Re: MR as ontological, intelligence

["John Kineman" <***>]

Hi Tim and Dan,

Some comments (please excuse the length, I intended to be brief, but
alas..) on this interesting question of anthropomorphism.

I recently mentioned this issue on another list, making an analogy with
Jane Goodall's work - i.e., changing the paradigm of animal behavior
research by participating rather than blind observing, which was the
scientific ethic before Leaky put her up to the chimp research at Gombe.
The result was indeed a revolution in thinking both about chimps and non
humans in general and about scientific methodology. I believe we do need
to legitimize experiential analogies in order to make any sense at all
out of non human minds. But it does get strong criticism from the old
guard. Intuiting what one cannot see, by analogy to one's own mental
processes had been considered poor science before these field studies
proved so successful, but still there are those who say they are
meaningless. To me, it is a question of one's basic assumption about
life - if live is something general that we share and are an instance of
(in which case, one should expect reasonable analogies, with due
caution), or if human life is different from everything else, in which
case none of our intuitions should be trusted in interpretation non
human behavior with regard to mental states driving that behavior. If
the former, than Occam's razor cuts to the first option - it is clearly
the more parsimonious assumption that we share similar faculties. If the
latter, then it cuts the other way, and reduces explanations to
mechanisms first and all else only as proved, with the "gottcha" that
non human minds can never be proved (neither can human minds, for that
matter).

Perhaps the best response I got on the question of whether or not
Goodall-style interpretations are overly anthropomorphic was the comment:
"That criticism would be entirely valid, coming from an ape." (Georg
Ivanovas). This is exactly the case. From the ape's point of view, our
interpretation would be overly laden with humanness. But from our point
of view, we are attempting to get into the mind of the ape by the only
tool we have, our own minds, and thus, if the attempt is honest and
careful, to eliminate whatever unnecessary human interpretations we can
to imagine what the ape mind might be like. Science is about getting an
answer through the most reasonable means, and if this is the only tool
available, it is about using that tool as well as one can.

The language question is always present: i.e., "Don't sound vitalistic
or pan psychic while discussing vital qualities of life and while trying
to develop the most general theory possible (a goal of science) for
understanding psyche" -- it is like trying to bite your teeth or pick
yourself up by your shoes. Its a no-win scenario invented by
positivistic physical scientists, who considered everything but physics
to be "stamp collecting.". The taboo of "vitalism" is a red herring in
this case. If life isn't vital than it isn't life. We are thinking about
it rationally and scientifically now, so it is not the same thing as
pre-scientific vitalism, which explained every movement in terms of
invented vital forces with no particular reason to do so. A book falld
off a shelf because it wanted to be on the floor. That is a tautology.
One takes the apparent result and proposes it as a cause, with the means
being vital force. So every wave of a leaf or trickle of water is
interpreted as having intention to achieve just what it achieves. That's
Dr. Panglos' "best of all possible worlds" scenario. That's pre
scientific vitalism, and it has nothing at all to do with proposing that
life is a natural phenomena embedded with physical matter (but not
reducible to it) and amplified though specific kinds of system
organizations.

So I think the issue is political, not scientific. Yet I sympathize with
the problem - some will use this immediately to discredit anyone asking
the deep questions. I think the only solution is (a) thick skin, and (b)
job security. But you probably can't hide the language sufficiently to
solve the problem. There's anotherl reason why adopting palliative
language won't work. It is that in the very act of even trying to do
this, you imply that there is some evil to avoid; that your theory
teeters on the edge of a horrible precipice where it may slip into
nonsense. Setting up that possibility will encourage dismissal and
pan-egotism. On the other hand, how can anyone claim to be talking about
life while avoiding vital language? The two words have the same root!!!
So the only alternative is to admit defeat at the outset and talk only
about non life, as if it might somehow add up to life if we talk about
it enough. But that won't happen. Similarly pan-psychism should not be
categorized as automatically wrong. It depends on how it is formulated.
After all, we allow physicists to speculate about an infinite number of
parallel universes created as complete copies of our universe on the
occurrence of every quantum event (Everett Worlds), or any number of
unseeable hidden dimensions rolled infinitely small in our universe but
there nevertheless to explain all that mechanism misses in a
pseudo-mechanistic way, or a zero-point-energy pervading the universe,
and non-local influences violating Bell's theorem regarding
speed-of-light communication, and theories of anti-universes, white
holes, etc. All this speculating is based on nothing more than the need
to assume that reality is computable, and we do that only because we
know how to compute (without any evidence that the rest of nature
"computes" much, if anything). But if a LIFE scientists uses VITalistic
language, that scientist is branded a charlatan. Or if a psychologist or
cognitive scientist talks about a general psyche, that is banned as
pan-psychism, which like vitalism is an inappropriate historical
reference. Since when are we obligated on penalty of professional death
to cede reality to the physical sciences??? This is nothing more than
pseudo-epistemology and professional arrogance, if I may be blunt (not
to anyone here, I hope). I make a strong point because it took me most
of my life to get enough courage to discuss these things as rational
topics, and looking back I belielve I was sold a bag of false fears
without the additional knowledge (which I had to acquire) to navigate
around them.

-jjk

Tim Gwinn wrote:

>Hi Dan,
>
>You bring up some great examples, like the maple seed. But I am still
>inclined to not use language like "thinking", "intelligence", "awareness",
>or "consciousness" except in an entirely metaphorical sense. And, rather
>than move linguistically from "awareness" -> "thinking" -> "switching" to
>find an appropriate terminology, I would rather begin from a
>physical/functional terminology and then see if it is necessary to move in
>the direction towards "awareness, etc.". To me, the question is whether this
>terminology is inadequate or not. Does it miss something crucial which
>requires invocation of a more anthropomorphic terminology? My concern is
>that starting off with anthropomorphic terminology almost inevitably leads
>one toward some kind of panpsychism or vitalism.
>
>My preference is say that such systems are 1) complex and 2) they have some
>genotype. By combination of these two, they have a stability - an identity -
>for some period of time. This also gives these systems certain phenotypes.
>By virtue of being complex they have degrees-of-freedom and context
>sensitivity unavailable to a mechanism. (I think you rightly point out that
>such genotypic/phenotypic characteristics are not isolable - they are
>entwined in the physical instantiation itself.)
>
>I feel that the behavior which you and John K. characterize as a kind of
>"intelligence" or "awareness" is to me just mechanics.But it is not the
>mechanics of Newtonian physics; rather, it is the mechanics of the Rosennean
>physics of complex and, in particular, anticipatory systems.
>
>For myself, the physical/functional language seems adequate, as long as the
>physics is the enlarged realm of Rosennean mechanics.
>
>Regards,
>Tim
>
>
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of Dan
>>Fiscus
>>Sent: Monday, August 18, 2003 8:40 AM
>>To: ***
>>Subject: Re: MR as ontological, intelligence
>>
>>
>>Tim and John,
>>
>>Good conversation you are having! Jumping in here...
>>
>>And welcome "back" John! I think about your Big Bang theory quite
>>a lot and want to read that paper again...
>>
>>Tim Gwinn wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>>The biggest problem with this is our typically anthropomorphic
>>>>interpretation of "conscious." Thinking as such is very superficial
>>>>consciouisness and not all there is to it. That much is safe.
>>>>
>>>>
>>Distinctions
>>
>>
>>>>between human and animal always break down or prove to not be
>>>>
>>>>
>>categorical
>>
>>
>>>>but rather relative. Even parrots are now recognized as being
>>>>able to think
>>>>as well as apes and dolphins, without a mammalian brain, which was
>>>>previously thought impossible. There is an awful lot of hubris
>>>>
>>>>
>>about human
>>
>>
>>>>consciousness and much of the need to call it unique in nature stems
>>>>directly from the habit of viewing nature mechanically. From
>>>>
>>>>
>>that view, it
>>
>>
>>>>becomes a necessity to exclude formal awareness, but then one
>>>>
>>>>
>>is left with
>>
>>
>>>>the glaring contradiction of the scientist him/herself. So then
>>>>
>>>>
>>we assume
>>
>>
>>>>that there is something qualitatively different that "emerges" or is
>>>>imparted externally. Rosen details all this very well. The other
>>>>alternative is that it is / was always part of nature and that
>>>>
>>>>
>>it evolved
>>
>>
>>>>with the organism. Logically that makes more sense, but it also
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Here we differ, and I suspect will always differ.:) Positing
>>>
>>>
>>consciousness
>>
>>
>>>or awareness as some fundamental property or stuff of nature
>>>
>>>
>>does not seem
>>
>>
>>>at all logical to me.
>>>
>>>
>>Tim - perhaps if you think of it as intelligence, or even the capacity for
>>intelligence it may become more logical or possible. I suggest this as
>>assuming such is becoming increasingly important in my own work and
>>my own interpretations of Rosen. Still more simplified you could think
>>of it as "switching" as in crude decision making and then, again, the
>>capacity for switching. I don't mean algorithmic or simple computation
>>type switching, as I suggest a kind of logic or switching that arises as
>>entangled with, and co-causal with, physical substrate - not as
>>independent
>>from substrate as algorithms are considered to be. For yet another
>>analogy as catch phrase, imagine what "authentic intelligence" would be
>>as compared to artificial intelligence - physical instantiation (hardware)
>>matters a lot and is mutually causal with the logic or formal intelligence
>>(software). Also, details of "local place" and specifics of context matter
>>too - it is not something universal across all time and space
>>scales. It can
>>arise and be amplified into complex forms/processes like life, but only as
>>the conditions are right. Usually it is very faint and hard to detect; we
>>consider non-living matter to dead and also be "dumb". But I think
>>intelligence is part of the "background" nonetheless - everything has some
>>level of intelligence, or capacity for it.
>>
>>[This is mainly me thinking out loud here...all open to debate...]
>>
>>
>>
>>>>Right. And thus do trees have minds?? If we skip the anthropomorphic
>>>>phobias, there is no reason to doubt that trees have a capacity for
>>>>self-representation, which we can also call a primitive kind of formal
>>>>awareness.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>I would not call it 'awareness'. Nor do I see any reason to suppose that
>>>trees have a capacity for self-representation. I am only willing to cede
>>>that a tree is: 1) an anticipatory system, and 2) it has
>>>
>>>
>>internal models of
>>
>>
>>>aspects of its environment. Neither of these, apart or together, would I
>>>take as sufficient for the property 'awareness'.
>>>
>>>
>>Again, try intelligence or knowing or etc. Look at a maple seed or other
>>seeds that are self-designed by life over millenia for specific
>>functions in
>>specific contexts. A helicopter-like maple seed "knows" certain things
>>about both the plant (life) and its context (the environment). Because the
>>hardware is entangled we could say that it "embodies" this
>>intelligence - it
>>is not separate somewhere, like in some code you could isolate or extract
>>or simulate. A maple seed knows about dispersal - the need for dispersal,
>>the imperative of dispersal for survival in a changing environment. This
>>knowledge is a model of environment (ever-changing) and self = life
>>(survival, open-ended evolution as goal) and also the life-environment
>>relation (to survive in changing environment must disperse = spread out
>>= grow = create plan B's as "we know" many will die and disturbance
>>will come to kill the parent plant, given enough time).
>>
>>Likewise, vines are able to move, climb, find things to climb up; most
>>plants "know" to move to orient to the sun, etc. etc. I think the
>>intelligence
>>of plants becomes much more obivous and tangible when you speed up
>>time - plants seem to run on a slower clock than we do. Here is a great
>>website with quite a few videos of plants in motion:
>>
>>http://sunflower.bio.indiana.edu/~rhangart/plantmotion/
>>
>>There are further extensions to systems even simpler than plants and
>>less alive than life itself, as in purely physical systems, but I'll
>>save those
>>for another post. I also should have mentioned all this makes best sense
>>when considering the basic unit of biological life to have both
>>ecosystemic and organismic aspects. I.e., life is not the same as
>>organism,
>>the origin of life was not the origin of the cell but was more likely an
>>ecosystemic process of coupled complementary composer-decomposer
>>that later generated cells, etc.
>>
>>A few thoughts...
>>
>>Dan
>>
>>