I just finished reading a book by Paul Churchland about the human brain and its neural network architecture (“Engine of Reason, Seat of the Soul”). This book might be the best available introduction to neural networks and how they make things happen in the brain. It’s not highly technical, but it’s not light reading either; you need to be comfortable around basic scientific and math concepts. But if you can slog your way through it (it’s a slow read), Churchland will reward you with a lot of enlightenment about the operating system of the brain, about how things work below the level of thoughts and feelings and moods and sub-conscious motives, i.e. the paradigms of ordinary psychology. He gives you the basic outline of how small webs of brain neurons (small components of the brain) respond to signals coming in from the senses, as to translate these little blips of ion charges into something having meaning to the higher decision-making parts of the brain; e.g., how they identify a particular face, or a taste, or a color, etc. based on past experience.
These higher areas themselves turn out to use the same techniques to bring together all of these sensory impressions, weaving them into an overall picture of where you are, what you are perceiving, what you think or feel, what you remember, and what you plan to do (or not do). Pretty interesting; it’s not the final blueprint for how the mind works, but it does explain what the primary building blocks are like.
After his introduction to neural networks in the first half of the book, Churchland spends the second half discussing some of the implications of a neural-net understanding of the mind. Obviously there are lots of things about classic psychology that will need to be updated, including how we look at depression, schizophrenia, criminal behavior, perceptions and illusions, etc. I get the feeling that psychology is still swallowing this new understanding of the brain, despite neural networks being a hot topic since the late 1980s.
But Churchland doesn’t stop with psychology; he delves into a variety of social, political and philosophical topics. Being a philosopher by trade, Churchland has to grind some axes about how we understand consciousness and the “feeling of being” because of our new vistas about how the brain works. He and his wife Patricia (another accomplished philosopher) feel that the old notions about conscious subjectivity being “something special”, something having characteristics beyond what physics and chemistry can impart, must go the way of the flat Earth paradigm. These are “folk views” that must give way to the advances of science. Personally, I’m not convinced, despite all of the wonder that I felt from reading about the mechanics of neural nets and their conceptual “prototypes” of the external world, as embedded in the fine tuning of their synapses.
In taking on some other philosophers who disagree with him on this point, Churchland gave a very short but cogent exposition of what the Godel paradox regarding formal algorithms meant. I’ve read a lot about Godel’s determination that any defined set of rules of logic can be outwitted by a certain kind of logical proposition. I.e., using the rules of logic in question (e.g. Peano arithmetic), a certain proposition can be stated which those logical rules cannot judge as either true or false. And yet, humans can read the proposition and make a quick determination as to its truth status. Some philosophers (most notably Roger Penrose) seemed to think that because the brain and its neurons operated by logical processes, the fact that they in sum could judge something beyond what a logical system could evaluate must show that “something really big” was going on in the brain (possibly having to do with quantum physics). Some people interpreted this as the source of the unique nature of subjective conscious experience, proof that consciousness was more than a computational output.
Well, Churchland takes the air out of this balloon. He makes a strong argument that the brain’s neural networks can “intuit” things like the truth of a strange bit of logic, just as they intuit whether your finger feels something hot or cold, something rough or smooth, something sharp or dull, etc. This is just the sort of thing that neural networks do; no sweat. Sure, the processes in the neurons that make neural networks work are clearly logical and algorithmic; they could easily be computerized. The output from a neural networks operations, however, are emergent. And emergence is no great mystery; we experience emergence whenever we watch a flock of birds flying, or get stopped in a traffic jam on the highway where nothing seems wrong, no car crashes or fires, just a bit of volume.
So, mystery solved. Or is it? Is emergence really so trivial? Do scientists and mathematicians really understand it? Only in the past 20 years have they started to think about it, and they are coming up with some interesting things. E.g., that there may be some inherent unpredictability in highly complex interactions that create emergent properties, even when all of the underlying forces are governed by predictable scientific laws. Maybe emergence isn’t such a tame animal after all.
Consciousness itself, most would agree, is an emergent phenomenon, based on perhaps the most complex mechanism we know (the brain and it billions of neurons and inter-connections). In the emergent, interactive processes by which environments and bodies and neurons create consciousness, perhaps something beyond what our science can currently account for happens. Perhaps consciousness reflects some fundamental dimension beyond space-time, something embedded in the “implicate order” of information that possibly underlies what we know of the quantum world, with its quarks, leptons, bosons, etc.
And yes, perhaps we are “making this reality up” in our minds. But if our conscious minds are uniquely grounded in the fundamental layer of reality, then that’s just fine; then there is both an objective external reality and a subjective world, in harmony with one another (well, mostly anyway). It would be an ultimate complementarity, something hinted at in the weird, trans-logical things that we observe in the “middle world” of the quantum. I hope that it’s true!
Jim,
I must confess that most of what you wrote in your blog today I just don’t understand. I am not a “math” person in any sense of the word; in fact, I must say I am (to say the least) “math illiterate.” For instance, I have never even HEARD of “Peano arithmetic” among other things mentioned in your blog. And I have to say that it will just have to stay that way because at my age I just don’t have the time left to pursue such topics; there are too many other topics I wish to spend time studying and reading. Therefore, technically, since I know nothing about the topic(s) you mention, I should really say I am unable to comment.
However, I do have a comment about the APPROACH to the topic you are writing about. And I must say also that I am not totally devoid of what might be called a “logical” approach to the topic of the human brain and (for want of a better word) what I call “intangible” topics such as God, consciousness, and “related” topics. I am currently reading Christian Empiricism by Ian Ramsey and have lined up behind that book The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience by Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew B. Newberg. The last book lured me in when I read a review about it where the comment was made that our brains are “wired for liturgy.” So, perhaps it is that, while I may not take a “mathematical” approach to the topic of God, consciousness, etc., I am not totally lacking in taking a different approach to thought on the topic.
However, I have to confess that I find these types of books “difficult” to read in that I find myself “arguing” with the authors through much of their thinking. For instance, I find myself wondering just how one can put in the same sentence the words “God” and “logical” as Ian Ramsey seems to want to do a lot. (But I digress.) So with this background, I make the following comments on your blog:
You mention that “perhaps we are ‘making this reality up’ in our minds”. I would like to change that sentence a bit and say that I often wonder if perhaps we are “creating reality”—that is, ACTUALLY BRINGING IT INTO BEING OUTSIDE our minds. I started thinking this a long time ago. I actually remember that when I was a young girl I learned in school (5th grade to be exact; I had a wonderful teacher that year) that the atom was the smallest possible thing that existed. No one would ever find anything smaller. Well, of course, scientists then proceeded to ponder their mathematics (I am NOT being sarcastic here), searched over many years, and sure enough came up with much smaller components of the atom. (And once again, not being a “math person” I have to admit that I do not understand even a little bit of the math; but I could not help myself from continuing to think about this subject. Specifically, exactly HOW was it that scientists could first THINK something MUST exist, go look for it, and then actually find it. Is there not a scientific law (is that the right term?) that says that the observer AFFECTS the observed. (And I must confess that just last night I heard Craig Ferguson talking about the “Hawthorne Effect” which, according to his description, stated just that point—the observer affects the observed. I have to say, where else but on Craig Ferguson’s program can you hear comedy about the Hawthorne Effect? I love it—but again, I digress.)
(Continued below)
Comment by MCS — March 16, 2010 @ 9:45 am
(Continued from above)
Well, now I must confess that that observation set me to thinking—if we affect what it is we observe, then might it be that we actually bring into being the things we tend to seek in our lives? (Which thought also set me to thinking that it would then be wise to seek out the positive and the “good” in life.) I could make some further arguments here on this point, but basically they get me back to the same point; so I will forego those other arguments.
Then I also wonder about your comment: “In the emergent, interactive processes by which environments and bodies and neurons create consciousness.” (Here I admit to sectioning out only a piece of your complete thought here.) But the juxtaposition of the two words “create consciousness” struck me and got me to thinking again. I wonder: Rather than say (and here I paraphrase your thought—so I hope I have not misinterpreted your point) our brain brings consciousness into being, I wonder if it might work the other way. That is, why could it not be that consciousness already exists “outside” or “beyond” (I am “stuck” here for the most appropriate word) the brain; and therefore, the brain must develop to a certain degree of complexity before the intangible and self-existing (other possible words to use) consciousness can express itself through the brain.
For example: I am struck by my little dog who reminds me often that he has a brain that is developed to about that of a child of perhaps 6 months old. Specifically, some times when my dog wants to see behind himself, instead of turning his head to look behind himself, he does what young babies do: he tilts his head back and tries to turn himself upside down. (Parents and people who have cared for babies know that at a certain level of development one must be very careful in carrying a baby. Babies at a certain age will simply throw themselves backward out of one’s arms—if one is not very careful—to look at what is behind them.) The dog does the same thing. Hmmmm. Might it be that the brain’s development determines the level of consciousness that is expressed? Might not people who so strongly argue for the right to life of severely brain injured people are actually implying that given a higher level of brain function, the consciousness that is fully developed (but unable to express itself) would show through the person?
Thus, these people are arguing that consciousness exists outside and beyond the brain and “just” uses the brain to express itself. Might it be that human consciousness requires a certain level of development (or evolution?) of the brain for it to be able to express itself through the brain? And thus I find myself wondering if those who look for a “brain-then-consciousness” development of the expression of an intangible intelligence should take a different approach and look for an “a-properly-developed-brain-to-express-the-consciosness-that-exists and wishes-to-express-itself-through-the-brain” approach.
MCS
Comment by MCS — March 16, 2010 @ 9:46 am