Gene-machine Darwinism and Responsibility

Many folk complain that an 'ultra-Darwinist', or 'gene-machine' Darwinist, view of the world renders us incapable of assigning blame to individuals. The implication is that we are creatures at the mercy of our genes, mere puppets, so cannot be blamed or praised for our behaviour. Is this true?

The view sometimes assigned to sociobiologists, or evolutionary psychologists, that we must follow our genetic blueprints, gains traction from the analogies drawn to illustrate their ideas, such as Dawkins’s ‘lumbering robots’. This inference is unfair, since they do accept cultural influence on behaviour, but, relevant to this question, they would expect the sexes to have evolved differently (even competitively) because of their differing physical characteristics. Women have larger sex cells than men, and carry the foetus for nine months. Because men can afford more reproductions in a lifetime, sociobiology would suggest that emotions would evolve differently to motivate men to spend more than women; i.e., have more promiscuous tendencies. Does this mean that some of the more rabid accusations aimed at evolutionary psychology are true? If we consider this statement, typical of the sort of thing:

If gene-machine Darwinism is true, then we cannot blame a man for sexual infidelity, nor praise a woman for being faithful.

To tease out the implications of this conditional statement, we can consider it the outline of an argument, with the antecedent as the premise and the consequent as the conclusion:

Premise	Men’s genes give them a tendency to sexual infidelity
Conclusion	Men cannot be blamed for sexual infidelity

This is invalid; there is a hidden premise or two. We could complete it like this:

Premise 1	Men’s genes give them a tendency to sexual infidelity
Premise 2	Men cannot be blamed for their tendencies
Conclusion	Men cannot be blamed for sexual infidelity

This looks valid, although there is a slight equivocation on the word ‘men’. Not all men will have a tendency equally, so we cannot conclude that all men are blameless for sexual infidelity. But we’ll pass on this and assume ‘men’ refers to the average man.

The implication of P2 is that our tendencies are overwhelming in their force. This doesn’t seem to be true at all. We are all aware of temptations and understand we can resist them. In such circumstances, other inclinations and reasoning help us to resist. Sociobiology claims we are a basket of competing traits and tools evolved for dealing with the world, and it’s too simplistic to say we blindly follow our tendencies. And to say we blindly follow one tendency, such as a sexual imperative, is even more so. The law recognises in cases of diminished responsibility that in some circumstances, including natural aberrations, we cannot be held wholly responsible for our actions. But this principle acknowledges that the average person is responsible for their actions, and it’s the average person we’re considering.

The ‘gene-machine’ charge might be levelled by a 'blank-paperist' (a believer in the social science model that holds that a large part of our nature derives from the cultural environment), in which case we can ask if their counter position can be justified. This would have to look something like this:

P1	People’s behaviour is determined by their culture
P2	People determine their culture
P3	People can be blamed for what they determine
Conclusion	People can be blamed for their behaviour

Some say that people do determine their cultural environment. In a sense, that’s true about their current situation. But the development of traits that occur pre-adulthood is inaccessible to us as adults. Many traits form in the years before 16, so there may be an opportunity for the blank-paperist to determine them in childhood that is not available to the gene-machinist. That may be relevant to the wider community, but no individual, contra P2, can determine their own culture in their formative years. And there is no reason to believe that how these traits are formed makes them more or less mutable in adulthood.

So, once determined, however that may be, the problem of blame presents itself. To determine one’s own traits, one would have to exist prior to one’s own conception – a logical impossibility. So determinism seems to be the enemy of blame, not genetic determinism.

Looking at P3, we do blame people for what they do, often ignoring prior causes. This arises from a sense of localised or ordinary responsibility because, perhaps, it’s more important to understand immediate causes. Consider a house underneath a cliff that suffers from rock-falls. If the rock-falls are due to an unstable rock face, the instability can be addressed. If they’re due to someone pushing rocks down, then they should be held responsible and prevented from re-offending. Observing that, ultimately, both the unstable rock face and the vandal are simply following causes deterministically as part of one long chain of causality from the Big Bang doesn’t help us to decide a future course of action.

Consequentialists and deontologists would take different approaches to the vandal; the consequentialist would see little value in blame unless it resulted in greater benefits than other responses. Deontologists would lay blame because of the inherent wrongness of the act. But neither would blame, morally, the unstable rock face for falling on the house, because it lacks agency. If agency is a temporary phenomenon, it would not be appropriate to say that someone is, or is not, ultimately to blame, but to say that they are locally to blame is pragmatic. We recognise prior agencies as mitigating factors; if the miscreant has been unduly influenced by another, for example. But the further back from the current moment we move the less responsibility we assign. So the passage of time is relevant to the level of responsibility, in conjunction with agency, and neither rests on the truth of gene-machine Darwinism.

The charge from immaterialists, typically theists, is that determinism follows from materialism (immateriality is redundant in gene-machine Darwinism). Science suggests that materialism may not entail determinism, but we’ll allow this assumption for the sake of argument. Immaterialists suggest that morality is meaningless without ‘free’ choice; if our actions follow unavoidably from prior events, blame cannot be laid:

P1	Materialism entails determinism
P2	Determinism dictates that every cause has a prior cause
P3	Responsibility rests where the causal chain stops; at a cause without a prior cause
Conclusion	Materialism precludes responsibility

We blame the person responsible, but if the causal chain doesn’t stop, neither does the responsibility. The argument looks valid; P1 we are allowing, P2 is just determinism defined, but P3 looks suspect. As discussed above, a local responsibility is understandable, even with a chain of events extending back into the past to other ultimate causes. In fact, to rest the responsibility where there are no prior causes can prevent us laying blame. Consider the following scenario: a woman sees a man advancing toward a baby with his arms outstretched. She hits him with her handbag, knocking him out. Among the reasons for her actions could be:

a)       She knew the man meant to harm the baby.

b)       She’s a lunatic out to hit the first man she sees.

c)       She made the decision to hit the man, or acted to hit the man, with no prior cause.

The first two explanations allow us to draw on further evidence and perhaps assign praise (a) or blame (b, with diminished responsibility). But (c) leaves us helpless, because intentions are a major factor in moral judgements. Indeterministic acts happen for no reason. Further, it’s hard to see why someone could do something without prior cause; how would they know what to do without the knowledge of the situation? Perhaps knowledge of the situation exists, but does not count as a prior cause? But the woman is hitting the man because he’s there, else she’d be flailing at nothing. It is a necessary precursor to the act, so must be a component of some prior cause. So indeterminism stops us placing blame, and gene-machine Darwinism is not to blame for that!

The expanded argument for the second part of the conditional we're considering shares the same problems:

P1	Women’s genes give them a tendency to sexual constancy
P2	People cannot be praised for their tendencies
Conclusion	Women cannot be blamed for sexual constancy

The implication is we have no choice but to follow our tendencies. To expand further:

P1	Women’s genes give them a tendency to sexual constancy
P2	People have no choice but to follow their tendencies
P3	People should only be praised for choosing to act well
P4	Sexual constancy is acting well
Conclusion	Women cannot be praised for sexual constancy

P2 is false per gene-machinists, but P3 is troublesome too. Comedian Richard Herring cracks the joke “I was very moral as a teenager; I was a virgin by choice, but also because no-one would have sex with me.” We recognise a difference between acting well by choice rather than by circumstance (imagine if Herring's setup was that he was trying to be promiscuous, but failing). But the charge against gene-machine Darwinism is a little deeper than this; it’s the suggestion that we have no choice because of our nature and cannot choose to act well, so never act well. But we hear stories of people acting ‘heroically’ and afterwards saying ‘I had no time to think’ or ‘It all happened so quick’. Heroes often act instinctively, not through choice, but we think they are praiseworthy still. We praise them because of the nature that compelled them; the hero could have done otherwise in a way that the rock from the previous example could not, but didn’t, and wouldn’t. The idea that they might do something else in the same circumstances would just make their actions arbitrary, and them unreliable, which would hardly attract plaudits. Natural compulsion, then, doesn’t preclude praise, and gene-machine Darwinism’s supposed denial of choice is not fatal to praise-giving, either.

Whether we can praise or blame, then, may still be an issue, but the fact of it does not turn on the truth of so-called gene-machine Darwinism. The arguments to support the conditional could be constructed differently, so we have not exhausted all possible justifications. Nevertheless, based on the arguments considered above, it's clear that the implications often ascribed to ultra Darwinism are quite unwarranted. Ultimately, all that it argues for is the origin of personality traits, not their strength or immutability. As Dawkins says in The Extended Phenotype, when he complains about the unjustified reputation that genes have acquired as 'sinister' and 'juggernaut-like':

Educational, or other cultural influences may, in some circumstances, be just as unmodifiable and irreversible as genes and ‘stars’ are popularly thought to be.

Quite.

Bibliography:

Radcliffe-Richards, J. (2000) Human Nature After Darwin (A211 Book 4), Milton Keynes, The Open University

Read more »

Suffer Little Children

There's been a lot of articles recently from people like Colin Tudge and John Gray saying that religious believers are caricatured by atheists, and that they don't believe the things they say they do. Perhaps, but how do they behave? Do they act as if magic happens, for example?

The Kingdom Faith Church is an evangelical church based in Horsham, Sussex, run by 'neo-charismatic' Christian, Colin Urquhart. According to Wikipedia, he spent some time in the seventies as an itinerant minister "with his living costs arising solely from donations - living on faith." Living on faith? Well, not exactly; living off other people might be a more accurate description. Anyway, he's managed to leverage 'living on faith' into a much bigger enterprise which includes a number of ministries, a training college and some expensive camera equipment too, by the look of their videos.

You'll see from their website that they're very 'Good News' about faith. Not my cup of tea, but I accept that if grown adults want to give their money to such a place then they have every right to; presumably the congregation feel they're getting some benefits from the community values on offer.

However, I'm not happy with what I've seen from the Youtube clips of their faith camps. Consider this:

'GoGen' is the name they give to their activities for 10-11 year olds. All sounds innocent enough and heart-warming. Until we see the testimonials from Faith10, the previous year's camp:

Listen to what these poor kids are saying:

"God showed me that I should speak faith over people" !

"This week I've been prayed for by a leader, for my bladder [??] problems, and I've been completely healed."

These are dangerous things to be indoctrinating in children as young as 10. One of the youth leaders says it's been a 'week of the supernatural' and 'the things that God has done to the children have been deep, have been real'. They do not know that there is supernatural healing going on here (there isn't), so to tell these kids that it's real is an abuse of their position. But this is even worse:

The leader of the 'Bouncies' says 'Monday we started with salvation', when the children learned that Jesus died to make them 'clean' (nice), and were asked to put sparkly men on a cross if they wanted to be made clean by Jesus! Which most of them did, surprise, surprise (I'd like to meet the kids who wanted to retain their uncleanliness). It was the Holy Spirit on Tuesday, then on Wednesday they listened to God; 'amazing things the children heard' (no kidding). One boy said that Jesus wants to heal his eczema, and his mother the following day said his skin wasn't inflamed any more, and the leader announces that 'he'd already got his healing'.

Finally, one of the Bouncies' testimonials:

Evie was singing about God's healing power over her. She's had a persistent cough all week, and since last night she's not coughed once, so we thank Jesus for her healing.

(Praise be, child recovers from the common cold! Did she thank Jesus for her catching it in the first place?)

The 'Bouncies' are just 3-4 years old.

This is all entirely inappropriate. If the faithful really want to teach their kids that Jesus is their salvation, I can't stop them. But it can't be healthy to tell such young children that they're unclean (unless, you know, they've got some dirt on them), and they should not tell them that Jesus can heal them. The little 'uns aren't equipped to see that this is nonsense. Every regression to the mean will be classed as a miracle, and there's a chance they'll grow up thinking that praying is a suitable course of treatment. There really should be a law against such dangerous mendacity.

This is in the heart of England, in a pretty secular country in a pretty secular continent, and it's a growing church. It seems clear that, even here, there are plenty of believers who still think that magic happens.

Read more »

The Problem of Consciousness

Susan Blackmore's excellent Conversations on Consciousness (recommended by my friend Quine, I think) documents a number of chats she has had with eminent researchers on the subject over the years. The strength of the book for a layman like me is the conversational approach. No doubt this isn't appropriate for peer review papers, but it's great for getting some of the ideas across to science dunces like me!
Blackmore asks each subject the same questions (mostly), and I thought it would be a handy guide to summarise their answers in individual posts, starting with a question which attempts to frame the whole subject: what is the problem of consciousness?

I will only offer outlines of and quotes from their answers; buy the book for the Full Monty. Be aware that quote context is important, and I'm focussing on those comments that seem particularly relevant to me.

Bernard Baars: slightly avoided the question, but I could summarise as: what is the difference between knowledge which is conscious and knowledge which is unconscious?

Ned Block: "The problem is, what is consciousness? More specifically, I'm interested in what consciousness is in the brain." Consciousness is the "technicolour phenomenology; the 'what it's like'."

David Chalmers: "We can be terribly objective, but something very important about being a human being is left out. As human beings we all know that it feels like something, from the inside. We have sensations, thoughts and feelings...We all know this, and it's central to being a human being, but for some reason, in the last 50 or 100 years science has tended to ignore this."

Patricia & Paul Churchland (treated as one mind, amusingly): Pat - "We don't know how neurons code information. That's a lot not to know." Sue objects that Pat has slipped from 'What's so special about consciousness' to "something we don't know about the brain". Pat responds: "Many people suppose that by sheer contemplation of a problem, they can tell whether it is hard or easy. This is self-deception, and usually self-aggrandising self-deception, to make it worse." Then..."People think that because we don't understand how consciousness is produced in brains, this must be telling us something really deep and interesting." She finds Chalmers distinction ridiculous. Paul cites examples of consciousness, like the difference between being awake and being asleep, and qualia (!), and says: "It's not clear how they knit together. It's not clear how the brain produces them."

Francis Crick: "[H]ow can you explain the redness of red in terms of physics and chemistry?"

Daniel Dennett: "[W]e have evolved a certain capacity for self-knowledge, a certain access to ourselves which gives us subjective experience - which gives us a way of looking out at the world from where we are. And this just turns out to be very hard to understand. How can something have that perspective?"

Susan Greenfield: "[I]t's a subjective phenomenon that we can't really define properly...it's very hard to know how to even frame the question as to how a subjective inner state is associated with something physical."

Richard Gregory: "[T]he huge gap between what qualia are like and what the physical system of the brain is like. In other words, how the hell does physics produce something which is so totally unphysical?"

Stuart Hameroff: "The brain is an excellent information processing system, but there's no accounting for how and why we have subjective experience, emotional feelings, an 'inner life'."

Christof Koch: "Well, the problem is to explain why sometimes I see something and sometimes I don't"

Stephen LaBerge: Not really asked directly, but he does say ""The problem to be explained is experience...".

Thomas Metzinger: "[C]onsciousness is opposed to all other states." Other states are only known from the outside. "Consciousness is different in that we gain knowledge about it from the inside as well as from the outside - and we don't really know what that statement actually means."

Kevin O'Regan: "A pseudo-problem." Then... " ...the problem is making the link between the experience and the brain process. And nobody seems to have found any reasonable physico-chemical mechanism that could make that link." He gives the move from vitalism as a comparison and says: "I think exactly the same paradigm shift could solve the problem that people call 'the hard problem of consciousness'."

Roger Penrose:  "[T]here's nothing in our physical theory of what the universe is like which says anything about why some things should be conscious and other things not."

Vilayanur Ramachandram: "[A]ll the problems we have tackled and solved so far have to do with the external world...But we're now finally confronted with in some ways the biggest problem of all, namely, understanding the very organ that made all those other discoveries possible, turning on itself and asking, 'Who am I?'."

John Searle: Not asked directly, but says "[W]hat is the difference between the conscious brain and the unconscious brain?"

Petra Stoerig: "[W]hy does consciousness come about, what is it good for, how is it made?"

Francisco Varela: "There is the world, and there is me."

Max Velmans: "If you accept...that neural causal processes in the brain in a sense produce these experiences, and that indeed there might be neural correlates in the brain going on at the very same time as you're having those experiences, but that there is something deeply mysterious about the fact that these neural states seem to be completely different from these phenomenal worlds - then what kind of explanations would start to count as explanations of what is going on?"

Daniel Wegner: "[E]veryone has a consciousness but they have no access whatsoever to anyone else's."

Some fascinating thoughts. Many highlight the gap between first person and third person; some think it's not such a problem. What Penrose says is also a common theme, and close to how I've often puzzled over the problem; how do the cells in my brain produce this feeling but all the other cells in the universe not? Assuming that consciousness is limited to brains, of course. But Penrose goes too far, I think.

Read more »

Abuse and Positive Liberty

Isaiah Berlin famously made the distinction between negative and positive liberty in his essay Two Concepts of Liberty, which he delivered in a lecture at Oxford University in 1958. It seems plain to me that totalitarianism had been much on his mind (and why not!) and he wanted to show how some forms of liberty could be abused. It's tempting, because of the negative/positive nomenclature, to think they are two sides of a coin, but this is wrong. Berlin is talking about two distinct concepts of liberty.

By negative liberty Berlin means the freedom to conduct our lives without obstruction from other people or groups of people, including the state.

How free we are in the negative sense depends on the range of options available to us, and their nature. Berlin illustrates this liberty by comparing it to the availability of doors:

The extent of a man’s negative liberty is, as it were, a function of what doors, and how many are open to him; upon what prospects they open; and how open they are. 

We needn’t take advantage of the opportunities available to us; they should simply be there. For example, as a child growing up in the sixties, I spent Sundays in a fug of boredom. Sunday specific laws shut down shops and entertainments that were available on other days of the week, thus reducing my negative liberty. Today, my daughter regularly shops on a Sunday, visits the cinema and goes bowling. In that respect, she is freer, in Berlin’s negative sense, because those ‘doors’ are unlocked. However, I may ground her, and once again reduce her negative liberty. I am freer than I was too, even if I never go shopping, to the cinema, or bowling on a Sunday; it’s sufficient that I can if I want. Conversely, the religious might think that opportunities for worship have been reduced by this relaxation of Sunday laws, adversely affecting their negative liberty in this respect.

Berlin is concerned with political freedoms only, so natural constraints are excluded. If Sunday bowling was available to me, but I couldn’t play because I was disabled, this wouldn’t be an infringement of my negative liberty, since the restriction has not been placed on me by another person, group of people, or the state. So there is an element of coercion in the concept.

By positive liberty Berlin means the freedom to choose the ideal life; ideal, that is, according to informed reason.

Berlin draws the distinction between two inner selves – a ‘higher’ rational self and a ‘lower’ empirical self. If we behave according to our higher self we would act in the ideal way to fulfil our potential and goals as human beings. Our baser instincts and desires corrupt this ideal mode of behaviour.

So we may have been granted a completely free hand in Berlin’s negative sense, but still be unable to play that hand. To return to the Sunday example, I now have a number of activities available to me, on that day, which were not there before. Despite these distractions, I might spend the day sorting out some jobs around the house, doing some gardening, and enjoying time with my daughter baking a cake. Let us assume these are the proper goals of my higher rational self. However, if there’s a big game on I may ‘find’ myself down the pub watching Sky’s Super Sunday, and neglect those higher callings. Ironically, in this instance more negative liberty (the pub’s open and there’s Sunday football on TV) has resulted in less liberty for me, in Berlin’s positive sense. If I manage to resist the call of the pub, I would increase my positive liberty.

In some cases, coercion is employed by the state to help people realise these higher goals. For example, down the pub, it is now illegal to smoke inside, and this reduction in negative liberty is aimed at increasing our positive liberty, by gently coercing a healthier lifestyle. This is a paternalistic control imposed by the collective, to help us achieve more well-being; something we ‘really’ want; that is, what our rational higher self really wants.

Because some limited paternalistic coercion is understood as acceptable to increase positive liberty, a danger presents itself. Berlin argues that misuse of the notion of positive liberty can occur when this paternalism is extended, and a ‘final solution’ imposed by groups of people, or states, on the individuals within. By ‘final solution’, he means that those in authority come to believe there is one ideal way of living that reconciles every person’s ideal way of living, and so maximises freedom for the person and the state. Berlin does not think that such a reconciliation of a population’s aims is possible, so such a project would be ill-conceived from the start.

Coercion by the group is then seen as an extension of the individual higher self, and a judgement is made that what an individual truly wants is better known by the group than the individual. And, further, that the individual being coerced actually wants these things, only sub-consciously, to achieve more positive liberty. The result is paradoxical: coercion is employed to make folk ‘free’. Berlin saw the dangers of such misuse in the totalitarianism of the twentieth century, in Nazism and communism; an authoritarianism which coerces individuals for their own supposed good. Although I think Berlin had twentieth century totalitarianism uppermost in his mind when describing these concepts, it's plain to me that they also apply well to that other seat of authoritarianism - religion. Once a church gains sufficient power to wield over the populace, primarily through indoctrination, they wield that power by asserting their knowledge of the 'real' greater good and demanding believers follow their unlikely doctrines, for their own good.

It’s a rule of law that would be hard to argue against. If a citizen agrees with a course of action, all well and good; if she disagrees with it the authority could say that the higher self ‘really’ agrees, and assume a mandate for the greater good of the state, or religion. It’s a rule imposed against the wishes of the people but supposedly for the wishes of the people, in the mistaken belief that a set of unified wishes can be established. And so institutional cover-ups of massive abuse to further the institution become the norm. As Enda Kenny said:

The rape and torture of children were downplayed or 'managed' to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and 'reputation'.

One can't help thinking that throughout, the Catholic authorities believed they were protecting the priests because it was the best for the Church, because they know what is best for everyone.

That sort of approach cannot be allowed to continue in any institution. Until religious ones drop their claims to  a divine truth, the danger of this abuse of positive liberty, and therefore children and adults, continues.

Bibliography:

Warburton, N. (2002) Arguments for Freedom (A211 Book 1), Milton Keynes, The Open University

Read more »

It's All Chinese to Me

Searle’s Chinese Room argument addresses the notion of strong artificial intelligence (AI) – that simply running a computer program constitutes thinking. This he contrasts with weak AI – that computers can model aspects of the mind; an uncontroversial idea. Models are used to test theories of reality against reality itself; there is no illusion that the model is reality itself. A climate model doesn’t produce phenomena the way that climate does, for example.

Computers process algorithms. An algorithm is a series of unambiguous (at each step) instructions that deliver an expected result. Since this is all computers do, any biological process that cannot be represented by an algorithm cannot be computed. Algorithms are executed by manipulating symbols, represented at the lowest level by binary on-off states. All popular machines are based on the von Neumann architecture. The relevant elements of this are: step-by-step processing; storage of symbols in one memory location; a unique address for access; all controlled by a central processing unit (CPU). With this common architecture in mind, it also follows that the same instructions (programs) on different computers will produce the same results. Such machines, with sufficient capacity, are dubbed universal Turing machines (UTMs) - after Alan Turing, computer pioneer. Strong AI advocates consider that all mental processes can be represented algorithmically and therefore all UTMs can think – that there is nothing about the brain necessary for thought apart from what qualifies it as a UTM.

Searle allows that machines can think, since he considers we are machines and we can. But he doesn’t think that a program by itself constitutes thinking, and, more specifically, he thinks that algorithmic rule processing (syntax) is insufficient for mental content (semantics). He offers a ‘simple and decisive refutation’ with his Chinese Room thought experiment. Imagine we’re in a room with baskets of symbols we don’t understand (Chinese, in his example) and a rule-book we do understand. People outside pass in symbols and we pass out symbols according to the book’s instructions. If the rule-book is adequate, the ‘room’ appears to understand Chinese. But inside, we have no understanding of Chinese before or after.

Searle argues that this counts against computers based on the von Neumann architecture, but not against brains, because in brains the physical causes the mental in a way that is absent from computers. The biochemical processes are responsible for the mental contents, not the rule processing, so minds are not computer programs.

Searle’s argument is plausible. We see how processing can produce an output without apparent understanding. In fact, we experience this when we learn another language. Initially, we apply rules to translate the foreign language, delivering output without understanding. With practice and exposure to the language, we come to understand it, in a way we didn’t before. What is this difference between translating and understanding? Furthermore, if the brain is simply processing algorithms, how do these step-by-step unambiguous processes come to be creative, or even wrong? Error-prone computers fail catastrophically, rather than creatively. None of this lends support to the brain as algorithmic processor.

Searle asks us to consider what the person in the room understands (nothing). But he places the person in the position of the CPU, whereas his argument is against thinking being the running of a program. For the room to respond adequately, this does, as a matter of fact, require the CPU (the person) and a program (the rule-book) and data storage (the basket), as well as input/output. So we must ask: does the person, in conjunction with the program and data, and input and output, understand Chinese, not just the person? This is the core of the systems reply objection and the answer to its challenge is less clear-cut than Searle suggests. Agreed, it’s still hard to see how adding a hard disk with data and a program to a silicon chip, attaching a keyboard and monitor, could allow the ensemble to think.

The Loebner annual prize is awarded to the computer that performs best against other contestants in a Turing Test - Turing suggested that if a machine responds so that interrogators cannot distinguish it from a human, we should conclude that it’s thinking. It’s a measure of the difficulty of the test that no machine has come close to passing it in twenty years of competition. For example, in 2010 the winning computer told a joke and its interrogator said “Well, I believe that’s worth a LOL!”. The program responded with “Should I know that?”, misunderstanding a phrase that almost anyone would understand. As Daniel Dennett observes in Consciousness Explained, countering Searle’s argument, any program that responds to such comments sensibly would have a vast ‘world knowledge’ and complexity. Just understanding ‘LOL’ requires knowledge of textspeak and its background. But the rest of the sentence requires knowledge of how some people wouldn’t just say ‘LOL’, but would distance themselves from the exclamation by commenting on it in a more detached way. It gives a completely different impression of the interlocutor than just ‘LOL’, but still delivers the news that she found the joke amusing. All this ‘meaning’ would feed back into and inform the subsequent conversation. This is how minds embedded in the real world operate, and is the challenge for AI. So the test poses a valid question. If anything passes the test, shouldn’t we conclude that it’s thinking - displaying an embedded knowledge of the world?

A program could, by storing any number of associated ‘meanings’ and ‘relations’ in database tables called ‘meanings’ and ‘relations’, deliver answers that appear intelligent. But is it understanding? After all, the computer doesn’t know that a ‘meaning’ entry in the table ‘meaning’ has any meaning – it’s just a record in a table. Like the Chinese Room, it’s hard to see that the computer has conquered semantics internally. But to return to the process of learning a language, maybe the mechanistic translation algorithms become subsumed into the sub-conscious, along with the associated categories. By definition we then only ‘see’ the meaning of foreign phrases and the appropriate responses, not the algorithms and categories underlying. We move from knowledge that ‘this word’ means ‘that word’ to knowledge how to speak the language. If this is so, then we are simply passing our own Turing Test, just as an observer outside the Chinese Room considers the room passes the test, ignorant of the mechanism inside, and Searle’s argument counts against our own minds.

Maybe the most interesting premise in Searle’s argument is that brains cause minds. At one level, this is trivially accepted by any physicalist, but perhaps Searle is addressing issues such as the particularity of a self that forms the mind, and its self-starting nature. If software creates the mind, and that software can run on any hardware, how is the mind individual? And programs seem inert. How could they initiate action?

Searle doesn’t really engage with the case for how complexity might address these problems. His ‘Chinese Gym’ counter argument, to address more complex connectionist architecture, asks us to imagine lots of folk in the room manipulating symbols. He is suggesting that lots of processes will exhibit the same properties, and only those, of one process. This isn’t true of physical things, and I’m not sure it’s true for processes. At some point sufficient complexity will appear individual. We can see that complexity introduces something new; for example, patterns in windblown sand dunes, and flock behaviour in starlings. We have a pattern-seeking mind, and pattern-seeking can be programmed. And, just as we get false-positives (ducks seen in cloud shapes, faces in toast) so would pattern-seeking programs. If this is the source of creativity and synchronicity, this could be replicated by rule-processing.

The apparently self-starting nature of the mind is perhaps a deeper problem. Searle considers that the particular physical architecture of the brain is required for semantics, but we see that different people (and maybe different species) acquire meaning with some difference in the brain, so at least some independence from the physical is allowed. So whether mind is emergent from complex algorithms or ‘fizzing chemicals’ is moot. And if an analogue process is required to initiate thinking, this would be something that doesn’t simply provide input to a digital process, or else that input could be simulated. So it needs to initiate and provide something extra to the digital processing, and it’s not clear what this is. Searle’s contention that the mind is tightly coupled with the hardware, and that something about the brain, biochemicals or similar, causes the mental content is as inscrutable as the Chinese Room, so this is insufficient to discount algorithms as a basis for mind.

Searle notes that simulation is not duplication. For example, simulating digestion does not digest. The analogy appeals to function to dismiss simulated thought as genuine thought, but functionalists would note that some simulations do produce the same output as the thing they’re copying, so perform the same function. Much brain activity is simulating our macro reality in a way that aids our survival. Simulating that simulation is doing the same work in a way that simulating digestion is not. Mental content that has no correlate in reality, like pain, appears simulated. However, if minds can be simulated it does suggest that maybe characters in simulated realities have feelings, which is hard to countenance. Indeed, like the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment, it becomes difficult to discount that we are in a simulation. Nevertheless, it’s not clear that mind is immune to simulation.

So, on a functionalist understanding, Searle’s digestion analogy only stands if semantics derives from a process which does not produce the same outputs as the original. It’s plausible that the output of the Chinese Room is the only output required for semantics, but brain processes, in addition to delivering the intelligent response, also generate some heat, and maybe some biochemical and molecular changes. If these are necessary for true understanding, then only machines that produced them would understand as we do. Searle hasn’t established that, and his argument is inconclusive in discounting algorithmic processing as a route to meaning and mind.

Bibliography:

Wilkinson, R. (2002) Minds and Bodies (A211 Book 5), Milton Keynes, The Open University

Read more »

Merdophilia

Stephen Law linked to a curious review of his book Believing Bullshit in THE, by Martin Cohen. I've not read Law's book, but I may well do - I've enjoyed some of the snippets he's posted from it, and his blog is full of useful philosophy. So I was interested to read what Cohen, Editor of The Philosopher, the journal of The Philosophical Society of England, had to say. According to the Society's blurb:

The Society aligns itself with no particular school of philosophy, nor is it a cover for any political, ideological, religious or esoteric movement or interests.

Sounds good. The review presents Law's book as an uncompromising attack on religion, alternative medicine and anti-science. Doesn't sound too bad to me, but I'm aware that Law's philosophy is rarely so absolute, so it surprised me. Then he says that Law thinks the scientific method:

...was invented about 400 years ago and is this: "Scientists collect data by observation and experiment. They formulate theories to explain what they observe and where possible, subject these theories to tests." Now that's what I call bullshit!

Eh? It's a simplistic summary, for sure, but 'bullshit'? How so?

Cohen complains that there is no mention of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, and so the alarm bells start ringing. No doubt their contribution to philosophy of science is considerable, but is it possible the reviewer is in thrall to unworkable post modern social science theories? Then Cohen says:

Law is one of the militant English atheists, led by His Holiness, Richard Dawkins.

Oh boy, the hallmark of the shallow thinker; 'cleverly' equating Richard Dawkins with a religious leader. Ironically, in a review of a book about believing bullshit, we are given a stream of classic examples from Cohen:

Take homeopaths, for example. Law complains that they swap anecdotes with each other about people who got better after taking the little sugar pills. No doubt this happens, yet if homeopathic remedies work for some people, then why the censorship?

Is it possible that this is some elaborate ruse by Law and Cohen to manufacture a review that highlights the problems detailed in the book? I mean, homeopathy? No harm? To the story covered at that link, Cohen says:

An "undercover" BBC reporter once asked homeopaths if they had alternatives to malaria pills. And they did! Scarcely surprising nor, I would say, particularly culpable.

The prospect of people using pills that don't work instead of pills that do doesn't raise any issues of blame for any resulting illness? Bizarre.

Stephen Law comments on the review a few times, and unsurprisingly is pretty livid at what appear to be misrepresentations. Cohen makes a risible defence of his statements, which in no way supports his review. And during the course of one point, in which he defends his accusation that Law is uncritical of the theory of natural selection by quoting Law on the theory of evolution (!), he says:

I argue that Law's book is uncritical of the theory of Natural Selection, which there are good arguments for considering to be unsupported by the 'evidence', whatever one may think about religious explanations for the universe.

This prompted me to berate him for commenting irresponsibly, as an academic (the use of scare quotes around 'evidence'). Water off a duck's back. The evidence for the overall theory is legion, even if many details are still debated. Law posts a comment detailing Cohen's completely inadequate response:

In short, I am baffled how Martin Cohen thinks any of the above supports his bizarre characterization of my views. As others have already spotted, it *very obviously* doesn't.

... which even Cohen can plainly see, since he posts a feeble follow-up:

You say the quotes don't show that you consdier (arguments for) belief in God to be 'bullshit', but I think it is reasonable to read this in. The second quote clearly implies Dawkins' work to be 'intellectually rigorous' and the views of 'theists' to be silly = you use value=laden terms to lead the reader into dismissing the 'theists' as people who use 'immunizing tricks'.

The quote he refers to has had Law's questioning of Dawkins' argument removed! Anyone's ghast should be flabbered by Cohen's effrontery.

Cohen's entirely inadequate data collection does rather point to the problems of folk who don't think that data collection in support of a theory (the very basics of science) has any value. What a sorry state we would be in if scientists like, say, Simon Singh, Christopher French and Richard Dawkins never bothered to check their data, and simply wrote about the impressions they, somehow, culled from the world, just as Cohen wrote about the impressions he, somehow, culled from Law's book.

But according to Cohen, that would be fascistic. Yes, in a masterful piece of Godwining even before the writing starts, Cohen is partly responsible for the website Philosophical Investigations, on which a page called British Science Fascists is prominent. Why Fascists?

But do they deserve to be called 'Fascists', after the 20th century political movement? The term is bandied about carelessly elsewhere. But we use it very, ah 'scientifically', as these reactionary thinkers share with the original fascists:

• a superficial and ideological commitment to Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection, which they attempt to adopt for political ends
• an inappropriate and dangerous reverence for scientific 'progress', coupled with an unwillingness to accept an ethical dimension to science
• an objectionable version of the history of science
• an even more objectionable distinction between 'Rational Man' and 'irrational deviants', with an often vicious antipathy towards the latter.
• hair on their arms and legs

So far, so brainless (and so straw filled, apart from the hair on the arms and legs). Here are slagged off, in order:

Chris French: "In an article for... (where else) The Guardian he trots out merrily the usual scientifically ignorant and politically dangerous call for 'rational' thought to eliminate 'emotional' biases."

Ben Goldacre: "...when confronted with the self-evident notion that his belief system (clinical epidemiology, now pretentiously called 'evidence-based medicine' or EBM), a statistics-based hierarchy of facts, is exclusionary..."

Julian Baggini: "Baggini speaks down to the ignorami from his perch at... the Guardian."

Madeleine Bunting (!): "She has also argued that the Enlightenment is a ‘made-up’ pseudo concept, which it is. In fact, she doesn’t belong in this list, but just fell in her because of her popping up regularly to support her ‘colleagues’." (phew, that's better - didn't think this was right!)

Nick Cohen: "Columnist for the Observer... guess what! part of the Guardian newspaper group."

Richard Dawkins (about time): "Richard Dawkins has successfully combined his day job, Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, with being the prophet of a new religion, the sole deity of which is Charles Darwin."

George Monbiot: "A columnist for the Guardian."

Simon Singh: "In a laughably bad 'investigation', Singh and others contacted homeopathic quacks, told them they suffered dangerous side effects from malaria tablets, and then asked what they should do? The homeopaths advised homeopathic treatments... Shame on them!"

Jeremy Stangroom (!): "Less influential, but tries to make up for it by the sheer venom of his pronouncements. Fails miserably."

Mark Lynas: "Guardian regular"

They don't like American scientists either! A number of themes appear. A paranoid distrust of science, so that one wonders how the compilers manage in everyday life. An antipathy to The Guardian! Well, it's not my cup of tea either, but I don't immediately consign its contributors to the bin. A slight obsession with CAM and climate change denial. They are keen to call into question the expertise of those mentioned, but it's not clear what expertise they have to talk about climate change, evidence based medicine and homeopathy. The website lists Samuel Hahnemann as a key thinker, for goodness sake!

All in all, the sort of sloppy thinking exemplified on the site plays out in Cohen's review and comments, as we see above. If this demonstrates the best thinking of the anti-science faction, then they are good examples of the unworkability of some theories of post-modernism and social science. I guess I'm in favour of science fascism.

Read more »

Unreasonable Accommodationists

The UK's Equality and Human Rights Commission has issued a press release calling for a concept of 'reasonable accommodations' to allow employees to manifest their religious beliefs. They say:

For example, if a Jew asks not to have to work on a Saturday for religious reasons, his employer could accommodate this with minimum disruption simply by changing the rota. This would potentially be reasonable and would provide a good outcome for both employee and employer.

Seems fair enough. But Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the EHRC recently said:

Our business is defending the believer. The law we're here to implement recognises that a religious or belief identity is, for the majority of people in Britain, an essential element of being a fulfilled human being and plays an important part in our society.

Clearly he is wrong here, since his business is equality, not just the concerns of a particular group, like believers. But let's be charitable and assume he meant that in striving for equality, the Commission must recognise the concerns of every group, and he's simply mentioning one group over others because he's expressed himself clumsily.

However, one of the cases that the Commission is supporting is Lillian Ladele's. She's the Christian Registrar who wanted to discriminate against gay people in the performance of her duties. One can only assume that the Commission adopt the position that she should be allowed to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation, because of her religious belief. If the Commission thinks this falls into the range of 'reasonable accommodations' for religious views, then one wonders what qualifies as unreasonable. Note the duties of the EHRC:

We have a statutory remit to promote and monitor human rights; and to protect, enforce and promote equality across the nine "protected" grounds - age, disability, gender, race, religion and belief, pregnancy and maternity, marriage and civil partnership, sexual orientation and gender reassignment.

So, sexual orientation is on a par with age, disability, gender, race and religion and belief. As an aside, in my view sexual orientation, age, disability, gender and race are qualitatively different to religion and belief, since they are invariable, and cannot be chosen under any circumstances. But, in any case, since the EHRC appear to be including discrimination based on sexual orientation as a 'reasonable accommodation' for religious beliefs, then one assumes that discrimination based on race, gender and so on are also 'reasonable accommodations' for religious beliefs.

So, if the EHRC support Ladele, then this renders the EHRC self-defeating. They will then be campaigning against their own aims. A bizarre situation.

Read more »