This blog post will be split into two parts. First, I will
present my view that Bor has not created a scientific argument in his book The Ravenous Brain, but a philosophical
one. In the second part of my blog post I will connect Bor’s argument with an
article written recently for The New York
Times and show how they complement each other.
Firstly, when I say Bor’s main argument is philosophical and
not scientific, I am not intending to insult him! Philosophy is a tool that we
can use to help satiate curiosity when we are drawn to patterns that are not
scientifically verifiable. It is my view that Bor is engaging in the field of
philosophy known as metaphysics in order to explain the patterns he sees in
neuroscience, psychology, and biology.
Let me first give a brief definition of metaphysics, then I will link this discipline to Bor’s work. Metaphysics is problematic to define because it has had different instantiations since it was first written by Aristotle, but for this blog post I will give a broad definition: Any theory dealing with patterns that apply universally and are abstract in nature (and so not empirically verifiable). Here is an example to illustrate this definition: Zoroastrianism holds that all existence is a struggle between good and evil. This is a metaphysical theory because (1.) the notions of good and evil apply to everything, even a particular hydrogen atom, and (2.) good an evil are abstractions and so impossible to discern based solely on the experience our five senses give us. Metaphysical systems are not guided by the trial and error of experiments coupled with reworked hypotheses, but by introspection and reason. It is true that Bor cites an ample amount of experiments in his book, but these experiments are only used to support his system in various ways, there are no experiments cited that test his central theory.
Let me first give a brief definition of metaphysics, then I will link this discipline to Bor’s work. Metaphysics is problematic to define because it has had different instantiations since it was first written by Aristotle, but for this blog post I will give a broad definition: Any theory dealing with patterns that apply universally and are abstract in nature (and so not empirically verifiable). Here is an example to illustrate this definition: Zoroastrianism holds that all existence is a struggle between good and evil. This is a metaphysical theory because (1.) the notions of good and evil apply to everything, even a particular hydrogen atom, and (2.) good an evil are abstractions and so impossible to discern based solely on the experience our five senses give us. Metaphysical systems are not guided by the trial and error of experiments coupled with reworked hypotheses, but by introspection and reason. It is true that Bor cites an ample amount of experiments in his book, but these experiments are only used to support his system in various ways, there are no experiments cited that test his central theory.
To the best of my knowledge, Bor’s central thesis proceeds
as follows. He begins with the undeniable fact that different molecules possess
different properties, and that these properties react differently to the same
environment. He states that when these molecules are able to reproduce
themselves with similar traits, this constitutes evolution[1].
But then he makes the leap to metaphysics. He links evolution to the selection
among ‘ideas’:
“From this schematic
of how all life evolved on this planet, there is a hidden agenda, namely, the
blind ‘need’ to accurately represent the relevant features of the world.”[2]
“Consciousness… evolved, like almost everything else in
nature, in an incremental way, and is intimately linked to the universal blind
biological enterprise of accurately capturing useful ideas.”[3]
There are a couple things to point out here. First, the representation
of ideas applies to (“almost”) everything in nature (it is unclear why he uses
the qualifier). Second, there was no empirical evidence cited to support either
the claim that something as simple as molecules ‘represent’ features of the
world, or the claim that evolution possesses this “need” (sic) essentially (the title of this section is The Essence of Evolution).
What does he mean when he talks about representations and
ideas (he seems to use the terms synonymously) that “almost everything” in
nature possesses? He informs the reader in a separate paragraph enclosed in
parentheses.
“At this stage, I should stress, I’m not assuming any
consciousness whatsoever in any organism except for humans-terms like ‘beliefs’
and ‘ideas’ are meant as a kind of shorthand to describe creatures that
internally represent a certain informational perspective about the world, but
without any requirement for awareness of those representations.”[4]
To sum up what we have gone through so far, evolution
essentially possesses a hidden agenda that is present in almost all of nature
to represent the world to itself. This representation occurs internally to the object, and does not
assume an awareness of this representation (a representation that exists
internally to an object of which that object has 0-awareness would be very
difficult to test for). An example he gives of ideas is “a strong chemical bond
to a rock wall”[5],
to give you a sense of what he means. Ideas alone are not sufficient for
evolution to occur, the best ones must also be selected for. The word for this
process is ‘learning’[6]
Bor understands consciousness as a product of this
evolutionary drive to represent ideas and learn from which ones work and which
ones don’t. Consciousness has its own enhanced form of learning that non-conscious
objects do not possess. Consciousness is a product of evolution because it
provides an organism with a risk-free workspace to mold, attempt, and learn new
ideas[7].
The rest of this paragraph will briefly summarize how Bor accounts for learning
and information processing in consciousness. In our brains, neurons
electronically compete with each other to decide which chunk of information
should populate our attention[8].
This gives rise to our working memory, which Bor roughly defines as the chunks
of our attention that are presented to us as conscious thinkers[9].
Bor admirably notes that although our working memory is limited to four
objects, the complexity of each of these objects does not seem to have as
strict a limit.[10]
Bor then develops a concept he calls chunking. There are basically two stages[11]:
the first where “attention is spread wide and thin”[12].
In this stage we don’t really understand something as much as we intuit it. We
are overwhelmed by a multiplicity of stars, to borrow his example[13],
but we have not yet understood something about them. Understanding comes in the
next stage, where we focus on a subset of the multiplicity, stars in this
instance, and create a ‘chunk’ that represents a pattern of the subset in
question. When we do this, many of the aspects of what we were originally
presented with fade away, having been deemed superfluous by our attention. Bor
proceeds from this to eventually describe humans as the only animals with
access to “pyramids of meaning”[14],
which refers to how we are able to build complex meaningful structures by
chunking together bits of information, and then chunking together those chunks.
This is
how I understand the central theory to the book The Ravenous Brain. I
would now like to show why I think this argument is metaphysical. Bor, by my
reading, is suggesting that all of nature has an ideal dimension to it, and
that evolution is essentially a competition for reproduction between these
ideas. Our conscious minds lie with the rest of nature on an evolutionary continuum
of learning, and so the entirety of our mental lives follows the formula of
pattern seeking. Working memory, skepticism, pyramids of meaning; these are
evolutionary tools we use in our conscious workplace to forge ideas. Let’s
return to the two requirements for a metaphysical argument which I outlined at
the beginning of this post. First: does this theory apply universally?[15]
The answer is yes, this theory asserts that (almost) all of nature is ideal and
possesses an internal representation of the outside world (I will say again, it
is unclear to me what Bor meant by ‘almost’. He later describes how simple
molecules are ‘ideas’, so what would be excluded?) The second requirement: is
this theory empirically verifiable? Or does it refer to patterns beyond our
five senses? The answer to this is that this theory is not empirically
verifiable. Bor’s theory posits an idea corresponding to every object. Every
object is supposed to possess an idea internally, but not necessarily be aware
of this idea[16].
Bor cites a great number of studies that help support a number of claims he
makes, but none will be able to verify his central thesis: that consciousness
evolved to be pattern seeking because evolution is a battle of ideas. Metaphysical
systems are useful if they help us understand something we do not yet have a
firm grasp of, but they cannot correctly be thought of as possessing the rigor
of science.
The second part of my blog post will deal with an article
from the New York Times entitled Are We Conscious?[17]In
this article, professor of psychology and neuroscience Micheal Graziano outlines his theory about attention and awareness.
Recall that for Bor, attention is the neuronal war of electronic excitations,
and awareness is the base level of conscioussnes corresponding to the strongest
neuron signals[18].
Professor Graziano holds the same definitions of attention and awareness, and
we shall see that his theory can be used to complement Bor’s. Graziano argues
that a self, or subjective impression, is not a real thing, but an illusion
created by the relation between attention and awareness. He starts by saying that
we possess receptor organs that gather information about physical phenomena. This
information is then sent to our neurons causing our neurons to fire (this
corresponds to our attention). Our awareness reconstructs these physical phenomena
into intuition of a presentation of the world. So we do not only process
wavelengths, we also see color. Bor’s theory can be used to complement Graziano’s
to help answer the question, why is it we see color and process wavelengths
like a computer? Bor might say this: our brain evolved so that is can recognize
and chunk patterns and then make pyramids of meaning out of them. Our awareness
converts the neuron signals corresponding to physical wavelengths into the colorful
world we are familiar with so that we can better deal with the information
presented to us. Our awareness streamlines information. If we were presented
with too much detail we would be overwhelmed and be unable to recognize patterns
that might aid us. This falls in line with Bor’s discussion about chaos and
structure in Chapter 1. Our awareness is a mediator between the chaos of too
much information and the structure of too little, leaving our consciousness
with enough information to recognize new patterns, and filtering out the
information that threatens to overwhelm our faculties.
[1] Pg.
38
[2]
Pg. 37
[3]
pg. 36-37
[4] Pg.39
[5]
Pg.39
[6]
Pg.62
[7]
Pg.194
[8] Pg.
124
[9]
Pg. 135-136
[10]
Pg. 138
[11]
Pg. 144
[12]
Pg. 143
[13]
Pg. 143
[14]
Pg. 219
[15] To
put that in more traditional philosophical terms, does this theory deal with
Being?
[16]
Extrapolating a bit, I suppose that ideas as we are conscious of them are of
the same kind as ideas that nothing is conscious of, as Bor would have it.
[17] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/opinion/sunday/are-we-really-conscious.html?_r=0
[18]
Pg.125
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