The brain... It makes you think. Doesn't it?

The UK Guardian ran a nice little debate between David Eagleman and Raymond Tallis on the role of the brain and the unconscious processes in our behavior (April 28 2012). Eagleman is a neuroscientist interested in the neural correlates of mental activity (and author of Incognito), and Tallis is a professor of medicine who challenges just how truly important the unconscious processing really is. I think it sums up the debate pretty well. While I side closer to Tallis, I think his style is a little obnoxious, and Eagleman keeps it polite. Here's a bit of it:

Eagleman -A person is not a single entity of a single mind: a human is built of several parts, all of which compete to steer the ship of state. As a consequence, people are nuanced, complicated, contradictory. We act in ways that are sometimes difficult to detect by simple introspection. To know ourselves increasingly requires careful studies of the neural substrate of which we are composed.

Tallis: Some of what you have just said sounds like common sense and a retreat from the radical thesis advanced in Incognito. There you put unconscious brain mechanisms in the driving seat – which is why your book has attracted such attention – and argue that important life decisions are strongly influenced by "the covert machinery of the unconscious".

Even when you concede in Incognito that "consciousness is the long-term planner", you still can't let go of the idea of the largely unconscious brain being in charge. This is because you want to privilege brain science. Your case is assisted by personifying the brain, as when you say things like "the brain cares about social interaction".

Why everyone (else) is a hypocrite - Robert Kurzban (2010)

Robert Kurzban is associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and his 2010 book entitled Why everyone (else) is a hypocrite is a view of the modular theory of mind.  The basic idea is that the forces of natural selection have resulted in humans having a brain that supports a variety of functions, which are not necessarily united or made consistent.  Kurzban writes: "A module is an information-processing mechanism that is specialized to perform some function."  They key is that the modules are not all sharing information with each other, which throws into question the notion of a singular "you".

As a simple example of this notion, he cites various optical illusions, such as one where lines with different arrow point endings appear to be of different lengths, but are actually the same - our perceptions 'tell' us one thing about what we're seeing, while we can 'know' via measurements what the situation actually is. There are a variety of modules which serve different purposes, and the claim is that these modules are acting essentially independently at least in some circumstances.  That in some ways is not so different from what we may be used to from discussion of the conscious mind and the unconscious.

This view of mind leads Kurzban to question the notion of the unitary 'self' - and thus there are many passages along these lines:

It's often appealing to talk about what "I" "believe," or what "you" "believe" - and , in real life, it's often good enough.  But when you're trying to figure out how the mind works, it's important to think about modules, even when making seemingly simple claims that Person X believes p.(p. 72)

He covers a number of different experiments and findings to support this modular view - and one of the key ideas is that context matters in how we process various situations.  For instance, it is very difficult to support the notion that people have fully rational and describable preferences - they seem to vary based on the context of the choice, such as whether it's known to the chooser that other people are involved and that the choice will be known by those others.

Relating things to the title of the book, the concept is that the various modules may have functional reasons for having contradictory 'views' - and if the information is never brought into one resolved view, then we all have various tendencies toward hypocrisy.  Depending on the situation and context, different functional aspects may come to the fore.

Kurzban introduces the notion of the 'press secretary' module of mind - that which communicates to others.  Extending the metaphor, it is often good for the press secretary to be unaware of certain activities, so that no falsehood is given and strategic goals are advanced - and this is tied into some evolutionary arguments of why this may have developed.

Overall I found this to be quite an interesting take on the subject.  But I do have my quibbles.  For one, Kurzban seems to equate 'mind' and 'brain' - and I believe this erases some very important distinctions.  I see mind as an experiential concept - one which may be 'hosted' in the brain, but is not itself aware of all the inner workings of that brain.  So when Kurzban writes things like "I'm not going to talk at any length about where putative modules are, physically, in the mind" (p. 47), I think the reference should be to the brain, a physical object.  And I believe the mind is what provides enough stability and consistency to our experience and our presentation of ourselves to other people for the concept of a 'self' to be important.  Which is not to say our conscious experience is aware of all the modular functions going on in the brain - indeed we are blissfully unaware of much of the goings-on in the brain.

I saw that he includes a note on his use of the word 'design' in terms of brain functions:  "Some people don't like the word "design" to be used in the way that I am using it here.  As the material in this chapter should make clear, I intend no consciousness or intention when I use the word." (p. 224).  I can't help feeling that the word 'design' implies a designer and an intention (as well as the potential for designed things to be used in ways they were not designed for), so I am one of those people who don't like its use in this way.  I think it would be sufficient to talk about functional aspects of modules that evolved however they evolved.

Thinking, Fast and Slow - by Daniel Kahneman (2011)

Daniel Kahneman's life work goes into Thinking, Fast and Slow - the title sums up a good portion of what the book explains, our two main modes of thinking.  He terms the modes System 1 (our essentially instant, intuitive mode of coming up with a quick answer to many questions and decisions) and System 2 (the more deliberative, conscious thinking that we do when we have to - he calls it a lazy system).  System 1 seems to basically be unconscious, and in many situations does a very creditable job of keeping us out of trouble.

But what Kahneman (and his former colleague Amos Tversky) were interested in was the situations in which System 1 goes wrong - systematic biases which steer us away from what economists think of as the rational choice.  And there are many!  Their researches looked at anchoring and framing effects, and the way we tend to fear a small chance of loss as compared with the value we put on small chances of gain.

Note that System 2 is not always perfect either. Especially when it comes to statistical and probability-based questions, even professionals often go astray in their thinking unless they are very careful.  And some of our errors may in fact be helpful in certain ways - for example a bias toward optimism very likely helps make people attempt much more than they would otherwise, and sometimes they succeed!

This book is a readable summary of years of interesting work, and sheds much light on how we all tend to think.  The point is not that we can avoid error, but some awareness of systematic bias can help to trigger System 2 when it can help!

Here's a good review from the NYT by Jim Holt.

'Free Will' by Sam Harris

The question of free will has been bouncing around for a long time, and recent neuroscience is leading some to conclusions that I find needlessly restrictive in their outlook.  I decided to read Sam Harris's latest short piece on "Free Will" to test my thinking.  Here are some thoughts, driven by my reactions to various lines from the eBook.

Harris doesn't do a good job, to my taste, of defining what he means by 'free will' or 'freedom'.  Early on he writes: "Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making." (p 5).  The closest thing I saw to a common definition is this:  "The popular conception of free will seems to rest on two assumptions: (1) that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past, and (2) that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions in the present." (p. 6).  I'm going to ignore part 1, since it's impossible to experimentally test whether one could 'repeat' a choice situation and choose something different.  So I'll focus on #2.

My take on freedom is that there is no such thing as 'complete freedom' - this would seem to me to indicate that there are absolutely no constraints in any way, and I don't see such a situation ever existing.  So freedom is always a relative concept.  One is more free when there are fewer constraints on one's actions, and less free when there are more constraints.

Harris does a great job in pointing out that there are many constraints on our choices.  He writes:  "Unconscious neural events determine our thoughts and actions—and are themselves determined by prior causes of which we are subjectively unaware." p.16.  I think this is largely true - though in a way it's simply a tautology to say we aren't conscious of that which goes on unconsciously.  But I think the focus should be on that which we are consciously aware: situations where we consider alternatives, think about possibilities, and finally decide upon a course of action.  Even if our preferences aren't consciously created, and we don't understand the basis of our decision-making, we still subjectively face decisions and make choices.  Decisions are sometimes difficult, and over time our decision-making may change, notably because we have learned something from past decisions and behaviors.

Frequently Harris poses the question "Where is the freedom?" if so much is constrained by the past, and we can't account for where our desires and preferences come from.  I would say that if freedom is about movement with constraints, then it doesn't necessarily matter that we don't know why we want what we want.  We also don't know why there is gravity, but there is, and we are constrained by it.  So too we are constrained by certain preferences, some of which we could probably alter if we choose to, and some of which seem to alter over time without any conscious effort.

Harris dwells on the fact that we did not choose much of our past experience.  "Take a moment to think about the context in which your next decision will occur: You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn’t choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome or the development of your brain." (p. 40).  As you would expect from this blog, I dispute the last point, on the development of your brain.  I believe that choices and behaviors we choose today will impact our brain and our unconscious processing in the future.  When we attempt to learn something, we have to concentrate consciously, and think about each new choice.  As we master a subject or learn how to do a physical task, we don't have to try so hard consciously - we've absorbed it in our brains, we can take action unconsciously.  This adds some weight to the compatabilist position that Harris rejects, in which the individual must be considered as more than just the conscious awareness.

So my sense is that Harris does describe many of the true constraints on our will, but I don't agree with his take that you must understand and control every underlying process to achieve 'freedom'.

On Free Will

The piece 'Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will' by Eddy Nahmias (NYT Opinionator, Nov 13, 2011) sums up my take on this matter pretty well.

Many philosophers, including me, understand free will as a set of capacities for imagining future courses of action, deliberating about one’s reasons for choosing them, planning one’s actions in light of this deliberation and controlling actions in the face of competing desires. We act of our own free will to the extent that we have the opportunity to exercise these capacities, without unreasonable external or internal pressure. We are responsible for our actions roughly to the extent that we possess these capacities and we have opportunities to exercise them.

These capacities for conscious deliberation, rational thinking and self-control are not magical abilities. They need not belong to immaterial souls outside the realm of scientific understanding (indeed, since we don’t know how souls are supposed to work, souls would not help to explain these capacities). Rather, these are the sorts of cognitive capacities that psychologists and neuroscientists are well positioned to study.

The range of comments are also interesting.  Many folks seem very opposed to the idea of free will - but then again, have they any choice?

Also liked this aside from Robert Anton Wilson (found here):
"Incidentally, you can get a quick estimate of a person's intelligence by asking them how much of themselves is robotic. Those who say "not at all" or "less than 50%" are hopeless imbeciles, always. The few who say "about 99%" are worth talking to; they are quite intelligent."

Pioneer of Mind-body link, Robert Ader

Today I saw this obituary for Dr. Robert Ader, who was an early investigator of the relationship of mind and immune system.  Here's an excerpt:

His initial research, in the 1970s, became a touchstone for studies that have since mapped the vast communications network among immune cells, hormones and neurotransmitters. It introduced a field of research that nailed down the science behind notions once considered magical thinking: that meditation helps reduce arterial plaque; that social bonds improve cancer survival; that people under stress catch more colds; and that placebos work not only on the human mind but also on supposedly insentient cells.

At the core of Dr. Ader’s breakthrough research was an insight already obvious to any grandmother who ever said, “Stop worrying or you’ll make yourself sick.” He demonstrated scientifically that stress worsens illness — sometimes even triggering it — and that reducing stress is essential to health care.

That idea, now widely accepted among medical researchers, contradicted a previous principle of biochemistry, which said that the immune system was autonomous. As late as 1985, the idea of a connection between the brain and the immune system was dismissed in an editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine as “folklore.”

More on 'The Beginning of Infinity'

David Deutsch's book 'The Beginning of Infinity' has a fairly straightforward message when you boil it down.  He believes that a scientific worldview that looks to create and continually improve the explanations of how things work leads to an infinite chain of discovery and improvement.  The subtitle 'Explanations that Transform the World' indicates the importance he places on science as explanation - which depends both on the creative act of conjecture and the continual open-minded questioning and criticism that must test every explanation and reject those that don't hold water.  As I mention in the previous post, he is open to abstract emergence as necessary part of explanations, and in fact appears to feel that essentially everything (from laws of physics to people) are abstractions.

Deutsch makes some leaps here that I found more based on faith than on any proof of argument - such as the notion that humans are 'universal explainers' capable of understanding and explaining anything.  On page 60, he writes "if the claim is that we may be qualitatively unable to understand what some other forms of intelligence can - if our disability cannot be remedied by mere automation - then this is just another claim that the world is not explicable.  Indeed it is tantamount to an appeal to the supernatural..."  He seems to be saying that unless everything is fully explicable by humans then there's no point in explaining anything, which I find unconvincing.

I am interested in the comparison of the idea of infinity with the idea of 'universal' - as Deutsch explains Cantor's work, there are levels of infinity - countable infinities and uncountable.  It seems possible to me that an infinite part of the world could be explained by human intelligence, and yet there could be infinities more...

In any case, for this blog I like the fact that Deutsch sees human intelligence as key, and in particular the importance of the creative act.  At this point it's a mystery we don't understand - how new ideas are generated... but it does feel like the future depends on cultivating the best new explanations.

Abstractions are real

I've been reading The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch (2011), and it's full of interesting arguments, but one point in particular stood out to me for this blog. In chapter 5, titled 'The reality of abstractions' he takes issue with the reductionist approach that argues that all explanations must be reduced to elemental levels. Here's one way he argues the point:

You know that if your computer beats you at chess, it is really the program that has beaten you, not the silicon atoms or the computer as such. The abstract program is instantiated physically as a high-level behavior of vast numbers of atoms, but the explanation of why it has beaten you cannot be expressed without also referring to the program in its own right.

Deutsch goes on to argue against Douglas Hofstadter's position that the mind "can't push stuff around", and hence against Dennett's position that the 'I' is an illusion. Deutsch sums up: "There is no inconsistency in having multiple explanations of the same phenomenon, at different levels of emergence. Regarding micro-physical explanations as more fundamental than emergent ones is arbitrary and fallacious."