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The kind of reasoning we find in AI texts seeks to justification beyond the level of techné, needs obviously to be more fully evaluated. Julian Jaynes in an essay entitled “The Study of the History of Psychology” provides us with a clue in the search for the causes of the present obsession in both Psychology and Philosophy with technical terms such as “data”, “information”, and “information processing”. Jaynes argues:
“…current Psychology is wedded to its History with much stronger ties than any other science.” “The Julian Jaynes Collection” Edited by Kuijsten, M.,Julian Jaynes Society, Henderson, 2012.
Jaynes points out that whilst the history of the subject as a laboratory science is only just over a century old , as a body of insights, ideas, observations and hypotheses, Psychology is one of the oldest sciences in the world. Jaynes himself does not fully acknowledge the importance of Philosophy in some of the assumptions behind the positions he adopts in relation to various central psychological issues, so he would not be sympathetic with the claim that a philosophical approach to many psychological issues would diminish the conceptual confusion and fallacious thinking accompanying many of the psychological claims that have been made.
He notes that during the 20th century there has been a proliferation of psychological research in many different directions and he sees this as a fragmenting process in the name of a principle of specialisation which he regards as a positive phenomenon. One of these directions resulted in the current obsession with the advancement of machine technology and AI, which along with behaviourism and certain forms of brain research explored the thesis of “Psychology without a soul”. The concept of “soul” has, unfortunately, its own chequered History, beginning with the Greek psuche which meant life-form, continuing with the religious idea of an insubstantial entity which could continue to survive after death, and ending with the scientific denial of the relevance of the idea of a life-form : a denial of the hylomorphic idea of form that has a material substrate of a system of organs accompanying a configuration of limbs and a developmental history which ends in a flourishing good spirited life that has actualised in accordance with the form/principle of the idea of the good.
The de-materialisation of psuche was part of the strategy of dualism(initiated by Plato) the Church adapted in order to overcome a cloud of discontent that hovered over the lives of people who wished for a different kind of life. Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory, against this background, was seen to be a pagan belief system that situated man in the unholy terrain of a world of multiplying appetites and dwindling opportunities. Hylomorphism , of course, was less concerned with holiness and more concerned with areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) diké (getting what one deserved) epistemé(knowledge) arché(principles), and eudaimonia(the good spirited flourishing life. Hylomorphism also embraced a broader view of science that included the theoretical sciences( metaphysics, theology, physics, maths)the practical sciences(politics, ethics), and the productive sciences(techné, aesthetics, rhetoric). Many of our modern disciplines have discarded the transcendental and metaphysical aspects of these sciences and refuse to embrace the four-fold explanatory framework Aristotle proposed in his later writings. The final and formal causes proposed rely more on the powers of understanding and reason than the material and efficient causes, which are more amenable to the form of perception we call observation and the associated power of the imagination. Final and formal causes are, of course, very much tied to understanding/judgment and the principles of reason(noncontradiction, sufficient reason), and require what Kant referred to as transcendental and metaphysical philosophy for their justification. Both Aristotle and Kant rejected the different forms of atomism of their day, probably because they both conceived of reality as a continuum which can only be potentially, and not actually divided for theoretical purposes. Both Philosophers would therefore have rejected the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, as Einstein did, but without appealing to God rolling the dice. Aristotle combatted the materialism and dualism of his day with his hylomorphic theory, and Kant combatted, (together with Newton), the materialism and dualism of his time with his critical philosophy that emphasised, as we demonstrated in the previous chapter, the transcendental and metaphysical presuppositions of science.
Religion was suspicious of critical Philosophy but whilst being a form of secularism, Kant,s philosophy did not seek to diminish the importance of religion and its pursuit of the “holy” ethical values. For both Greek and Kantian Philosophy, the great-souled men of their accounts were more likely to resemble the Greek idea of the phronimos, than the prophets or holy men of the various faiths, but the religious form of life was nevertheless, still held in high regard. In a certain sense, however, Philosophy was perceived by these men of faith as sacrireligious. Ever since the garden of Eden myth, faith has been opposed to knowledge(epistemé), and men who seek the fruits of knowledge independently of faith in Gods existence and power, have been seen to have flawed “souls” and lead flawed forms of life. By this time, the “soul” had become some kind of immaterial substance detached not just from knowledge, but also our bodies. It was out of this triangle of tension that a form of secularism was born that held both religion and Philosophy in contempt.
The firstborn “new men” were Descartes and Hobbes who both vaguely accepted the idea of a soul as some immaterial entity. and looked upon the behaviour encountered in life as “material” to be observed, manipulated and measured, whilst at the same time according this immaterial entity of the soul some kind of privileged status. For both Hobbes and Descartes God was an absolute authority and power, and our souls owed allegiance to this power. Now Hobbes was an Anglican and Descartes a Roman catholic, and whilst Hobbes’ materialism was very basically scientific( everything could be reduced to matter in motion), Descartes dualism was more influential and more problematic. Both claimed to be critics of Aristotle, but there is no sign of any deep awareness of Aristotelian ideas in either Philosopher’s works.
It was C.P. Snow that first referred to scientists as “the new men” in an artistic context. A context in which scientists work frenetically on a weapon that could destroy all of mankind. It was Arendt in her seminal political work “The Origins of Totalitarianism” who used this expression to designate men like Cecil Rhodes, who seek to colonise the planets for the purposes of exploration and presumably also exploitation. The subsequent success of science in producing this weapon of mass-destruction, and the unholy alliance with “new politicians”, of course, resulted in the dropping of two atomic bombs on civilian populations: an unethical act that explored the outer boundaries of human decency. The spirit of exploration/exploitation seems not to take social, norms, rules and laws into consideration when it engages in historical courses of action.
Scientific Psychology had very little contribution to make in the ensuing discussion of such acts of terrorism and Universities such as Oxford even awarded honorary doctorates to the decision makers. Elisabeth Anscombe, a follower of Wittgenstein, was one of the few figures to publicly oppose this travesty of academic values and moved to Cambridge University shortly thereafter. Indeed the academic response of Wittgenstein to Psychology at this time was summed up in his claim at the end of his work “Philosophical Investigations”: Psychology suffers from what Wittgenstein called “conceptual confusion” which also describes well the mentality of the “new men”. Hannah Arendt in her work on totalitarianism acutely pointed out the collapse of the Political party system in Europe which allowed the emergence of mass movements, which, in turn, prepared the way for authoritarian dictators to emerge both in Germany and Russia. Freud in his work “Group Psychology and the Ego” had also outlined the psychological/pathological mechanisms such dictators use in mobilising masses behind their “conceptual confusions”.
Freud and William James were the two Psychologists of interest for Wittgenstein. At one point in his later work Wittgenstein admitted to being a follower of Freud, but also criticised him for overemphasising the power of the past to determine the present and the future. Freud, in the above work, pointed to the primitive instinctive mechanism of “identification” with the leaders of movements, and outlined in particular, the way this defence mechanism operates when aggression is in the picture and one is forced to “identify with the aggressor”. Democracy is an idea and political movement that is in need of a respect for authority that is rational and respects the law. Historical traditions and institutions are important for the continuity of democratic society. and when belief in these fail the most terrible events can occur in the name of “government”, including criminal acts of mass murder. The halcyon days of Greek and Enlightenment political/legal rationality seemed very far away once the world had been taken over by the unholy trinity of businessmen, scientists, and authoritarian politicians.
Freud, in 1929(Civilisation and its Discontents) was absolutely correct in his diagnosis that perhaps all the work we have put into our civilisations was not worth the effort. The least one could have hoped for, given the history of civilisation, was incremental progress. In 1929 all the evidence was in favour of regression and repression. The new men had succeeded in creating and exploiting their “new world, and beginning the era of “The Age of Discontentment” which continues to the present day.
Now the conceptual confusions of Psychology had their roots in the Philosophical movements initiated by Descartes and Hobbes who set about dismantling the major threat to their revolutionary thinking, namely Aristotle and the Greek tradition. Consider the article entitled ,”The Problem of Animate motion in the 17th Century” written by Julian Jaynes:
“Before the seventeenth century, motion was a far more awesome mystery. Shared by all objects, stars ships, animals and men—-and since Copernicus, the very earth itself—it seemed to hide the answer to everything. The Aristotelian writings had made motion or activity the distinctive property of living things….Because they moved the stars were thought by no less a scientist than Kepler to be animated…In the Aristotelian heritage, motion was of three kinds: change in quantity, change in quality, and change in spatial locality. While the 16th century was beginning to use the word only in its third sense as we do today, the mysterious aura of its other two meanings hung about like ghosts, into the next century.”(P.69)
The sixteenth century, Jaynes points out was also a century of political upheavals and religious wars, and manifested the heritage from the Roman Empire of using engineering for political , military and business purposes. The Latin word “machina”, has an underlying connotation of “trick”, a trick that is used to animate machines to do the work done by living things: automated artifacts, earlier, had taken the form of dancing dolls and Jaynes notes in this context that during the period in which Descartes, (the philosopher with an interest in constructing machines of destruction for the military),was having a mental breakdown as a young man, he used to visit the Royal park in Paris and listen to the automated statues “talking” when one stepped on hidden plates in the ground.
This account incidentally correlates well with Heidegger’s complaint relating to the Latin translations of key Greek philosophical terms such as aletheia and Psuché. What we are witnessing here is the interest of the new men in machines and automata which was to continue during the succeeding centuries in a context which sought to repress central ideas inherited from Greek Philosophy, e.g. psuché, areté, arché, diké, epistemé, techné, logos, eudaimonia. The attempt was not wholly successful, however, since during the late German Enlightenment a resurrection of Hylomorphic Philosophy occurred in the form of Kant’s Critical Philosophy: a Philosophy which undermined both materialist theories and the metaphysics of dualists such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Metaphysics, however, was not discarded but rather transformed into a form in which science, religion and the arts could constitute a philosophical trinity in which psychology and ethics occupied central positions. These ideas invoked immediate interest all over the world, but were shortly to be overshadowed by Hegels attempt to “turn Kant upside down” which, even if not in the name of religion or science, managed to further the cause of the new men to discard Aristotle and all forms of Metaphysics connected to rationalism. Programs of materialism and dualism immediately reemerged, until the Later work of Wittgenstein could once again provide us with a form of Philosophy that was neither materialistic nor dualistic and recalled the Kantian relation to Metaphysics.
Jaynes recalls earlier programs of brain research by Harvey in which the work of brain is compared to that of a judge or sergeant-major, the nerves to leaders or magistrates and the muscles to soldiers. Descartes followed up on this with the claim that the brain was full of animal liquid and muscles and tendons were no different to the various engines and springs which moved the statues in the park in Paris. Jaynes also notes that Descartes performed experimental surgery upon animals without anaesthetic and regarded their cries of pain as “mechanical”, in the spirit of materialism (mere physical responses to physical stimuli(reflexes!)).
Fortunately Newtons Principles made a clear distinction between physical and animal motion and allowed Kant to differentiate animal psuché from human psuché, but stimulus -response theory was to reemerge in the 20th century as part of the “new men’s” attempt to dismiss the idea of consciousness, whilst at the same time retaining the mechanical idea of the reflex. Responses to Behaviourism were more dualistic, and hylomorphic responses were dismissed because the metaphysics behind them appeared too “rational” and “unscientific”. This established a precedent to conceive of the brain in terms of the schema of “stimulus-processor- response”, a schema well suited for the designer of machines, thus confusing physical motion with the kind of motion generated by a living form of life pursuing various purposes.
This is some of the background that explains the attempt to define man as an “information-processor”. J Z Young’s work “Philosophy and The Brain” has the following statement to make in Chapter 1:
“It is now clear that there are serious deficiencies in the philosophers classical methods for reporting his own and other peoples mental activities. Beneath our conscious thoughts and perceptions there are layers of information processing, which greatly influence what is thought or seen.”( Oxford, Oxford University Press,1986) P.2
It is not clear what classical methods Young is referring to here, but it surely must be clear that the basis for reporting my own mental states cannot be via observation of myself. Is he attempting to claim that if I report to you that I am feeling sad that this use of language is a (classical)method? Why the qualifier of “classical”. Classical methods for ascertaining what one believes or knows. would be elenchus and logical reasoning, but belief and knowledge are not mental states(they are mental attitudes). What I believe and what I know, on the other hand ,would certainly be better than any “information” I am given about the mental state you are in. I might, of course, observe that you are sad or angry or amused, but these are transient states that classical Philosophers have only a passing interest in. Both Plato and Aristotle, for example, would agree that the above emotions belong to the “spirited aspect” of mans character, and insofar as areté was relevant in relation to these states, it was because it is sometimes important to have appropriate “feelings”. I might, that is, not be praised or blamed for feeling sad about a loss, but I certainly might be blamed for inappropriate anger or humour. The virtue of self control may be relevant to many emotional states. It is not clear what role “information processing” might have in these situations because not all my states begin with the perception of something outside, some, that is, may be caused by internal pathological causes. Is the face at the window that startles me, information? If I am asked “Why were you scared?”, I certainly refer to an object, namely, the fact of the face at the window, and in that case I give you information about the object, but my fear is also constituted of fearful symptoms, shaking hands, and perhaps fearful behaviour (retreating away from the window). What is definitely not on the list of items constituting my emotional states is the facilitation of neuronal pathways by the stimulus, and different pathways in the response. This neural activity could, in Aristotelian terms, be part of the explanation of the state:- that part, namely, which belongs to what was called the “material and efficient ” explanations”(aitia) of the state(although Aristotle, to his credit, was not particularly interested in the role of the hidden processes of the brain and more interested in what was in view).
Wittgenstein would have claimed that these hidden private processes could not possibly have any role in the learning of the language we use to report these states because the criteria that must be used, must be public criteria(criteria related to the circumstances, the symptoms and the behaviour). Insofar as the feelings related to these private neural processes are also hidden and private, they too play little role in the emotions, e.g. the shaking hands insofar as they are related to a disruption in the motor centres of the subject. What role these hidden processes have to “information” is a mystery: what is being transmitted along the nerve fibre is electrical activity but what is being transmitted and at the nerve synapses are chemical agents and receptors. Both Aristotle and Plato would see an important role for discourse and reason in the self control of such emotional mental states because of their narcissistic character, and both would see a clear relation to the wider ethical issues that are raised when people do what they “feel” like, instead of what they rationally ought to do. When one is engaged in doing what one ought to do, what role is played by information? Very little, because having made a promise I am not looking around the world for excuses not to keep my promise. The only issue is, if my promise is time sensitive, when the time comes to do so, I keep the promise I have made. If I have promised to pay some money back by a particular date then the information concerning what date it is may be important, and this of course is determined by observation of the calendar. But the promise to be faithful to a partner till death us do part, is not time sensitive and requires that the promise is kept without any necessity for the observation of time.
The scientific method of observation , the formation of hypotheses, and the manipulation and measurement of variables are all elements of a context of discovery/exploration but these are not elements of contexts of explanation/justification in which principles such as “treating everyone as ends-in-themselves” are used to make ethical judgements and perform ethical actions for which we are praised or blamed. The role of whatever is going on in my brain, is irrelevant, as is any feelings that I have related to keeping my promise. If I kept a promise because it made me feel happy then this is not an ethical response, since the motivation is my happiness, which as Kant claimed is the principle of self-love in disguise. If I failed to keep a promise because it made me unhappy, this too is narcissistic and not a candidate for the status of an ethical principle.
Young claims that he will show during the course of his work how abstract concepts such as “information”, “representation”, “aim” and “value” will be used in relation to the brain via an “extension” of their meanings. Wittgenstein claimed that if one wishes to introduce new rules for the use of a word that is open to us to do so only as long as we can explain the purposes of the new usage. Without a clear statement of the purpose for introducing a new use for these words, there is a risk that what is being demonstrated in such reasoning is just another example of “conceptual confusion”.
Young complains that accounts of life and mind suffer from a failure to appreciate the role of :
“the intense and complex continuous internal activity that directs organisms to search for means of survival.”(P.3)
This is only possible, it is argued, if the animal can reference “stored information from past history”(P.3)
Does information mean “memory” in the above claim? Information in a certain sense cannot be other than what it is: the representations involved in this information have to be correctly related, otherwise how and about what would we be informed? If information is composed of 0’s and 1’s in a string, the 0’s and 1’s must correctly refer to states of the machine. The primary form of this term is the verb form.This casts doubt upon whether 0’s and 1’s in a string can literally be referred to as information. If it is a state of the machine I wish to bring about, at best, it is part of a plan to bring a certain state of affairs about. Surely, then such a plan contains information about the state of the machine? Perhaps it is an instruction and an instruction must contain information. So, for a programmer such an instruction or plan can convey information about what is to be done, but when the programmer programs the computer is the computer being instructed or is it merely a tool that is being manipulated? Can a tool understand instructions composed of representations? It might be useful in this context to ask, “Can Animals be informed about anything?” Humans are informed about their world in discourse. Surely animal learning has less to do with information and more to do with finding a particular way of behaving that meets the animals needs? If the animals survival on a particular occasion is related to prior learning, is it because they understand the relations of the representations in the information they possess, or is it because they understand the relation of their circumstances to what they do?
The above contains some of the reflections involved in extending the meaning of the term “information” to unusual contexts, but it is not clear that they contain an explanation of the purpose of such an extension of the meaning of the term “information”. Young also discusses the aims or the goals of living entities, and claims there is a continuity between animal and human forms of life, but he does acknowledge certain differences owing to the forward looking consciousness of man, and the fact that he is a language-user. In this discussion it is also claimed that the explanations used in physical science are incompatible with explanations in terms of “purpose”, and this, the author argues, is somewhat paradoxical. The author then attempts to resolve this paradox by reference to the theory of evolution which, he paradoxically claims:
“has provided each organism with a repertoire of programs of action.”P. 4-5
The question to ask here is whether organisms can be said to be “Programmed” by “natural” selection. Did not Darwin refer to the “random variations” that occur in animal populations as the cause of survival in environments that have changed significantly. Young defends his paradoxical statement by claiming that living systems are, after all, physical systems, and all physical systems are composed of some combination of 92 natural elements: furthermore, combinations of these elements even in living organisms behave like physical systems in the natural world. This is a typical materialist reductionist move that fails to acknowledge that a different set configurations of these elements are responsible for the types of motion we see amongst the planets and physical objects of the natural world, compared with the self initiated forms of movement we see in animals. Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory articulated these differences relatively painlessly without conceptual confusion and without reducing one form of organisation to another. Surely one does not need to be an Aristotle to understand that a system of living organs and a particular configuration of limbs is moving in accordance with different principles compared to that of a rock rolling downhill or a planet orbiting in the heavens. External moving causes are responsible for the latter phenomena and internal moving forces are responsible for the former set of phenomena. Reducing psuche to pure “material” fails to comprehend that it may be the name of the principle that is organising the matter that composes it. This may be the core meaning of the term “psychological”: one of the many meanings of Being that Aristotle referred to in his metaphysics (which we should remind readers refers to “first principles”).
Artifacts such as computers are in intermediate region of Being sharing some of the characteristics of psuche_(e.g. the “idea” of the artifact which was a necessary condition of it coming into existence) and some of the characteristics of the physical material which is chosen because a certain kind of material is best suited for performing the function of the artifact(eg. building materials that ensure a house protects one from the elements). Aristotle’s hylomorphism has the advantage of retaining the truths of materialism and the truths of dualism in one all encompassing theory about the many regions of Being that are referred to in his canon of theoretical, practical, and productive sciences. Insofar as psychology in general, and psychoanalysis in particular, aims at “producing” mental health for patients seeking help to lead their daily lives, we are dealing with a peculiar combination of theoretical , practical and productive science which combines epistemé, areté, techné, diké and eudaimonia in a system of treatment whose purpose is eudaimonia.
Can the therapist be said to be providing the patient with “information” to assist in this psychological therapeutical process? Surely the primary focus of the treatment is practical and related to action and what the patient ought to do to improve the quality of their life. Knowledge is involved in this process, but knowledge is so much more than information. If information can be said to be involved at all it is embedded in the “interpretations” of the patients behaviour that the therapist gives the patient . These interpretations contain epistemé in the form of the principles involved with areté, and if they were purely “Informative”, they might not have the desired effect on the patient because they are not merely telling the patient how to act or what to do but rather intend also to “explain why” the interpretation ought to be heeded. The attitude toward the “information”, if that term is appropriate here, is also important from the patients perspective, because if he believes he is being provided with facts, he can acknowledge the facts without believing that they have any relevance to his desire for mental health or well-being. If he is given the information that he might be “projecting” his mental states onto others, the patient might well acknowledge this with a shrug and respond” Does not everyone do this?”
Young appeals to brain researchers who have studied the brain extensively to authenticate the extensions of the meanings of the terms he proposes, “information, “storing” “rules” “instructions”, etc. One such researcher, Gerald Edelman, has the following to say about the brain-computer identity thesis:
“An analysis of the evolution, development and structure of brains makes it highly unlikely that they are Turing machines: brains posses enormous individual structural variation at a variety of organisational levels. An examination of the means by which brains develop indicates that each brain is highly variable. Indeed a simple calculation shows that the genome of the human being(the entire collection of an individual’s genes) is insufficient to specify explicitly the synaptic structure of the developing brain…. More damaging is the fact that an analysis of ecological and environmental variation and of the categorisation procedures of animals and humans..makes it unlikely that the world(physical and social) could function as a tape for a Turing machine.”(Bright Air Brilliant Fire, P.223)
Hilary Putnam, the author claims, has decisive arguments against the above materialist/functionalist position:
“His central point is that is that psychological states including propositional attitudes(“believing that p”, desiring that p”, and so on) cannot be described by the computational model. We cannot individuate concepts and beliefs without reference to the environment. The brain and the nervous system cannot be considered in isolation from states of the world and social interactions. But such states both environmental and social, are indeterminate and open-ended.”(“Edelman, G, “Bright Air, Brilliant Fire”, The Penguin Press, London, 1992) P.224
There are many reasons why this argument of Putnams is correct: firstly, it links up to Searle’s argument that a computer lacks understanding of its own tasks: secondly, it links up to the fact that in a closed variable system such as a computer program, the probability of any individual event can always be calculated but this is not the case with individual living systems that are controlled by individual brains. Searle has additionally argued on the grounds of meaning , claiming that the syntax of computer programs is insufficient for semantical properties. We have also argued earlier that only living systems can have experiences and this is therefore not a possibility for a machine or a computer. Edelman concludes this discussion with the following:
“Now we begin to see why digital computers are a false analogue to the brain.The facile analogy with digital computers breaks down for several reasons. The tape read by a Turing machine is marked unambiguously with symbols chosen from a finite set: in contrast the sensory signals available to nervous systems are truly analogue in nature and therefore are neither unambiguous nor finite in number. Turing machines have by definition a finite number of internal states while there are no apparent limits on the number of states the human nervous system can assume….The transitions of Turing machines between states are entirely deterministic, while those of humans give ample appearance of indeterminacy. Human experience is not based on so simple an abstraction as a Turing machine: to get our “meanings” we have to grow and communicate in a society.”(Edelman P.225)
Edelman continues in a later section to explore the relations between memory and Language. “Human memory is not at all like computer memory” (P.237) he argues, because the memory of animals is not a trace that is stored and coded to represent its object. Neither is it the case that memory, which is a property of a biological system, can be confused with the causal mechanisms of its production, e.g. synaptic change(P.238). On the modern view of causation where the cause is one event in the space-time continuum, and the effect is a separably identifiable event in this continuum, the cause and the effect are logically different entities, and therefore cannot be identified. Even common sense tells us that a stone rolling downhill cannot be identified with the foot that kicked it.
Hylomorphism inserts the event of memory in a network of explanations which would include synaptic change but also includes the intentional object(“I remember that….”), and it would recognise the different forms of explanation of the phenomenon of remembering, for example, that I had arranged to meet Pierre in the café. For Aristotle, the separate explanations would be the concern of different sciences. Kant’s Critical Philosophy would agree with the hylomorphic diagnosis and separate the observational knowledge we have of the synaptic change from my remembering that I had arranged to meet Pierre in the café in the following way:
“A doctrine of knowledge of the human being, systematically formulated(anthropology), can exist either in a physiological or in a pragmatic point of view—Physiological knowledge of the human being concerns the investigation of what nature makes of the human being: pragmatic, the investigation of what he as a free acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself.–He who ponders natural phenomena, for example, what the causes of the faculty may rest on, can speculate back and forth(like Descartes) over the traces of impressions remaining in the brain, but in doing so he must admit that in this play of his representations he is a mere observer and must let nature run its course, for he does not know the cranial nerves and fibres, nor does he understand how to put them to use for his purpose. Therefore all theoretical speculation about this is a waste of time.”(Kant, I.,Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans Louden, R., B., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, P.3)
Young’s speculations , then, do not respect the ontological distinctions outlined by Aristotle and Kant, and would not be in accordance with the grammatical distinctions outlined by Wittgenstein. Neither is what Young is claiming, in tune with our common sense about this issue which was well expressed by Socrates in the Phaedo when he claimed that the reason he was sitting in prison was not attributable to the motion of the muscles and tendons involved in bringing him to the prison.
Let us examine another Nobel prize winning brain researchers work, namely, that of Erik, Kandel(another researcher who sees using Freud’s work as crucial to conducting brain research):
“John Searle argues that consciousness cannot be reduced to a machine that can think, a physical computer with mind as a software program and consciousness as an emergent property. He maintains that the mind is not analogous to software being processed by the hardware of the brain. He argues that programs consist entirely of a set of rules(they are syntactic) whereas mind deals with values, sense, and meaning(semantics). Minds therefore differ from computer programs because a set of rules, no matter how complex, is not sufficient for semantics..”Kandel, E., et al “Principles of Neural Science”, McGraw-Hill China, 2000 P 1318
Freud, we know, identified three types of neurones using the categories of meaning, sense and value, and focusses upon the role of memory as critical in the theoretical process, postulating that when someone can be made to remember something that was previously unconscious and repressed, the remembered experience can be transformed by “interpretations”. Having identified these three types of neuronal systems (Freud’s concepts are all “semantic”), he left the investigation of these neuronal systems with their “contact barriers”(which he discovered 70 years before the discovery of synapses) to future brain researchers (e.g. Edelman, Kandel)
Aristotles contribution to this debate is to situate the material of the nerve system in the domain of psuche and encourage investigation into the living material of cells and the chemistry of their protein-events (and contrast this activity to the electrical events connecting the parts of the computer). The material cause for Aristotle was an important explanation of what that thing is and what it does . (A tree, for example, burns after being struck by lightning because of the wood that it is composed of). An axe can perform the function which defines its “soul”, because its head is made of iron or steel. A computer too belongs to the category of objects we name artifacts, and its actions too are determined by the material it is made of. The “soul”(used metaphorically here by Aristotle) of instruments, for Aristotle was more related to their function then is the case with animals and humans. For Aristotle , then, the kind of explanations we have of the computer and its functions would have to be found in the theoretical and the productive sciences. Kant too, would have agreed with this diagnosis relating where to look for explanations of the operations of physical events in space and time that are dependent on “observation” for their characterisation.
M R Bennett, an ex President of the International Society for autonomic neuroscience and co author of the work “Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience”. He defines his cooperation with the Philosopher P M S Hacker and the field of neuroscience in the following way:
“It is concerned with the conceptual foundations of cognitive neuroscience–foundations constituted by the structural relationships among the psychological concepts involved in investigations into the neural underpinnings of human cognitive, affective and volitional capacities. Investigating logical relations among concepts is a philosophical task….If we are to understand the neural structures and dynamics that make perception, thought, memory, emotion, and intentional behaviour possible, clarity about these concepts and categories is essential….Conceptual questions are antecedent to matters of truth and falsehood. They are questions concerning our forms of representation, not questions concerning the truth or falsehood of empirical truths. These forms are presupposed by true(and false)scientific statements and by correct(and incorrect) scientific theories. They determine not what is empirically true or false, but rather what does and does not make sense. Hence conceptual questions are not amenable to scientific investigation and experimentation or to scientific theorizing.” (“Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience”, Bennett, M., R, and Hacker, P.M.S., Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2003, p1-2)
Three experts in neuroscience have been produced to explicate Young’s contention that future brain research will better guide us through this complicated conceptual terrain. We have indicated how these experts would disagree with Young’s characterisations of key terms of research and how they support Aristotelian, Kantian and Wittgensteinian diagnoses of conceptual problems in this realm of research. We should also note that it is not being contested that the brain contains all our capacities for conscious life as Young maintains. Neither is it being contested that mentality is not separable from the brain. What is, however being questioned in the quote above is the position that:
“it is unlikely that wholly different languages are appropriate to describe the mental and the physical.”(Young P.16)
Language is as a matter fact used differently when we are talking about the motion of a stone rolling down the hill and the motion of standing up in the middle of a musical recital to make some obscure political point. Young believes, as none of the above three experts do that :
“we speak of brain programs”(P.18)
Thereby ignoring the syntactical structure of these programs and the contrasting semantic structure of many mental predicates. Many predicates, however, possess the characteristic of only being attributable to a person and not to a part of him such as his body or his brain. Bennett and Hacker claim that:
“Human beings possess a wide range of psychological powers, which are exercised in the circumstances of life, when we perceive, think and reason, feel emotions, want things, form plans and make decisions…..Talk of the brains perceiving, thinking, guessing, or believing, or one hemisphere of the brains knowing things of which the other hemisphere is ignorant, is widespread among contemporary neuroscientists.”(P 3)
It is important also to note that both Edelman and Kandel are included in this accusation of the conceptual confusion of neuroscientists. Even Searle is taken to task for not understanding fully the distinction between empirical investigations and conceptual investigations. Hacker is a Wittgensteinian scholar with detailed knowledge of Aristotelian Philosophy. In response to Youngs comments on the term “information”, Bennett and Hacker claim the folllowing:
“The sense in which separate neural pathways carry information about colour, shape, movement etc is not semantic but, at best information-theoretic. In neither sense of “information” can information be “organised” into “cohesive perceptions. In the semantic sense information is a set of true propositions, and true propositions cannot be organised into perceptions(i.e. into a persons perceiving something)…”(P.142)
Hacket and Bennett also criticise those neuroscientists that wish to use the term “representation” in relation to the brain:
“This is confused. Neither in the iconic nor in the lexical sense could there be any representation of the external world in the brain. The brain can neither make a decision nor be indecisive; and it cannot engage in guesswork either. Human beings when they perceive their environments, do not perceive representations of the world, straightforward or otherwise, since to perceive the world..is not to perceive a representation. And in whatever legitimate sense there is to the supposition that there is a representation of what is seen in the brain, that representation is not what the owner of the brain sees. The term “representation” is a weed in the neuroscientific garden, not a tool—and the sooner it is uprooted the better.”(p.143)
Computers can neither feel not understand emotions primarily because the latter implies the former, and also because the material composition of the computer is not of the right ontological kind to be the bearer of emotions(an axe head composed of jelly cannot chop wood). One could probably in the far distant future create a robot that can “simulate” the reactive behaviour of the emotions and the verbal expressions of the emotion, but both the physiology of the emotions would be lacking(a release of liquid from the “eyes” of the robot would simply not be crying) and the object in the world linked to the emotional response would not be categorised in the way we humans categorise it. Human emotion, the authors argue is a sub category of “Affections”, which also include agitations and moods and perhaps also attitudes(praising and blaming). Emotions are passions, it is argued, over which we have control otherwise praising or blaming someone for lack of control would be pointless. Appetites such as hunger, thirst and lust can also be controlled : they are not emotions but rather constituted of desires and sensations which have different physiological and hormonal relations and a different relation(i.e. hardly any relation) to cognitive attitudes such as belief or knowledge. Furthermore, the authors claim:
“Emotions cannot be said to have evolved as “brain states and bodily responses”. Rather, brains evolved in such a way as to make it possible for animals to respond affectively to objects of their concern. Emotions evolved as animals responses to features of the environment apprehended as affecting in one way or another the good of the animal. Neither brain states(which are essential for the feeling of the emotion), nor somatic responses(which may characterise an emotional perturbation(are emotions. They lack the intentionality or “directedness towards an object” which is constitutive of most emotions. One cannot individuate an emotion by reference either to brain states or somatic reactions independently of the circumstances of their occurrence and the knowledge or beliefs, as well as the desires or wishes , of the creature.”(P. 209).
The authors also take up the way in which machines recognise objects with the way in which animals do, and claim that, in the animal case, there is no process of matching input with electronically stored images .Similarly, it is argued one cannot compare the mental image of an object with a physical image of which the image is of:
“to reproduce ones mental image of X, if this phrase means anything at all, would be to imagine or visualise X again.”(P.192)
This confusion has generated a plethora of research which is misguided and it is not disconnected to the confusions over the term “representation”:
“Neuroscientists and cognitive scientists characterise mental images as “internal representations”. Mental imagery is alleged to be “a form of internal representation in which information about the appearance of physical objects, events, and scenes can be depicted and manipulated”. But if pictures, maps and verbal descriptions are paradigms of representations, the mental images are not representations of what one imagines….To make a representation of how one imagines something is to depict it as one imagines, or to describe how one imagines it. It is not to conjure up an image of it.”(P.192-3)
Bennetts and Hackers arguments are only partly Aristotelian and mostly rely on a perspicuous presentation of the grammar of these terms –i.e. how they ought to be used if we wish them to make sense. We ought not, however, to be deceived by the normative nature of these arguments: they follow the Aristotelian/Kantian logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason and are norms of both thought and relate to the ontological conditions of various forms of existence(Being).
