F.H. Bradley, the idealist philosopher, used to shoot cats (at night, in the grounds of Merton College, Oxford). Bradley was a dog man.
In a footnote in chapter XXVI of his magnum opus, Appearance and reality, in a section dealing with the human desire for life after death and the inconsistencies of the standard (Christian) view, he writes:
No one can have been so fortunate as never to have felt the grief of parting, or so inhuman as not to have longed for another meeting after death... One feels that a personal immortality would not be very personal, if it implied a mutilation of our affections. There are those too who would not sit down among the angels, till they had recovered their dog.
The only pet I've ever owned (apart from animals that were family responsibilities) was a cat, and I know the strange chemistry which sometimes links humans and animals of other species. I wouldn't want to make too much of it, but there was a kind of recognition there, a kind of bond, albeit tenuous and uncertain. Intimate may not be too strong a word.
A while ago, I saw on a lamppost a small, monochrome poster. Just a stylized cat's face and the sentence: Cats are people too. I have some sympathy with the people who bothered to design and print and paste up these posters, with their quirky and lighthearted campaign in defense of a currently very unpopular animal.
But I don't believe that animals have rights, or that we humans should be seen as more or less on a par with chimpanzees. The attempt by intellectuals and activists to raise the status and moral profile of animals has succeeded only in distorting reality and weakening moral thinking in general. By virtue of language and our relatively advanced brains we inhabit a vast new world from which all other animals are excluded.
The burdens of this world of human consciousness are such, however, that the pre-human world of our distant ancestors - of which we remain obscurely aware - can be seen as a kind of paradise from which we have been cast out. This may explain in part the mystique that animals have for many.
What animals see in us is an altogether more difficult question.
Showing posts with label consciousness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label consciousness. Show all posts
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Deeper than language
Polonius: ... What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.
I suspect that the strings of words we use to explain and justify our behavior may be insignificant froth compared to the deep neural sources of our convictions and our actions. As split-brain and similar experiments have shown, we have a natural tendency to confabulate, to rationalize behavior after the event - and the stories we tell (and believe!) are often utter fictions.
Arguably, most of our decision-making occurs below the level of conscious awareness. As a schoolboy, I was taught to make important decisions by creating lists of fors and againsts, and weighing them up rationally. This never worked, and I thought the fault was with me. But the recommended technique was based on an utterly false view of the human brain, one that saw consciousness as all.
Intuition is an important element in certain types of complex, real-world decision-making, especially in relation to pattern-recognition and also in relation to judgements about other people. The trouble is that, though intuitions can usefully draw on sub-conscious processing of complex data, they also incorporate input from primitive, value-related systems of the brain which were appropriate to the sorts of quick, rough-and-ready judgements required by our ancestors, but are inappropriate to people living in technologically-advanced societies.
Of course, language affects cognitive processing (conscious and unconscious) in complex and subtle ways. But it is a mistake to think that the structure of language - its concepts and categories and so on - reflects the underlying nature of reality. The most one could claim in this regard is that it enhanced our ancestors' ability to deal with their environment in a practical way. And language itself is a key component in the social environment which makes human intelligence possible.
Natural language is good for many things - for sharing knowledge and enabling complex group operations, for inspiring and encouraging, for misleading and discouraging, for cementing social bonds, for fomenting rebellion, etc. But one thing it is not good for (except as an adjunct to scientific methods) is discovering new truths.
Metaphysics was the ultimate armchair discipline. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries metaphysicians in Europe and America created vast linguistic and conceptual structures which purported to explain the underlying nature of reality and much else besides. But they were blinded by the structure of language and their own rhetorical flights, and their prolix works now gather dust in library basements and warehouses.
Of course, there have always been those, of an empirical cast of mind, who saw little value in metaphysics, but perhaps the most formidable attack on this style of thinking was mounted in the 1920s and 1930s by the so-called logical positivists. They sought to discredit metaphysics entirely and had a huge impact in the middle decades of the 20th century.
In the latter part of the century, however, certain philosophers tried - with some success - not only to attack logical positivism but also to rehabilitate metaphysics. They claimed, for example, that the logical positivists' anti-metaphysics campaign was flawed and indeed ultimately metaphysical itself.
In general terms, though, I think the logical positivists were right - science (broadly understood so as to incorporate the historical disciplines) is the only way to push back the frontiers of knowledge. Not only do metaphysics and philosophy lack the empirical dimension of science, they are generally pursued via the medium of natural language, whereas the underlying structure of the world is amenable only to approaches which are heavily reliant on quantitative and mathematical methods.
But science has little or nothing to say about right and wrong, or about political and social ideals. By contrast, natural language might be seen to be ideally suited to deal with such issues. Perhaps, but caution should be exercised in this area. The trouble (as I see it) is that value-based political and ethical theories proliferate, not unlike the metaphysical theories of the 19th century, without any way to test them and weed out the rubbish.
I am inclined to think (like Wittgenstein) that value-related issues are real, and they can of course be discussed, but they are not the sorts of things one needs to have theories about.
Value systems are real and inescapable aspects of social relations, built into the manners and customs and expectations of any society. And, of course, individuals and groups may and do challenge certain conventions, but always within the context of a complex network incorporating many other conventions. (Such a view seems to me compatible with virtue-based approaches to ethics, by the way.)
This process of review and revision happens. Conservatives may prefer that it happen more slowly, liberals may prefer that it happen more quickly, but it is an inevitable part of the life of society.
And though language constitutes a key element in the social environment and so profoundly affects cognition, and though words may inspire, instruct, clarify, warn and all the rest, the ultimate driving forces of human existence will always be wider and deeper than language, in the still obscure dynamics of social and somatic processes.
Hamlet: Words, words, words.
I suspect that the strings of words we use to explain and justify our behavior may be insignificant froth compared to the deep neural sources of our convictions and our actions. As split-brain and similar experiments have shown, we have a natural tendency to confabulate, to rationalize behavior after the event - and the stories we tell (and believe!) are often utter fictions.
Arguably, most of our decision-making occurs below the level of conscious awareness. As a schoolboy, I was taught to make important decisions by creating lists of fors and againsts, and weighing them up rationally. This never worked, and I thought the fault was with me. But the recommended technique was based on an utterly false view of the human brain, one that saw consciousness as all.
Intuition is an important element in certain types of complex, real-world decision-making, especially in relation to pattern-recognition and also in relation to judgements about other people. The trouble is that, though intuitions can usefully draw on sub-conscious processing of complex data, they also incorporate input from primitive, value-related systems of the brain which were appropriate to the sorts of quick, rough-and-ready judgements required by our ancestors, but are inappropriate to people living in technologically-advanced societies.
Of course, language affects cognitive processing (conscious and unconscious) in complex and subtle ways. But it is a mistake to think that the structure of language - its concepts and categories and so on - reflects the underlying nature of reality. The most one could claim in this regard is that it enhanced our ancestors' ability to deal with their environment in a practical way. And language itself is a key component in the social environment which makes human intelligence possible.
Natural language is good for many things - for sharing knowledge and enabling complex group operations, for inspiring and encouraging, for misleading and discouraging, for cementing social bonds, for fomenting rebellion, etc. But one thing it is not good for (except as an adjunct to scientific methods) is discovering new truths.
Metaphysics was the ultimate armchair discipline. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries metaphysicians in Europe and America created vast linguistic and conceptual structures which purported to explain the underlying nature of reality and much else besides. But they were blinded by the structure of language and their own rhetorical flights, and their prolix works now gather dust in library basements and warehouses.
Of course, there have always been those, of an empirical cast of mind, who saw little value in metaphysics, but perhaps the most formidable attack on this style of thinking was mounted in the 1920s and 1930s by the so-called logical positivists. They sought to discredit metaphysics entirely and had a huge impact in the middle decades of the 20th century.
In the latter part of the century, however, certain philosophers tried - with some success - not only to attack logical positivism but also to rehabilitate metaphysics. They claimed, for example, that the logical positivists' anti-metaphysics campaign was flawed and indeed ultimately metaphysical itself.
In general terms, though, I think the logical positivists were right - science (broadly understood so as to incorporate the historical disciplines) is the only way to push back the frontiers of knowledge. Not only do metaphysics and philosophy lack the empirical dimension of science, they are generally pursued via the medium of natural language, whereas the underlying structure of the world is amenable only to approaches which are heavily reliant on quantitative and mathematical methods.
But science has little or nothing to say about right and wrong, or about political and social ideals. By contrast, natural language might be seen to be ideally suited to deal with such issues. Perhaps, but caution should be exercised in this area. The trouble (as I see it) is that value-based political and ethical theories proliferate, not unlike the metaphysical theories of the 19th century, without any way to test them and weed out the rubbish.
I am inclined to think (like Wittgenstein) that value-related issues are real, and they can of course be discussed, but they are not the sorts of things one needs to have theories about.
Value systems are real and inescapable aspects of social relations, built into the manners and customs and expectations of any society. And, of course, individuals and groups may and do challenge certain conventions, but always within the context of a complex network incorporating many other conventions. (Such a view seems to me compatible with virtue-based approaches to ethics, by the way.)
This process of review and revision happens. Conservatives may prefer that it happen more slowly, liberals may prefer that it happen more quickly, but it is an inevitable part of the life of society.
And though language constitutes a key element in the social environment and so profoundly affects cognition, and though words may inspire, instruct, clarify, warn and all the rest, the ultimate driving forces of human existence will always be wider and deeper than language, in the still obscure dynamics of social and somatic processes.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
John Bickle on Antonio Damasio on consciousness
Late last year, John Bickle, a professor of philosophy and neuroscience at Mississippi State University, wrote a review* of Antonio Damasio's new book, Self comes to mind: constructing the conscious brain (Pantheon). Unfortunately (as with many such pieces) this review tells us more about the reviewer's beliefs and convictions than we need to know and consequently less about the book in question than it could do. Here is the first sentence:
"When combining neuroscience and philosophy, one popular strategy is to present many surprising neuroscientific results and then breathlessly assemble them into a grand speculative claim about 'what it all means'."
This bad strategy is contrasted with a second, and supposedly good, strategy (on which more in a moment), so that Bickle is setting up a simplistic dichotomy - as our brains are wont to do, but you would think a philosopher of neuroscience would resist the temptation. "Popular" obviously has a negative connotation for Bickle. (This in itself says a lot. I suspect his books don't sell as well as Damasio's.) Furthermore, breathlessly assembled facts and "grand speculative claims" are clearly out; and, whatever you do, don't ponder "what it all means"!
The second strategy, the one Professor Bickle follows, is "to roll up one's sleeves and dig into a specific area of neuroscience, presenting not only the eye-opening results but also the methods and rationales behind them to argue precise philosophical points."
Self comes to mind is, Bickle claims, an example of the first strategy. But is it?
Grudgingly admitting that Damasio's book is "an interesting read", the reviewer characterizes a central hypothesis (regarding homeostasis) as being "worthy of serious investigation". He also admits that Damasio "offers an intriguing link between the evolution of consciousness and the brain's propensity to create 'maps' - networks of neurons that represent body states... I was grateful to see Damasio apply real neuroscience to this often hand-waving notion of 'embodied cognition'."
Hang on. Isn't this book supposed to be of the hand-waving kind involving breathlessly assembled facts etc.? Not entirely, it seems.
The book provides "a nice continuation" of Damasio's previous writings on the role of emotions in consciousness, but has a new focus on memory: "... the brain's evolved capacity to store vast records of motor skills, facts and events, combined with its ability to process memory records while continuing to perceive the present moment, result in the fully human 'autobiographical' self - the key ingredient, he argues, that allows for the mysterious leap from mind to conscious awareness."
But, unfortunately, "[w]hen the philosophical going gets tough (that is, interesting), Damasio often switches topics." What is interesting for a philosopher may not be interesting for a general audience. And note the "often".
Bickle concedes that, "... when fleshing out a 'synoptic vision', it is not practically possible to explain all of the scientific processes that formed the basis of one's speculative reach. Still, there's something deeply worrisome about books like this. Expounding on scientific results and using them to engage in philosophical speculations without explaining or criticising the processes that generate the data can create a dangerous intellectual conformity paraded as 'scientific'." Books like this? Does he mean this book? As Bickle notes: "Damasio knows his science ..." Nonetheless, "... he and others would do well to remember that many readers don't." Really?
Bickle continues: "A little explanation of the scientific process lurking behind the philosophy would go a long way." Maybe, but then it would be Bickle's book and not Damasio's.
So, if ever you feel like rolling up your sleeves and digging into a specific area of neuroscience and making a minute examination of the methods and rationales that generate the data and using this as a basis to address precise philosophical points, you will know whose books to turn to.
*New Scientist (Nov. 27, 2010)
"When combining neuroscience and philosophy, one popular strategy is to present many surprising neuroscientific results and then breathlessly assemble them into a grand speculative claim about 'what it all means'."
This bad strategy is contrasted with a second, and supposedly good, strategy (on which more in a moment), so that Bickle is setting up a simplistic dichotomy - as our brains are wont to do, but you would think a philosopher of neuroscience would resist the temptation. "Popular" obviously has a negative connotation for Bickle. (This in itself says a lot. I suspect his books don't sell as well as Damasio's.) Furthermore, breathlessly assembled facts and "grand speculative claims" are clearly out; and, whatever you do, don't ponder "what it all means"!
The second strategy, the one Professor Bickle follows, is "to roll up one's sleeves and dig into a specific area of neuroscience, presenting not only the eye-opening results but also the methods and rationales behind them to argue precise philosophical points."
Self comes to mind is, Bickle claims, an example of the first strategy. But is it?
Grudgingly admitting that Damasio's book is "an interesting read", the reviewer characterizes a central hypothesis (regarding homeostasis) as being "worthy of serious investigation". He also admits that Damasio "offers an intriguing link between the evolution of consciousness and the brain's propensity to create 'maps' - networks of neurons that represent body states... I was grateful to see Damasio apply real neuroscience to this often hand-waving notion of 'embodied cognition'."
Hang on. Isn't this book supposed to be of the hand-waving kind involving breathlessly assembled facts etc.? Not entirely, it seems.
The book provides "a nice continuation" of Damasio's previous writings on the role of emotions in consciousness, but has a new focus on memory: "... the brain's evolved capacity to store vast records of motor skills, facts and events, combined with its ability to process memory records while continuing to perceive the present moment, result in the fully human 'autobiographical' self - the key ingredient, he argues, that allows for the mysterious leap from mind to conscious awareness."
But, unfortunately, "[w]hen the philosophical going gets tough (that is, interesting), Damasio often switches topics." What is interesting for a philosopher may not be interesting for a general audience. And note the "often".
Bickle concedes that, "... when fleshing out a 'synoptic vision', it is not practically possible to explain all of the scientific processes that formed the basis of one's speculative reach. Still, there's something deeply worrisome about books like this. Expounding on scientific results and using them to engage in philosophical speculations without explaining or criticising the processes that generate the data can create a dangerous intellectual conformity paraded as 'scientific'." Books like this? Does he mean this book? As Bickle notes: "Damasio knows his science ..." Nonetheless, "... he and others would do well to remember that many readers don't." Really?
Bickle continues: "A little explanation of the scientific process lurking behind the philosophy would go a long way." Maybe, but then it would be Bickle's book and not Damasio's.
So, if ever you feel like rolling up your sleeves and digging into a specific area of neuroscience and making a minute examination of the methods and rationales that generate the data and using this as a basis to address precise philosophical points, you will know whose books to turn to.
*New Scientist (Nov. 27, 2010)
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