the example: 'Pluto is a planet. The mountains show it. Geological activity, too. And the atmosphere.' These sentences go hand in glove. We understand them instantly. Yet notice that, after the first full stop, we have made no explicit reference to Pluto. No dictionary definition will show us that a planet has mountains – or geological activity or an atmosphere. These are what we call bridging inferences. The strange thing is, therefore, that without referring to the planet, we all know that we are talking about the planet.
The fact that we know (or feel) that mountains, for instance, belong to a planet is all the more strikingly seen when we use a bridging inference which does not work: 'Pluto is a planet. The gearbox shows it.' This does not fit, simply because we do not ever infer that it does. All the time, in fact, we know what we are talking about only through inference. 'Keep the chicken livers off the table. The cat is in there' – yet one will find few clues about chicken livers in our dictionaries, and none which suggest that cats have anything to do with tables. Or, 'He had an apartment in the Bronx. The karma was bad.' The same applies.
Notice, then, that our descriptive definitions of words – what they really are to us – comprise more than mere features. Rather, they are expansive, innovative, holistic. They explode the limits of dictionary definitions. With this in mind, we might try to imagine a word as something like a spinning, shimmering ball of inferences. Such a conception of words belongs to a new world, which for us has just been coming into view – a world of infinite connections – not a place which is reduced to features and components which are the mechanical world of Newton and the past. Planets and mountains, cutlets and cats, apartments and karma, all intertwine.
We play a dangerous game with our reductions, slashing meanings off words this side and that to reach a hard, prescriptive core. And so we separate science from outcomes, politics from poverty, business from ecology. On our university campuses, moreover, we put the humanities over there, the sciences over here. At stake is not merely the definition of a planet, but the definition of definitions, and the whole way in which we look at our world, our emotions not excluded.
This is why Pluto is a planet.
05 July 2015
Picture Post No. 2: The Blue Dot
 |
'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t that what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'
 |
| Image courtesy of NASA |
When I first saw the 'Blue Marble', to be honest, it didn't have any kind of effect on me. After all, I was familiar with the idea of planets in space, from numerous paintings and drawings - but this image just accidentally caught the Earth in the background.
Somehow, this time, I caught a hint of who those first space images might have changed perceptions back on Earth.
October 25th 2015
Unfortunately, the original comments, from July 2015, on this post are unable to be displayed - for 'technical reasons'.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)