Missing Shades of Grue

I'm back at my desk after a few days visiting family. Catching up on my feeds I came across this and then this. Primates never cease to amaze.

Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate

AS I read this essay on the evolution of the cyberinfrastructure--including "genre and knowledge creation," simulation, and representation as cognitive scaffolding--, I couldn't help but think about the co-evolution of mind, language and culture.

Information infrastructure is a network of cultural artifacts and practices. A database is not merely a technical construct; it represents a set of values and it also shapes what we see and how we see it. Every time we name something and itemize its attributes, we make some things visible and others invisible. We sometimes think of infrastructure, like computer networks, as outside of culture. But pathways, whether made of stone, optical fiber or radio waves, are built because of cultural connections. How they are built reflects the traditions and values as well as the technical skills of their creators. Infrastructure in turn shapes culture. Making some information hard to obtain creates a need for an expert class. Counting or not counting something changes the way it can be used. Increasingly it is the digital infrastructure that shapes our access to information and we are just beginning to understand how the pathways and containers and practices we build in cyberspace shape knowledge itself.

The advent of the computer has made possible an event that has happened only a few times in human history: the creation of a new medium of representation. The name "computer" fails to adequately convey the power of this medium, since a machine that executes procedures and processes vast quantities of symbolic representation is not merely a bigger calculator. It is a symbol processor, a transmitter of meaningful cultural codes. The advent of the machinery of computing is similar to that of the movie camera or the TV broadcast. The technical substrate is necessary but not sufficient for the process of meaning-making, which also depends on the related cultural process of inventing the medium. Cyberinfrastructure is an evolving creation. It is both technical and cultural, constrained and empowered by human skills and traditions, and possessing the same power to shape and expand the knowledge base that the print infrastructure has maintained for the past 500 years, and that the broadcast and moving image infrastructures have for the past 100 years.

The difference is that now we are able to reflect on and articulate (and perhaps control to some degree) the evolutionary changes that are taking place in the cyberinfrastructure.

Cyberinfrastructure as Cognitive Scaffolding: The Role of Genre Creation in Knowledge Making | Academic Commons

The psychology of the Golden Compass is wonderful--inner psyches are presented as changing animal daemons that develop through childhood and then stabilize as one reaches adulthood. And I love the twist that authoritative religions might be engaged in stealing one's soul rather than saving it. My daemon, chosen through a questionnaire on the film's web site, is an Ocelot named Aspara. Go figure. Now to find my own armored bear before the next faculty meeting!

Official Golden Compass Site

Anthony Appiah's Idea Lab article about experimental philosophy has received lots of attention. It's an exciting trend in philosophy--a revitalized empiricism--and Appiah describes some of the interesting experiments from Knobe, Machery and others. What I like most about the x-phi movement is that it highlights, as serious empiricism should do, the character and credibility of intuitions. Ordinary language philosophy offered up claims about what ordinary intuitions were, but it assumed an authority on these matters that seems to me to be undeserved. Armchair introspection can only go so far. And asking philosophical colleagues what they think a term means risks the problems of small samples biased toward a narrow tradition. X-phi does the actual work by digging more deeply into the cognitive sciences to uncover the relevant intuitions. Of course, one still has to decide which intuitions are relevant and to attend to what connects intuitions to theory and explanation. Intuitions may shift as theorizing becomes more sophisticated and available (philosophical and pre-philosophical intuitions frequently differ); and theories change as they confront new intuitions about new problems.

Surprisingly, I haven't seen much comment on Appiah's most critical comment.

The best work in experimental philosophy would be valuable and suggestive even if it skipped the actual experiments. ("It would be natural to say," Knobe might have written, "that the chairman in one situation had harmed the environment intentionally, whereas. . . .") X-phi helps keep us honest and enforces a useful modesty about how much weight to give one's personal hunches, even when they're shared by the guy in the next office. But -- this is my own empirical observation -- although experiments can illuminate philosophical arguments, they don't settle them.

I don't see where skipping the actual experiments preserves what's novel about experimental philosophy. That's the point, isn't it? Empirical access to intuitions (as opposed to introspective access alone) is a valuable part of the philosophical enterprise of solving problems, contributing more than mere illumination. No one denies there's got to be some theorizing regarding the data one finds--but one has to collect data accurately and carefully. Good theorizing depends on it. I must admit, it does seem that most of the attention in the press has been directed at the empirical collection of intuitive data and less attention placed on what one does with the data (and how the data relate to philosophical theory). But by my lights, what settles philosophical arguments is attention to both intuition and argument.

Idea Lab - Philosophy - New York Times

It seems scientists can now tell from monitoring my neurons whether I'm seeing Halle Berry or Jenifer Anniston (or pictures of them, at least-they don't come around much in person anymore). Though the main idea was published in 2005, when responses generalized over more than pictures, new research suggests a more precise correlation can be found. Researcher Dr. Quian Quiroga explains.

For example, if the 'Jennifer Anniston neuron' increases its firing then we can predict that the subject is seeing Jennifer Aniston. If the 'Halle Berry neuron' fires, then we can predict that the subject is seeing Halle Berry, and so on. To do this, we used and optimised a 'decoding algorithms', which is a mathematical method to infer the stimulus from the neuronal firing. We also needed to optimise our recording and data processing tools to record simultaneously from as many neurons as possible. Currently we are able to record simultaneously from up to 100 neurons in the human brain.

They seem to be making progress on the subjects of my thoughts; how far away are they from discovering the predicates?

Researchers can read thoughts to decipher what a person is actually seeing | Science & Consciousness Review

I almost forgot to post on this.

A particularly cunning seven-year-old chimp named Ayumu has bested university students at a game of memory. He and two other young chimps recalled the placement of numbers flashed onto a computer screen faster and more accurately than humans.

"It's a very simple fact: chimpanzees are better than us -- at this task," says Tetsuro Matsuzawa, a primatologist at Kyoto University in Japan who led the study.

The work doesn't mean that chimps are 'smarter' than humans, but rather they seem to be better at memorizing a snapshot view of their surroundings ? whether that be numbers on a screen or ripe figs dangling from a tree. Humans may have lost this capacity in exchange for gaining the brainpower to understand language and complex symbols, says Matsuzawa.

What really impressed me was that the memory task involved not just dangling figs but numbers on a screen. Though they were trained to "recognize" numeric symbols, they still faced a short-term memory task with these newly acquired kinds of stimuli that are not normally part of their home environment.

Chimp beats students at computer game : Nature News

I started watching the recent debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Dan Dennett at Tufts (video here). I didn't make it all the way to the end, finding myself very early on generally disappointed at the level of the discussion. In this debate, as in most recent debates on theism I've witnessed, nothing new appears on the stage.

The question to be debated is whether God is a human invention. Dennett's opening presentation failed to bring any structure or substance to that question, focusing instead on whether world religions should be a curriculum requirement and then trying to shift the debate to whether religion is a human invention. D'Souza is--as we should all know by now--a simple-minded thinker who recycles the most naive versions of theistic, pro-religion (pro-Christianity) arguments. The first cause, the Anthropic Principle, intelligence can't come from material nature, atheism is also a religion, science is also based on faith, science can't explain morality or free will, etc. He throws out these "arguments" rapidly in all directions, with no unifying purpose except to overwhelm the listener with barrage of nonsense. Some listeners might find a large number of rapid-fire bad arguments to be more convincing than a small number of good arguments. But Dennett--as we should all know by now--isn't one of those listeners. Yet, he goes on the defensive as though he needs to address nearly every bit of nonsense. I would rather that he had taken control of the debate, choosing one point to champion and then provide some substantive thinking on the matter. Dennett has a body of work from which to do just that. D'Souza is unable to handle any truly deep thinking about these matters and would have been quickly overwhelmed himself.

I suppose the nature of the debate forum itself limits the degree to which substantive discussion can surface. But I can't help but feel that Dan Dennett has met Bizarro-Dennett, and on such an occasion there can be no Hegelian synthesis.

In today's Louisville Courier-Journal James Willmot, a former Kentucky science teacher, writes a firm op-ed opposing the intent of the creation museum in Boone County.

There is a great educational injustice being inflicted upon thousands of children in this country, a large percentage of whom come from the Kentucky, Ohio and, Indiana areas. The source of this injustice is a sophisticated Christian ministry that uses the hook of dinosaurs, the guarantee of an afterlife, and the horrors of hell to convince children and their families to believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. The tax-exempt ministry, Answers in Genesis, and its new $28 million creation museum in Boone County has become the de facto source of science information to thousands of Christians who are throwing away reason and 500 years of scientific inquiry and replacing it with ignorant dogma. [...]

We do not need citizens who are closed-minded, anti-knowledge fundamentalists who want to see the world move closer to the Biblical prophecies of an Armageddon. (AIG also believes in a literal interpretation of the Book of Revelation.) Unfortunately, the creation museum in Northern Kentucky has been very successful at encouraging their non-thinking, anti-reasoning philosophy, especially among young, dinosaur-loving children. Inaction in this matter may come back to haunt us in the future.

Abolutely. Now how do we get those ignorant dogma-driven parents who reject critical thinking to see the point? I suppose we can't lure them in with dinosaurs.

Hat tip to Pharyngula

If I were to be eaten by a shark, I'm pretty sure the worst part would be not the pain or the mutilation or the actual dying and so forth, but rather the thought balloon over my head with the words, "I'm being eaten by a [expletive] shark!"

Joel Achenbach has written an opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News about the proposal for a "Decade of the Mind" to follow the "Decade of the Brain" of the 1990's. The idea seems to be to put $4 billion toward solving the mystery of consciousness (the so-called "hard problem"). Though the article presents a number of highlights in current philosophy of mind research, it remains unclear just what the objectives for the decade of the mind should be. Answering the question "How does a brain generate consciousness?" Or how about just "What is consciousness"? The actual proposal seems much less philosophical.

In a letter published this year in the journal Science, 10 scientists said that a Decade of the Mind would help us understand mental disorders that affect 50 million Americans and cost more than $400 billion a year. It might also aid in the development of intelligent machines and new computing techniques. A breakthrough in mind research, the scientists wrote, could have "broad and dramatic impacts on the economy, national security and our social well-being."

Given the direction this decade is supposed to go and the suspicion some philosophers have about the concept of mind anyway (Achenbach reports briefly on Dennett's work), it sounds to me that a "Decade of the Brain: Part 2" is a more reasonable label. Exploring the mind is not like going to the moon, which you're pretty sure is there. Achenbach seems to recognize the issues.

Cracking the code of the mind may be ultimately impossible. My guess is that a century from now, scientists and philosophers will still be arguing about the what, where and how of it all.

But we should still take a whack at it. Ten years and $4 billion: That's a reasonable cost. The evolution of the human mind is arguably the most important biological event in the history of our planet since the origin of life itself.

We should try to understand how the brain makes the mind. And then we can make up our minds about what to do with ourselves.

Yes, let's take a whack at it. The more work we do toward understanding the brain, the easier it will be to get a clearer understanding of the questions we should be asking.

What makes up my mind? | Dallas Morning News