Evolution of Reflexes

/5 Comments/in /by

Evolution of Reflexes

The reflex was one of the best ideas that Evolution ever had (second perhaps to articulated bodies). What could be better than an unlearned rapid response action to a threatening stimulus? It’s like having a lightning-fast gunslinger ready to get the organism out of trouble. You don’t have to wait ten minutes before your withdrawal response kicks in. The OED defines “reflex” thus: “an action performed without conscious thought as a response to a stimulus”. The reflex allows the organism to act adaptively (and hence survive) without having to think about it. Speed is of the essence: the organism needs to act quickly and efficiently—the quicker the better (this confers competitive advantage).[1] Bacteria were there first with their flagellar reflexes to chemical and temperature variables. Plants have similar mechanisms built in, though not so rapid—as with the tropisms (the plant doesn’t have to decide to face the sun). It is as if we have intelligence without brains. The smart reflex response is stereotyped, automatic, unlearned, appropriate, economical, and sudden (in the animal case). It can also be modulated in more advanced creatures so as to achieve a degree of fine-tuning. There is nothing unintelligent about it. No wonder, then, that the reflex, evolved so long ago, is still with us today, only now in multifarious forms: patellar, blink, tickle, startle, orienting, salivating, arousal, perspiring, withdrawal, vomiting, defecating, and more. The nervous system (including spinal cord) is a veritable reflex factory performing all sorts of useful functions. Most of our actions are reflex actions (think of digestion, respiration, bodily repair)—it’s all done for us independently of our will. Imagine if you had to figure it all out for yourself! We can’t make machines that duplicate it. The reflex is one of evolution’s great success stories, not to be taken for granted. It could have been used in a Paley-style argument for the existence of God—such exquisite design! There could be a cult worshipping the god of reflexes. And it extends across the animal kingdom, uniting us with our brothers and sisters in reflexology. It was Descartes who originally formulated the concept in Treatise on Man (1664). Darwin could easily have used it to prove evolutionary descent—look at our kinship-in-reflex with other species. The genes clearly invest a lot of capital in reflex creation: survival depends on it. The better the reflex the more the procreation. The reflex rules.

Nor is it limited to the body. The brain is clearly full of reflex action—that’s what the neurons do. They don’t pause to think; they react reflexively. But so does the mind proper: perception is a reflex action—the physical stimulus elicits a mental percept reflexively. It is fast, reliable, unlearned, involuntary, encapsulated, unwilled, automatic (no thinking necessary). The process is largely unconscious—no conscious thought is required. Even the birds and the bees can do it, despite their little brains. No intellection necessary. This is psychophysical reflex action, like pain production (our most trying reflex). And the reflex can also proceed from the inside to the outside, as the animal reacts reflexively to what it experiences: the frog flicks out its tongue having spotted the fly, the human infant winces and writhes with pain (reflexes are especially important to the not-too-brilliant neonate). This too is programmed by the genes—part of the animal’s hardwiring. Reflexes are instinctual, innate, God-given (as it were). In addition, there are intra-mental reflexes, as when a perception triggers an emotion, or a memory triggers a thought (vide Proust), or a word triggers another word (word association). The mind too is rife with reflexes—not surprisingly, given their evolutionary success. This is no doubt an extension of the original machinery: the mind comes to do what the body already does. The one evolved from the other. It didn’t spring into existence ab initio but built on what was already in place. Physical reflexes led to mental reflexes, mediated by the reflexive brain. In time, conditioned reflexes came to be, but they depend on prior unconditioned reflexes (salivation to a bell presupposes salivation to food). We can perhaps imagine a creature devoid of reflexes—it has to figure it all out and act on the basis of conscious reasoning—but that is far from being the actual situation here on planet Earth (or any planet where Darwinian evolution occurs).

I now want to suggest something heretical (so far it has all been banality). It is this: all action (mental or physical) is reflexive. I don’t mean that there is no such thing as conscious thought, or that conscious thought plays no role in the determination of action; I mean that conscious thought is itself reflexive, or is composed of reflexes. Reasoning, in particular, consists of reflexes—it is typically a string of them. This is most easily seen in the case of perception-based belief formation: the animal reflexively believes what its senses suggest. It doesn’t think about it; it just does it. It is genetically programmed to do it as a matter of instinct. It believes what it sees, reflexively; it can’t help itself. The response is automatic and fixed not a matter for contemplation. This is as it should be, because it is vital to the animal’s interests that it act quickly and decisively. It is the same with induction: the animal extrapolates from what it has observed to what it has not observed—immediately, automatically. There is no conscious thought about induction being a valid rule of inference. The general belief is formed reflexively not reflectively—just like other reflexes (compare Hume on inductive belief). Inductive reasoning is a useful adaptation to have (as well as being intrinsically reasonable, it goes without saying). And we can say the same about deductive reasoning: modus ponens, say, is a reflexive mode of reasoning—the mind just does it, without thinking (logicians think about it). Ditto for other logical rules. Logical reasoning consists of a series of reflexes (of course, it is not made correct by these reflexes). Hypothesis formation is no different: we and other animals have an instinct for it—and we typically do it rapidly and automatically, without pondering its justification. Thus, conscious thought consists of mental reflexes—reflexive transitions. And the same thing is true of intentional action: it too consists of reflexes. Beliefs and desires trigger intentions, which trigger actions.[2] No conscious thought is required to enact the transitions; we must not intellectualize the process, as if there are conscious thoughts about its justifiability—any more than the blink reflex is backed by thoughts concerning the inadvisability of letting projectiles hit your eyeball. Such thoughts are no doubt true, but you don’t need to have them for the reflex to do its work. The reflex spares you that responsibility—that’s the beauty of reflexes. You can thus engage in conscious thought without having to engage in conscious thought about your conscious thought.

You might object: what about deliberate drawn-out rational thought, say about where to go on vacation or whom to marry? Is that reflexive? It is true that there is no immediate movement from question to answer—you don’t automatically think “the south of France” once the question has occurred to you. You think about it, do some research, ask a friend. But all this input itself acts on you reflexively: each new piece of information triggers a belief, perhaps a desire, from which you hope to draw a conclusion. Then you finally decide, based on everything you know and want. But that transition is itself by way of being a reflex, because we are also programmed to act on the basis of the totality of our knowledge (and desire). We decide reflexively but holistically. Every component of the reasoning was reflexive, and the final outcome was itself a form of reflex—the reflex of doing what we think all things considered is the best (not that we formulate that principle explicitly). You can sometimes see an animal doing this as it pauses on the threshold—“Should I go out there or not?”—but its action is the automatic upshot of a survey of reasons for and against. Its final action is reflexively prompted by the totality of relevant facts (whether it’s raining, how cold it is, whether any danger lurks). Even the most reflective act is made up of pieces of reflexive action. Indeed, without such reflexes it is hard to see how we would think or do anything at all. We need primitive instinctual mental moves—intellectual reflexes, in effect. There is no such thing as purely non-reflexive thought and intentional action, as there is no such thing as non-reflexive bodily action. It is true that conscious thought can substitute for reflex action in certain cases, but when that happens it is just one sort of reflex standing in for another—as when you consciously close your eyelid with your hand for fear of incoming missiles (because your normal blink reflex has been abolished somehow). The contrast between reflexive behavior and so-called non-reflexive behavior has been greatly exaggerated, indeed misconceived. There is no such thing as completely non-reflexive behavior. That is not surprising given the evolutionary history. What we really have are successive modifications of the original plan—the initial simple primordial reflex. There is no sharp divide in this respect between the body and the mind. Descartes’ contrast between the instinctual reflexive body and the rational non-reflexive mind is erroneous. Reason is reflexive too.[3]

[1] There are short- and long-latency reflexes, depending on the number of neurons involved, but as a rule all reflexes are very fast—as fast as the nerve impulse can make them (nerves exist in order to implement fast reflexes).

[2] There are two marks of the reflex: it is not something chosen, and it is not something you can train yourself out of. You don’t choose to blink your eye when something approaches it (you can’t choose not to blink either), and you can’t learn not to blink by diligent effort. By these tests logical reasoning is reflexive: you don’t choose to reason by modus ponens or conjunction elimination (you can’t help it), and you can’t train yourself not to reason thus.

[3] I hope it is clear that no form of reductionist psychologism is intended by this paper. I am discussing the psychology of logic not its metaphysics and epistemology (justification, warrant). My point is that primitive logical transitions (inferences) are to be understood as corresponding to mental reflexes—logical validity is tracked by reflexes of the mind (“reflexism”). This is as it should be, since evolution has a general interest in the truth (though not a dogmatic interest). I would also say that moral reasoning is reflexive at its foundations: we reflexively (and rightly) think that pain is bad and pleasure good. We don’t learn this or reason it out; it isn’t a conclusion we have laboriously come to. It is the same with our disgust reactions—we reflexively recoil from the disgusting stimulus. It isn’t a matter of cultural indoctrination (though the disgust reaction can be modified and modulated by culture, as can many reflexes). Logical reasoning has the same basic psychological structure: inbuilt, hardwired, automatic, non-negotiable, involuntary, unreflective, immutable, elemental, given not chosen. It is part of our biological nature, a product of evolution with ancient roots. It is not, however, true in virtue of such biological facts. It is true in virtue of…but that’s another story.

Share

Stimulus-Response Science

/0 Comments/in /by

Stimulus-Response Science

Stimulus-response psychology has been out of fashion and favor for a long time now, not without reason. It is associated with behaviorism, physicalism, and conditioning theories of learning. We are not just physical mechanisms triggered into reflex behavior by outside stimuli! Indeed not: we are full of “intervening variables”, cognitive structures, streams of consciousness, mental images, trains of reasoning, flights of creativity, etc. We don’t learn by starting with a blank state and having patterns of S-R links stamped on it. Hence, the contemporary enthusiasm for cognitive science, consciousness studies, innate ideas, computational procedures, linguistic competence, mental representations, the language of thought, mental models, and all the rest. But let’s not defenestrate the baby along with the slush and slime: for the idea of the stimulus-response pairing, its ubiquity and utility, is logically detachable from its historical associations and connotations. We can drop the stuff about physical behavior and conditioning theory but retain the concept of the stimulus-response nexus, shorn of its regrettable past company. No more Clark Hull and B.F. Skinner, no more reductionism, no more preposterous simplemindedness; but plenty of stimulus-response connections, outright mentalism, and brain-mind configurations. We can let it all hang out (or in) while claiming that stimulus and response are ultimately what it’s all about. That is what I intend to do in what follows: defend internal conscious cognitive stimulus-response psychology (and beyond). Call it “cog-stim-sci”.

I have not set myself a difficult task. The idea is perfectly intuitive and natural, calling for no serious biting of the bullet. For example, pain is an inner response to an outer physical stimulus, and pain behavior is an outer response to an inner pain stimulus. The one elicits the other. There, what was so hard about that? It is important to notice that the elicitation relation between stimulus and response is not the ordinary causal relation as it obtains between physical events. The OED defines “stimulus” as “a thing that evokes a specific functional reaction in an organ or tissue” and “something that promotes activity, interest, or enthusiasm”. That is not true of common-or-garden causality (“efficient causation”). When a bomb causes a building to be reduced to rubble it does not evoke a specific functional reaction. The missing ingredient is captured by the word “functional”: I would paraphrase this as implying something teleological and normative. The stimulus evokes a response that is both purposeful and good for the organism. Thus, the purpose of evoked pain is to enable the organism to survive (where survival is deemed good for the organism); and the purpose of pain behavior is to do the same for the same reason—such behavior is designed to do good (promote health, fitness, reproductive success). That’s what the elicitation is for—but physical causation is not for anything. Gravity is not a stimulus that elicits the functional response of motion, but merely a cause of it. The blink reflex, by contrast, has as its purpose the avoidance of harmful intrusions in the eye—it has teleology and normativity. Maybe elicitation incorporates ordinary causation (de facto if not de jure) but it doesn’t reduce to causation. We are dealing with a richer concept than mere causation (conjunction plus necessary connection). We are dealing with a characteristic of life. This is why the word “response” is so frequently used in a question-answer context—as in “What is your response to that question?”. The question elicits a response in the form of an answer; it doesn’t merely cause an answer to enter the course of events. Elicitation is a relation on another ontological level, with its own distinctive nature and definition. Synonyms include: evoke, excite, stimulate, activate, incite, provoke, impel, instigate, innervate, prod, prompt, spark, quicken, trigger, spur, stir, goad, induce, invite, animate, propel, initiate. Stimuli do all these things in bringing about a response (reaction, answer, reply, reverberation, resultant). A thing is precisely a stimulus when it is a stimulus to something, as a response is a response to something: each looks forward or backward to its partner, with a kind of primitive (or not so primitive) intentionality; hence, stimulus and response come in pairs. Both can be internal or external: some stimuli are external (either distal or proximal) and some are internal (mental); and some responses are external (behavioral or physiological) and some are internal (also mental). The thesis is to be that all mental processes are one or the other: everything mental is either a stimulus or a response (sometimes both). The psychophysical organism is a stimulus-response machine or system or device or unit (nothing physical or unfree is intended by these labels—I could just as well have said “thing” or “entity”). Its mode of organization (or being) is to be a stimulus-response linkage: perception, consciousness, action, thought, knowledge, emotion, desire—the works.

Let’s consider some examples to get a feel for the conceptual scheme being proposed. External stimuli (distal and proximal) impinge on the organism eliciting a sensory response—a conscious experience. This in turn acts as a stimulus to belief formation, eliciting a particular belief. The belief may then elicit an action or utterance as response. We have a stimulus-response chain–a sequence of stimulus-response pairs. In between these items we will, no doubt, have micro-S-R links, occurring within the nervous system. All this is teleological-normative. Conscious states, for their part, function as stimulus and response, imperceptibly, privately. Actions will be elicited by suitable internal states—beliefs, desires, and intentions. These may be viewed as endogenously produced responses—responses to the eliciting states. Action (behavior) is the response part of an S-R pair.[1] Thought is a response to a felt problem, or a passing memory, or something imagined. Thought is not stimulus-free, though the stimulus may be completely internal. Speech is a response to a thought stimulus or some other inner state.[2] Knowledge is a response to evidence, sensory or testimony. If a logical inference is involved, with premises and conclusion, we may describe the premises as stimuli to the reasoning faculty and the conclusion as a response to these premises—it is elicited by the premises.[3] An emotion may be stimulated by a belief acting as a stimulus, or by a perceptual event, or by some subconscious perturbation. A desire will typically be a response to a need or lack.  The mind is thus an S-R network, rather like the body and brain. It is perpetually stimulating and responding, activating and reacting, exciting and being excited. This is not like a purely physical inanimate system (e.g., a system of planets) that is characterized by causal relations between interacting parts governed by a physical force; it is characteristic of a living system. There are functional-normative S-R systems, on the one hand, and purely causal law-governed systems, on the other. The latter are mechanistic in the classic sense (lifeless); the former are organic (imbued with life).

Consider biology: is it a stimulus-response science? The terms “stimulus” and “response” owe their origin in psychology to Pavlov and Thorndike, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the underlying conception originated in physiological studies, especially the study of the nerve impulse. Physiologists were already familiar with the salivation reflex—the stimulus of food elicits the response of salivation (an unconditioned reflex). Evidently, the body responds with a variety of secretions when appropriately stimulated, so it is natural to think of physiology as an S-R science; it is then a short step to conceiving the mind in the same way, at least in some of its aspects (psychophysics was the first step). Reflexive S-R connections thus become the dominant paradigm of the new non-introspective psychology. But what about biology as a whole—does it have an S-R interpretation? It does as far as animal physiology and psychology are concerned, but what about evolutionary biology? Here is a suggestion: mutation is the stimulus and natural selection the response. A genetic change occurs randomly (think of this as a physical stimulus) and then nature operates by selecting the good mutations and eliminating the bad ones (think of this as a non-random adaptive response). The stimulus elicits a new life form via the selective response. This is like the stimulus of a new breed of dog, produced by human action (or randomly), eliciting a selective response from dog breeders in general. A stimulus is necessary if any selective response is to occur—either in natural or artificial selection. Or again, sexual selection takes a stimulus in the shape of a potential mate and produces a response in the form of an act of mating, and hence gene propagation. The splendid peacock tail is a stimulus that elicits an act of procreation on the part of the peahen. Then too, an earlier species can by natural variation act as a stimulus to producing a new species as response. The evolutionary process has a stimulus-response structure or logic. Every species comes from an earlier species acting as stimulus (to paraphrase Darwin). Adaptation is the organism responding to the stimulus of the environment. There are biological reactions to stimuli everywhere. The gene itself is both a stimulus to action and a result of such action (as it is passed on). Thus, the science of biology can be analyzed as a stimulus-response science in a number of respects.

The same is true of economics. We have all heard of an “economic stimulus package” such as lowering interest rates or injecting money into the economy or large-scale public works. These are intended to produce an economic response such as boosting investment or encouraging consumption. The policy is said to stimulate economic activity. It is purposeful and normative—the results are intended to be beneficial. It isn’t just mindless efficient causation like rainfall or volcanic eruption. Innovation is a stimulus that elicits productivity and prosperity, as perception is a stimulus that elicits thought and knowledge. The structure is the same. And isn’t the supply-demand nexus a species of the stimulus-response nexus? Supply varies and produces price variation, as demand can act as a stimulus to supply. This interaction is like the mutation-selection interaction: supply variations are like mutational variations, and then the market acts like natural selection—it exerts a demand effect, either producing more of the same or eliminating the new variation. Innovation resembles random genetic variation; demand resembles survival of the fittest. Economies are thus comparable to biological systems: there is competition in both spheres driven by creative acts (mutation or commodity production). Thus, economies progress and so do species—things get better designed as the process repeats itself. This is all stimulus and response, input and output, elicitation and selection. Economic activity is the operant conditioning of goods and services: it selects by reinforcement. Think of this as macro stimulus and response. The electric car comes to sweep the planet, as ants and termites once did. The same is true of political movements: industrial capitalism incites the rise of communism by way of reaction, oligarchs appear, great political powers form. There is a stimulus and a response at the macro level: this will have a teleological and normative dimension, as social changes produce better or worse conditions of life. The same dialectical pattern recurs, and it is not just mindless efficient causation. From the cell to society, from biological tissue to the body politic, we have armies of stimuli eliciting cavalcades of responses. Meanwhile the inanimate world chugs mindlessly along, indifferent to all this stimulating and responding, the mark of the living world. Not that there is any vital spirit or some such; but there is a different conceptual apparatus at the two levels, a kind of irreducibility (much debated).

The analogy with questions and answers is never far away. The stimulus is like a question and the response an answer: the stimulus occurs and then it is up to the responder to act in a certain way. There are degrees of freedom: it might not respond at all, or it might over-respond, or it might respond just right. It might give the right answer or the wrong answer. There are two agencies at work—the stimulating agency and the responding agency. So, a perception may lead to a particular belief or not, a nerve innervation may produce an action potential or not, a new product may take off or not, a political movement may be sparked or not, an educational program may lead to increased knowledge or not. The stimulating agency cannot act alone; it needs the cooperation of the responding agency.[4] Supply alone cannot create demand; an electrical impulse alone cannot cause a neuron to fire. The stimulus needs an audience, as it were, a receptive capable audience—as the questioner needs an answerer equipped with what it takes to answer. We don’t think that the action of the sun on its planets is a question-answer interaction: the movement of the planets is not an answering response to the force of the sun’s gravity, save metaphorically. This kind of interaction is pre-stimulus-response, a simpler mode of being. It has no meaning or purpose. But the stimulus-response nexus is imbued with purpose and value: the response to the stimulus is always good or bad in some way. The cell remains healthy, the organism survives, the economy prospers, people’s lives improve—or not, as the case may be. This is a different way of looking at the world, not a value-free mechanistic way. It separates the living world from the non-living world. In death there is no response to stimulation.

How does this perspective bear on causal theories of this or that—perception, memory, knowledge, action? Such theories have been popular and have been thought to unify the mind with the non-mental world—causation being a highly general type of relation. Can we reduce the causally defined notions to something close to the physical? Is perception, say, a causal “naturalistic” relation to the perceived world, no different in kind from the relation of spatial proximity or gravitational attraction or mechanistic impact? Is memory a causal relation to a past event, like an imprint in the sand? Is knowledge a special case of causal dependence? Is intentional action causation by reasons, as volcanic eruptions are caused by seismic activity? These all sound pleasingly no-nonsense, steps towards a unified world-view; but if the present reflections are on the right track, then this is an illusion born of a thirst for generality (homogeneity). For a more apt description of what is going on invokes the specialized notions of stimulus and response: the percept is a response to a present stimulus, memories are responses to past stimuli, knowledge is a response elicited by evidential stimuli, actions are responses to the inner stimuli of desire and belief. Again, these concepts are saturated with teleological-normative content, with the idea of a living thing; they are not just regular mechanical causation. They may include such causation, but they are not merely that—they are not just impingements of an inanimate force (gravitational, electromagnetic, impact-mechanical). The theories in question were right to perceive an analogy with natural biological objects and processes, but wrong to try to assimilate the phenomena to the realm of the inanimate. Perceiving is a living process like salivation or perspiration, not a non-living process like crystal formation or tectonic-plate displacement.

Metaphysically, there are three sorts of dependency relation in the world: causal relations, elicitation relations, and logical relations. These correspond to the inanimate, the animate, and the abstract (for want of a better term). Thus, cause and effect, stimulus and response, premise and conclusion. Just as we need to distinguish the third of these from the first, so we need to distinguish the second from the other two. That relation has come under fire because of its historical association with outmoded theories and metaphysical doctrines, but it is not difficult to detach it from those bad ideas, thus giving us a purified conceptual framework for thinking about a variety of subject matters. There is nothing to prevent us from developing thoroughly cognitive (and affective) stimulus-response theories, as well as outright phenomenological stimulus-response theories. The basic idea, derived from physiological biology, is sound, even if its early applications missed the mark. There is a whole world of stimulus-response elicitation waiting to be recognized as such—hence, stimulus-response science. Cognitive science was billed as a multidisciplinary enterprise, unifying separate disciplines under a common conceptual framework (basically computational); stimulus-response science casts its net more widely still, bringing in everything animate, thus allowing for theoretical integration at a high level.[5]

[1] We can recognize stimulus holism if we see fit—the mind acts holistically in the elicitation of action.

[2] Is Chomsky-style linguistics an S-R scheme? It could be if we regard language learning as the elicitation of an innate language program. Also, we could see performance as an outer response to the internal stimulus of competence.

[3] We can envisage the emergence of “response epistemology”: knowledge acquisition and theory formation could be seen as responses to evidential stimuli. This would be a type of naturalized epistemology, allowing the inclusion of animal knowledge.

[4] The OED defines “elicit” as “evoke or draw out (a response or answer)” and “draw forth (something latent) into existence” (labeled archaic). Here we see the idea of the response as residing in a separate entity, already prepared to deliver the response in question, containing it in embryonic form.

[5] I would not shun the label “ideology” to describe the position I am advancing. It is a high-level all-inclusive conceptual framework designed to find a general underlying order where heterogeneity appears to reign. It unifies, integrates, homogenizes. It is to the life sciences what matter and energy are to the physical sciences—abstract ontology.

Share

Digital Weapons

/2 Comments/in /by

Digital Weapons

Suppose the Germans at the time of the Second World War were secretly working on a new weapon with lethal potential. The plan was to manufacture small handheld devices that could be distributed to enemy populations (how they weren’t sure). German psychologists and brain scientists had discovered that a certain kind of propaganda when administered via these devices would quickly brainwash the viewer, causing him or her to engage in local terrorist activity—or against any population Germany felt was not on its side. It could then stream this content onto the devices and turn them against the countries in which they lived, wreaking havoc. This would be a formidable weapon, sure to turn the war in Germany’s favor, and deserving concerted research and development efforts. They called it the “Digital Weapon”, or the “D-bomb” for short. As yet, it was only a glint in the eye of German scientists and difficult to implement, but the concept seemed sound. However, the allied powers got wind of this program and undertook to beat the Germans to it. American scientists declared it feasible in principle and got to work. As it happens, they did get there first and created the first generation of digital propaganda devices, which experimentation had confirmed to be effective (the German psychologists were right). They were eager to try them out on an unsuspecting enemy population. Accordingly, they dropped a large consignment of these devices onto two Japanese cities and waited to see what would happen. Predictably, the inhabitants were intrigued by the devices and downloaded the propaganda, which had a startling effect: they began to act like virtual zombies full of hatred for their own people. Soon there was violence in the streets, mass casualties, with millions killed. Japan surrendered, fearful of repeat uses of the new weapon. In the post-war period Russia began an ideological war and knew all about the digital weapons that had been unleashed on the world; so, they made their own. Now there began an arms race involving the weapons, and other nation states were eager to acquire them themselves. The world became a very dangerous place, because these weapons had enormous power—they weren’t just some mad scientist’s pipe dream. They were everywhere in the Middle East, and factions within a given society started to exploit them for their own internal purposes. They became weapons of domestic and international terrorism, capable of “radicalizing” their users. Havoc ensued. Wars were fought using them. The weapon had become normalized, democratized, privatized.

But isn’t that where we are today? The only difference is that the internet and cell phone were not originally conceived as weapons of war. They came upon us stealthily, in disguise; they were advertised as liberating, harmless, beneficial. Surely, if history had been as described above, we would have been alert to the dangers—we might have put some protective laws and treaties in place to control their proliferation and the content they were permitted to transmit. They were introduced as mere playthings, like toys, yet they contained the potential for great harm, given human propensities (gullibility, weakness for conspiracy theories, susceptibility to lies, social conformity). We had no advance warning of their potential for mischief and worse; no one ever told us they were lethal weapons. And now that AI is entering the world-stage an extra dimension of peril is near—from the atom bomb to the hydrogen bomb, from the bow-and-arrow to the firearm. Psychological warfare is the new type of war, civil and international, and the cell phone is its primary vehicle. Is it too late? Probably, given human nature; but we can at least try to gain some perspective on what has happened. That was the purpose of my alternative history. The internet is the new atomic bomb, but more insidious, harder to control, and much cheaper. It uses the human mind against itself. The atomic bomb used the highest achievements of the human mind (modern physics) to fashion a civilization-destroying weapon; now the technological triumphs of the internet are being used to destroy civilized society. From genius to genocide. Did anyone ever suspect that the peaceful motives behind the Manhattan Project would lead to a threat to the entire planet? Did anyone think that the humble cell phone could also be used to devastating effect? And we are just at the beginning of its development and its grip on people’s minds (or what remains of them). Now the explosions take place in our heads, silently.[1]

[1] Remember the first law of human history (of human life): things always turn out worse than you think, so be prepared. Frankly, I’m quite pessimistic, because I have seen how quickly human intelligence has been reduced. The human mind is highly input-sensitive. Memes are endemic. Thought is fragile. Stupidity is easy. Propaganda works.

Share

Blog Profile

/0 Comments/in /by

Blog Profile

I thought readers of this blog might be interested in its readership; at any rate, I’m going to tell you. My website gives me a top ten of readers by country, with an indication of relative volume. The top two are always the same but the other eight vary from week to week or day to day. In descending order, they are (as of today): USA, UK, Canada, Germany, Japan, Sweden, India, Italy, Norway, Australia. The USA is always about four times higher in volume than the UK, though remarkably silent (no idea why). Evidently, I have plenty of American readers. Other countries come and go (Spain, the Philippines, Croatia, China, and others). Reach is therefore global, though I don’t know actual numbers. Interesting. Comments welcome.

Share

Spock Logic

/7 Comments/in /by

Spock Logic

It is quite obvious that Spock doesn’t know any logic. He clearly knows a lot of science, but he is ignorant of the science of logic. Why do I say this? Two things: (a) he doesn’t know what “logic” means, and (b) he never refers to anything in the logical canon. He is deficient in logical education. I don’t know about other Vulcans—though I suspect the worst—but Spock himself is a logical ignoramus. Even humans know more logic than Spock! Even Dr. McCoy probably knows more! (You didn’t see that coming.) When Spock talks about logic, he clearly means “scientific”: fact-based, methodically reasoned, not driven by emotion, objective. The scientific method and attitude—not superstition, wishful thinking, prejudice, stock response. On all occasions on which other crew members think they have undermined Spock’s “logical” approach, they are grievously in error, because rational thought can never be in error—it is always preferable to its opposite (irrational thought). There is nothing wrong with Spock’s cognitive functioning, which is not to say there is nothing wrong with him (he seems morally at a loss sometimes, through lack of empathy). But that is only the half of it; the really amazing thing is his lack of logical knowledge. Have you ever heard Spock refer to any logical results or the great logicians of the past? Aristotle, Leibniz, Frege, Russell and Whitehead, Godel—nothing. Does he ever excoriate anyone for affirming the consequent, or even begging the question? Does he ever express any reverence for first-order predicate calculus, or sing the praises of modal logic? Why aren’t the great logicians ever cited by him? Does he even know what is meant by “existential generalization”? Has he heard of the logical constants? Has he ever cracked open a logic text? Clearly, he knows nothing of any of this—and yet he constantly parades his logical acumen and berates others for their lack of it. Why? It would be amusing and instructive for Captain Kirk to ask Spock what he makes of the semantic paradoxes or Russell’s class paradox or other logical conundrums—if only to make a dent in Spock’s total allegiance to logic. But that would require that someone knows some actual logic aboard the USS Enterprise. Dilithium crystals are regularly spoken of, but not logical particles (is Spock a logical atomist or a believer in possible world semantics?). Has he ever heard of soundness and completeness theorems? He is really very vague on what logic is, even in its most elementary parts; he seems to think it’s just the injunction to think rationally (and he doesn’t seem to know what that might involve—is induction rational?). In fact, the entire crew seems blissfully unaware of the issues surrounding the nature of human reason—deduction, induction, abduction, skepticism, the Cogito. I doubt that anyone has a view on whether existence is a predicate (not even the thoughtful Lieutenant Ohura).

What are we Trekkies to make of this? Only one conclusion is “logical”: the creators of the show are similarly logically illiterate. And yet the entire show is centered around the concept of the logical! Did Gene Rodenberry ever consult a real logician or open a logic book? Did he ever wonder what professionals have to say about logic? I doubt it. Nor, evidently, did any of the writers—or the great Leonard Nimoy himself. William Shatner you can understand not having much interest in logic, but surely Leonard Nimoy must have wondered about it as he said his famous lines in praise of logic. The producers obviously consulted scientists so as to get their science right, but logic—oh no. I don’t get it. I definitely don’t like it. Just think how different the show would be if some real logic had crept in. I like to think of Spock arching his eyebrow and remarking, “As Frege taught us…” or “As Hume pointed out…”. That would have shut McCoy up.

Share

2025 Intentions

/6 Comments/in /by

2025 Intentions

I don’t make New Years Resolutions (a pitiful concept) but I do intend to do certain things going forward. The main one is to go on hating—hating evil, corruption, and stupidity. I invite you to join me. This won’t be easy: I am not by nature a good hater. Hating is unpleasant, it’s work, it’s unpopular. I’d rather have a good time; I’d rather like people and their actions. I easily slip back into it (don’t you?). It’s just so much nicer, easier, happier. But it’s not the right thing to do: we have a duty to hate and I don’t propose to shirk this duty. I will keep on hating hateful things—and that includes people, particular people. Nothing else will stop them, evidently. No hatred, no moral integrity. We must (morally must) despise, detest, revile, and rebuke anything deserving these attitudes. Politicians in particular, but also the miscreants around us. We can practice degrees of hatred, to be sure; we don’t have to hate all bad people and things equally. Let us practice discriminating hate, not blind ignorant hate (those people we especially hate). So, I will persist in my hate, my anger, my revulsion—despite my temperamental tendency to like and approve. I will strive to keep hate alive.

The second thing I intend to do is less moral—in fact, hardly moral at all. I intend to write less. Not go cold turkey, but practice moderation. This one is going to be hard: I am a natural writer, I like writing, I always have. It’s a habit with me. I won’t say I crave it, but I do find it soothing, satisfying. Looking back on the last ten years, I find I have written approximately 1000 papers, all posted on this blog (two a week, year in, year out). That adds up to about 3000 pages (I really don’t know how many). These would make ten books of 300 pages each—a lot of books. It takes time and effort, like anything worthwhile. It distracts me from other things (housework, people). I won’t give up writing completely, but I will make a concerted effort to keep it under control. I am intending to practice writer’s block. Writer’s paralysis would be nice, but I can’t set my non-writing goals too high. Maybe I will start with only one paper a week (already I am sweating at the prospect). Wish me luck on my new voyage of just saying no to writing!

More hating, less writing: yes, that’s my goal for 2025. It’s going to take some serious self-discipline.

Share

Chemistry

/0 Comments/in /by

Chemistry

I used to love chemistry. It was my first intellectual interest. I was ten. It was my gateway science. Why, I don’t remember; it might have had to do with Dr. Dolittle. I persuaded my parents to equip me with a chemistry laboratory one Christmas. I selected the apparatus and chemical samples from a catalogue I had somehow obtained. My excitement could not be contained. They ordered what I had requested and in due course a cardboard box arrived. I discovered it under their bed, so I knew my dream had come true. The wait for Christmas day was unbearable. Eventually it came very early in the morning—I was allowed to open the box. I still recall the thrill of taking out the various items of equipment: the flasks, retorts, funnels, filters, the test tubes—and the Bunsen burner. This was my special favorite—a chunk of real metallic chemistry equipment, gas powered, fierce. I couldn’t wait to fire it up in the kitchen. Then the chemicals: each in their own labeled tube, brightly colored, potent, combustible, magical. I did little experiments all day, there in the kitchen, with smells and chemical reactions. I couldn’t wait to learn more chemistry. What I chiefly recall today is the sheer pleasure of chemistry apparatus—heating a chemical in a test tube was a joy. I wonder how many little boys (or girls) experienced this pleasure at that time—before the whole thing was banned. Remember, I was ten. It taught me so many things, notably a sense of responsibility around dangerous objects (I was also heavily into knives). What did my parents make of it?

These recollections were prompted by reading Oliver Sacks’ Letters (edited by Kate Edgar, 2024). We first bonded (chemically) over childhood chemistry at a movie premier party of all places (Robin Williams was the star—terrible film). We talked about our shared early chemical enthusiasm, his more learned than mine. The letters bring Oliver back to me with full force—you need his own voice to get the full measure of the man. The weightlifting, the motorcycling, the swimming, the psychological torment, the brilliance, the humanity, the inhumanity, the bookishness, the humor, the verbal felicity (and sound). He was childhood friends with Jonathan Miller, also a dear friend of mine, whose mind he describes as “an atomic bomb”. We both moved on from youthful chemistry in the direction of the mind—or did we? Are we both really chemists of the mind? I rather think so: but without the chemical apparatus, the laboratory experiments, the sulphureous smells.

Share

Limits of Intelligence

/4 Comments/in /by

Limits of Intelligence

Does intelligence have limits? What might these be? Where do we humans stand on the intelligence scale? I will discuss these questions by reference to a Star Trek episode and a well-known philosophical contention involving bats. Don’t expect anything too definitive; these questions are very difficult (we may not have the intelligence to answer them). Still, some faint light can perhaps be cast, or possibilities opened up. At least the ride should be enjoyable. The Star Trek episode (“Errand of Mercy”) concerns a species of beings called “Organians”: as we learn towards the episode’s end, they consist of nothing but “thought and energy”, as Spock puts it (they give off a very bright light in their true undisguised form). They have evolved into this form following a corporeal existence many hundreds of thousands of years ago. They are vastly superior to us, morally and intellectually, and indeed to all known species. Spock puts it by saying that as we are to the amoeba, so they are to us: if we are a billion times more intelligent than an amoeba, then they are a billion times more intelligent than we are. They prove this by doing things that are beyond our comprehension, like disarming a whole Starfleet by thought alone (phasers disappear from hands, starships find themselves devoid of weapons). They are afraid of nothing and find us perfectly disgusting in our primitiveness and lack of moral enlightenment (ditto the Klingons). The Organians are one hell of a smart bunch, no question. Even Spock bows to their superior brain power (except they have no physical brain). To my mind, this raises the thorny question of whether it is possible to be a billion times cleverer than humans—to outstrip us as we outstrip the amoeba. Is this just science-fiction fantasy or strict nomological possibility (or even metaphysical possibility)? Is it just playing with words or is it something conceptually serious? What if I told you that there is another species, the super-Organians, that makes the Organians look like amoebas? And then another species that similarly outdoes the super-Organians (they can turn empty space into a whole galaxy just by…well, we are too dumb to understand how). Doesn’t this start to sound just a tad farfetched? And how could giving off a blindingly bright light make all this possible? What has light got to do with intelligence? But then, intelligence doesn’t belong on a scale that can be indefinitely extended—it has limits. We might want to say that Organians are as smart as it gets—it don’t get no smarter. They have reached the intelligence limit (compare the speed of light). Because intelligence has a limit, a point at which it cannot be increased. Before I explore this possibility further, I will set out the second type of argument for limited intelligence, observing only that the things the Organians are alleged to do seem literally impossible, in clear violation of physical law, godlike.

Materials for the second argument can be found in the work of Thomas Nagel, though I will refrain from attributing it to him—this argument was suggested to me by reading him. Let’s distinguish two kinds of fact: those that can be known only by possessing a particular point of view, and those that presuppose no particular point of view. Call the first class of facts subjective and the second class objective. Then we can say that facts about consciousness are subjective in this sense and facts about the physical world are objective. Accordingly, our knowledge of facts about consciousness is more limited than our knowledge of facts about the physical world (at least so far as the present argument is concerned). We can’t know what it’s like consciously to be a bat but we can know all about a bat’s brain, for example. Put in terms of intelligence, our intelligence is more limited in the one area than the other: we are more intelligent about the physical world than we are about the mental world, because we can in principle know more about the former than the latter. Even the Organians might have trouble with knowledge of the minds of inferior beings, since they cannot put themselves in their place (they do seem baffled by human psychology). The point is that, according to this way of thinking, intelligence will have limits imposed by the mechanisms and methods of knowing with which we are familiar. We can only grasp the nature of other minds by being mentally similar to them, but we can grasp the nature of physical reality without ourselves being similar to this reality (we know what an elephant is, say, though we are not physically similar to elephants). From this perspective, we have a clear argument for cognitive limits built into the knowing process; as I would put it, we are cognitively closed to bat experience, because subjective facts can only be known via similarity to the subjective properties of the knower. This similarity constraint applies to knowledge of consciousness but not to knowledge of physical body. Of course, we could overcome the similarity constraint by simply giving the would-be knower the very experiences he is endeavoring to grasp (e.g., echolocation experiences); but the point is that intelligence alone will not fill the gap—no amount of clever thinking is going to enable you to know what it’s like to be a bat. That, at any rate, is the argument. The Organians look like an untenable exaggeration of the fact of differences of intelligence, and the subjectivity argument appears to explain how at least one kind of cognitive limit can arise. Intelligence is not free to develop ad libitum.

But that argument itself has its limits. Are we to suppose that no objective knowledge is out of bounds—that there is no limit to how objectively intelligent you can be? Could there be objective Organians even if there can’t be subjective Organians? They can’t grasp alien minds but they can grasp anything in physical reality; and it makes sense to suppose that they are vastly more intelligent than us. Can we really be as stupid as Spock makes us out to be (including himself)? Also, the subjectivity argument runs into difficulty when generalized: does it establish clear limits in all cases? Consider moral knowledge: can you know what morality is (really is) and not yourself be a moral agent? This kind of knowledge seems to require a basis in self-knowledge—how can you know what is right and wrong and not apply those concepts to yourself? If you are not a moral being, you can’t know what it is like to be one. Animals don’t know what human morality is all about while lacking morality themselves, and I doubt that Klingons get it either (in fact, they have their own morality—they recognize moral imperatives of a martial type). This is not a matter of subjective states of consciousness but of moral values: you have to have them in order to know what they are. And what about certain general sorts of physical knowledge—can you know what space is and not yourself be in space? Can you know what shape is and have no shape—or mass or articulated structure? None of this is clear, but a case could be made this this type of knowledge is also constrained by the physical nature of the knower (especially his brain)? We don’t here have a clear criterion to judge whether a certain item of knowledge is available to the would-be knower or not. The situation is messier than we thought. Could you know about arithmetic but not be subject to it? Could you know about aesthetic properties but not have them yourself?

Where are we? We are trying to determine whether intelligence has limits, and if so why. The Organians sound implausible, and the subjectivity argument doesn’t settle the question generally (it was never meant to); so, what is the right thing to say? I want to say the following: reality is limited and there is no sense in the idea of an intelligence that goes beyond reality—therefore intelligence is limited (necessarily so). Consider a simple game like checkers: you can only get so good at it. There is no scope for vast differences of checkers intelligence; Organians are no better at checkers than humans are (let alone Vulcans). No one is ever going to get massively more intelligent at checkers than you or I. But reality is essentially like checkers: once you know the rules there is nowhere else to go. Intelligence is as good as it is ever going to be once the truth has been grasped. No doubt we are far from this state, but the point of principle remains: you can’t just keep on getting more intelligent once reality has been exhausted—and it must be exhaustible. Or, if you don’t like that kind of sweeping claim, certain sections of reality are such that intelligence will reach its limit with respect to those sections once they have been mapped out and understood. Reality is not unlimited, so intelligence has limits—the limits of reality (this includes technological products). Intelligence is not infinitely extensible; it is not true that for every level of intelligence there is a higher level. No one could be more intelligent (more omniscient) than God! Take logic: it is inconceivable that the Organians are better at logic than super-logical chief science officer Spock (he learned Godel’s theorem at his mother’s knee, if not before). Why? Because there is only so much logic to know and Spock knows it. The Organians are not somehow better at logic than human (or Vulcan) logicians; it isn’t as if they have an enormously superior grasp of modus ponens or conjunction elimination. I doubt they are much better at arithmetic or morality or Shakespeare interpretation or the history of the Second World War or chess or cookery or humor or bottle washing. There just isn’t an unlimited amount to know about these areas; there is no room for gigantic differences of intelligence. What would it even meanto say that Organians are a billion times better at Shakespeare interpretation than we are? I think it could be plausibly argued that human beings are close to the “end of intelligence” (some of them anyway), as they are not far from the end of science (how much is there left to know in biology?). Once the big discoveries have been made there is not much further you can go. Human intelligence may have reached a plateau and not much improvement can be expected, because we have already got so much right—in particular, logical reasoning. Spock is depicted as perfectly logical, and the idea is not absurd—you don’t get more intelligent at logic than Spock. Rationality (which is what Spock really means by “logic”) has been pretty much figured out (like elementary arithmetic or dish washing), so we cannot look forward to massive advances in it as time goes by; it will look much the same in ten thousand years as it does now. The basic principles are well established (the same goes for morality). We are biologically no more intelligent than Plato and Aristotle, and the same will hold for future thinkers. We will never be stunned by the intelligence of aliens—though the extent of their knowledge may surprise us.

There may be endogenous limits on our problem-solving power; no doubt there are. It isn’t just that reality itself has limits—a restricted budget of problems to be solved. So, human intelligence cannot be expected to grow and increase indefinitely: it will run out of things to be intelligent about, and also run up against its own intrinsic limitations. The same is presumably true of any intelligence in the universe. I would speculate that we are about nine tenths of the way there already, because so much has already been learned—about logic, morality, physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, Shakespeare, philosophy, mathematics.[1] We are actually pretty damn intelligent, nothing like an amoeba. We could learn a lot from the Organians, no doubt, but not feel like complete dimwits in their presence; we could hold our head up intelligence-wise. This is simply because intelligence is not a quantity that can be increased ad infinitum. It has an upper limit and the signs are that we are not far from reaching it. I can see other species catching up with us in the fullness of time, but not our own species being massively surpassed by an alien intelligence  (somewhat, yes, but not colossally).[2]

[1] For some reason this position is found incredible by many—science is far from at an end! But there is every reason to suppose that the scientific revolution, only a few centuries old, will one day wind down, and is even now winding down. I have discussed this elsewhere, as have others, and won’t defend it now.

[2] If our universe were smaller and simpler, easier to figure out from our vantagepoint, this position would be uncontroversial. As time goes by, it will become increasingly evident that we have figured out as much as we are going to figure out, and the idea of a superior intelligence will seem less and less compelling. I doubt that the Organians take seriously the idea of an intelligence superior to their own, and rightly so, because they know that they have it all under control. They know they know (hence their complacent smiles). They know their intelligence has it covered. No one can look down on them.

Share