Brain: Constructs rather than mirrors reality

coberst · April 30, 2008, 9:15pm

Thomas Kuhn, in his famous book, â€œThe Structure of Scientific Revolutionsâ€, explains the difficult we have with recognizing and accepting experiences that contradict our anticipations.

Kuhn details some of the problems that arose while scientists discovered such scientific anomalies as X-ray and oxygen.

As Kuhn observed:
â€œNovelty emerges with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a back drop provided by expectation. Initially, only the anticipated and usual are experienced even under circumstances where anomaly is later to be discoveredâ€¦Further acquaintance, however, does result of awareness of something wrongâ€¦[which] opens a period in which perceptual categories are adjusted until the initially anomalous has become the anticipated.â€

He concludes: â€œWhat a man sees depends upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see.â€

Kuhn provides us with an experiment performed by Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman undertaken to illuminate this human characteristic of seeing only what we are prepared to see.

Subjects were shown standard playing cards mixed with the anomalous card a red six of spades and a black four of hearts. Subjects repeatedly and erroneously identified the anomalous cards as a six of hearts or a four of spades. Some, even after the experiment was over, displayed confusion and even anger at the experiment. Only after repeated exposures to the cards did the subjects slowly feel something was askew here. Only after forty exposures did the subjects correctly identify the cards.

Cyrene · April 30, 2008, 10:52pm

The brain doesn’t construct reality, because reality is a neccessary requirement for both brains and minds.

If you thats what you mean. Our minds certainly simulate reality and give us a certain picture of it, they don’t create reality in the sense of the world/organisms around us.

or do you mean, like cognitive biases that predispose us to coming to faulty conclusions on some or many subjects?

coberst · May 1, 2008, 6:47am

There is indeed some sensory input that stimulates the reality we create. It is a difficult thing to discuss because we do not have a vocabulary suitable for discussing it. Kant speaks of the thing-in-itself as being that reality out there and we speak of the reality that we know. Our problem lies in that we use the same word “reality” for both because up until recently everyone considered what we know is what is out there.

Cyrene · May 1, 2008, 2:23pm

Yeah, thats not exactly 100% coherent to me, could you explain at length, exactly what you mean?

Do you mean like, its hard to talk about because theres two ‘realities’ our simulation of reality, and just the shit which is obviously the case that we can’t simulate or sense directly because our minds aren’t adapted to it?

Like the crystal example. we see them as solid, they are solid, you could smash a head in with one.
they’re mainly empty space though.

is that what you mean? that we have one version of reality that is a simulation of the world out there, but theres a real reality too, and we just happen to view it this way because we’re middle sized organisms?

like i’m sure a bat would have a different reality then I would, as it’s brain takes information from the environment differently, but both for I, and the bat, theres still an environment outside of our brains?

Not even close to clear on what you mean.

coberst · May 1, 2008, 4:09pm

Cyrene

Kant tells us that the thing-in-itself cannot be known by us. Our senses give us data and from that data we create something that we call reality. Most people think that what we create in our mind as a result of the input from our senses is just like that which Kant calls the thing-in-itself.

I’m sure now you are clear about what reality really is.

Realism: Basic, Objectivism, and Experimentalism//

Basic realism entails at least the following characteristics:
â€¢ A commitment to the existence of a real world external to human existence
â€¢ A link of some kind between human conceptual systems and aspects of reality
â€¢ A conception of truth that has some grounding in external reality
â€¢ The possibility of stable knowledge of the external world
â€¢ The rejection of the idea that any conceptual system is as good as any other

Objectivism and experimentalism are two different versions of basic realism.

The objectivist paradigm features metaphysics and epistemology that is independent of human cognition, language, and knowledge. Objectivism holds that reality can be modeled as entities, their properties, and interrelationships. Page 159 women fire Lakoff

Basic realism only assumes that there is a mind independent reality out there somewhere. The reality that Kant calls the â€˜thing-in-itselfâ€™ is assumed to exist. This is a fundamental axiom of basic realism philosophy.

â€œObjectivist metaphysics is much more specific. It additionally assumes that reality is correctly and completely structured in a way that can be modeledâ€¦in terms of entities, properties, and relationsâ€¦this structure exists, independent of any human understanding.â€

Objectivists further assume that thought is merely the manipulation of abstract symbols. The assumption is that the brain functions much like the computer. The computer manipulates symbols in a specific manner and the meaning of the symbols is determined by the user.

Objectivists assume that words and mental representations, i.e. symbols, obtain their meaning from a correspondence with entities and categories in the world.

Objectivism holds the view that there are entities in the world that naturally fall into categories. It is also held that there exist logical relationships between categories that are purely objective, i.e. that have no subjective component, i.e. that are completely independent of any minds, human or otherwise (with the exception of God of course).

Experimentalism is a name given by Lakoff and Johnson to SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) in their book â€œPhilosophy in the Fleshâ€. Contrary to objectivist view that the body has nothing important to do with human thought or categorization SGCS characterizes meaning in terms of embodiment.

Cyrene · May 1, 2008, 4:29pm

You should look into the criticisms of lakoff, which are very well deserved, though he’s an amazing language researcher or at least has had moments of that. What he says about cognitive science, is far off on the real science of cognitive science, and nothing which is really accepted in the way that his work would suggest.

I’m talking about specific claims, but if he makes these gross errors in cognitive science or whatever, it doesn’t lead me to believe he’s going to use the science well in other areas.

Cyrene · May 1, 2008, 4:33pm

Is it really an axiom though? the independent reality of the brain.

An axiom is a self-evident truth which doesn’t require demonstration or can’t be demonstrated.

But we can prove/demonstrate that an external reality is a necessary requirement for a computational system to do Anything of note. Its also not truly self-evident that a environment is needed to create things like responsivenes. Infact, combinatorial explosion was largely ignored for most of humanity until AI-research started and true mapping of some of the brain’s neurological substrates. Definatly not self-evident in the way that, minds/brains require* massive programming from external environments.

I just don’t see how that is not demonstratable or even provable outright.

For example. say if we found out that telling the difference between bright light and shadow was an impossible computational task to solve, unless we programmed in massive information about the world outside of the organism. If there was literally an infinite different ways to interpret that information (there is) we couldn’t ever respond to the environment we couldn’t ever respond to light changes in an environment.

this isn’t an idle philosophical point but a huge issue of statistical probability. No computational system could extract information in a useful way or even simulate it, without those massive regularities, which requires an external environment.

I don’t see how thats an axiom at all. We can demonstrate that our subjective experience requires a massive feat of computation and a massive feat of prior programming from an external environment.

I get what you say now as well btw, i’m just reffering to that one axiom part.

I mean, maybe thats what they believe is what you’re saying, but why would they believe that?

coberst · May 1, 2008, 7:56pm

Lakoff has challenged our traditional Western philosophy and it will take a generation for such a challenge to work it self out. It will work it self out first in academia when the present generation will be replaced by a new generation that begins to address the challenge. I suspect academia is one of the most conservative establishments when it comes to changes that would require a complete change of intellectual comprehension. Can you imagine all those tenured professors having to create a new set of class notes.

Cyrene · May 1, 2008, 8:11pm

Ah, if you actually looked at the criticisms i’m talking about, their valid. Not that he hasn’t made his contributions to science, though. its jsut that in many areas he’s critically flawed and wrong.

et us begin with the cognitive science. As many of Lakoff’s skeptical colleagues have noted, the ubiquity of metaphor in language does not imply that all thinking is concrete. People cannot use a metaphor to reason with unless they have a deeper grasp of which aspects of the metaphor should be taken seriously and which should be ignored. When reasoning about a relationship as a kind of journey, it is fine to mull over the counterpart to a common destination, or to the bumpy stretches along the way – but someone would be seriously deranged if he wondered whether he had time to pack, or whether the next gas station has clean restrooms. Thinking cannot trade in metaphors directly. It must use a more basic currency that captures the abstract concepts shared by the metaphor and its topic – progress toward a shared goal in the case of journeys and relationships, conflict in the case of argument and war – while sloughing off the irrelevant bits.

Also, most metaphors are not processed as metaphors as all. They may have been alive in the minds of the original coiners, who needed some sound to express a new concept (such as “attack” for aggressive criticism). But subsequent speakers may have kicked the ladder away and memorized the idiom by rote. That is why we hear so many dead metaphors such as “coming to a head” (which most people would avoid if they knew that it alludes to the buildup of pus in a pimple), mixed metaphors (“once you open a can of worms, they always come home to roost”), Goldwynisms (“a verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on”), and figurative uses of “literally,” as in Baruch Korff’s defense of Nixon during his Watergate ordeal: “The American press has literally emasculated the president.” Laboratory experiments have confirmed that people don’t think about the underlying image when understanding a familiar metaphor, only when they are faced with a new one.

Lakoff’s way with brain science is even more dubious. It is true that “the frames that define common sense are instantiated physically in the brain,” but only in the sense that every thought we think – permanent or transient, rational or irrational – is instantiated physically in the brain. The implication that frames, by being “physically fixed” in the brain, are especially insidious or hard to change, is gratuitous. Also, cognitive psychology has not shown that people absorb frames through sheer repetition. On the contrary, information is retained when it fits into a person’s greater understanding of the subject matter. Nor is the claim that people are locked into a single frame anywhere to be found in cognitive linguistics, which emphasizes that people can nimbly switch among the many framings made available by their language. When Becky shouts across a room to Liz, an onlooker can construe the event as affecting Liz, creating a message, making noise, sending a message across the room, or just Becky moving her muscles in a certain way.

Steven Pinker, review of a lakoff book.

his thoughts about cognitive and brain science are largely largely critisized by people who pick apart it. I don’t think its truthful to ignore demonstratable correction to his works, when some of his ideas are basically laughable. Like, some of what he says is demonstratably false.

coberst · May 2, 2008, 6:30am

Cyrene

In the natural sciences new ideas are given quick evaluation by many because there is often money-in-it. In the human sciences new ideas must wait generations before many evaluate them because there is little money in it. Therein lay the reason that or technology far out paces our ability in the human sciences.

There is a level of technology that becomes very dangerous for the species. It is that level when we humans have the power to easily destroy our self without the intellectual sophistication to prevent that from happening. We have long ago passed that point.

We do not allow children to drive because they lack the intellectual sophistication to handle such a dangerous situation. We are adolescents with far too much power for our level of sophistication.
s.

Cyrene · May 2, 2008, 5:48pm

That may be true for whats accecptd by mainstream public policy and organizations but not by science itself. Somtimes ideas are critisized because they are irrational and demonstratably wrong, when an idea is demonstratably wrong and laughable, its okay for peer-reviewed science to critsize it as such. What standard are you accepting to say that lakoff knows better then an numerous, numerous, numerous peers, who all point out VERY great criticisms of lakoff’s ideas, until he somehow replies to these criticisms and lots of them are rational.

Don’t just say all the other scientist sare wrong, say why they are wrong, what standard of evidence makes them wrong? When the ideas they’re critisizing are demonstratably false.

for example, saying that to counter conservative spin on taxes (bush talking about ‘releving’ taxes) to call taxes ‘membership fees’. Is that not laughable? Does he not think that it’d be met with howls of laughter? fact is it wouldn’t work, and the science he envokes to suggest it is faulty.

thats another thing, the sciences we’re talking about have gone through many revolutions which has been accepted across the entire science within just a few years. I don’t know how educated you are about cognitive science and behavorial sciences in general, but it does not take years and years and years for new ideas based on strong evidence to be accepted. FAR from the case, the science is littered with new ideas and is advancing at a super-fast rate of new integrated information. SO yeah, thats just not true.