Saturday, February 10, 2007
Example of non-physical models for goal-directed processes
Here is an example of a kind of modelling language for an information-based / 'cognitive' process that is fundamentally non-physical (or 'extra-physical') in the sense that it involves the notions of 'goal state' and 'feedback'. It is not simply a causal mechanism; it incorporates a design. The diagram is from Susan Hurley's The Shared Circuits Model:How Control, Mirroring and Simulation Can Enable Imitation, Deliberation, and Mindreading [text]. You see similar types of models in Carver and Scheier's work - e.g. 'On the Self-Regulation of Behaviour'. Cybernetics type models.
Realism and ways of world-making...
"Some dynamicists are anti-Piagetian, rejecting representation and realism, in favour of ‘world making’. Cognitive scientists in general allow that different creatures – including humans of different ages or historical periods – inhabit different environments to the extent that they (subjectively) represent different objects of the same (objective) world. But these dynamicists reject the subject-object distinction and the realism associated with it (Haugeland in press). Stressing the close dynamic coupling between organism and environment they argue that ‘environments’ are wholly constituted by world-embedded activities of the creatures concerned: there is no such thing as an organism-independent, objectively real world. Based on ideas by Heidegger."
Where this quote comes from I don't know, but it expresses an 'ontological' view - a conception of the relationship of the mind to the 'external world' it interacts with - that I was attracted to as a graduate student in Pittsburgh. It is an idea that seems to flow naturally from 'embodied cognition' accounts of our mental life. It is found in work by Maturana and Varela. It is found in commentaries on their work by Fritjof Capra in his 'The Hidden Connections'. To quote from this book:
"Cognition is the very process of life. The organizing activity of living systems, at all levels of life, is mental activity. The interactions of a living organism - plant, animal or human - with its environment are cognitive interactions. Thus life and cognition are inseparably connected. Mind - or, more accurately, mental activity - is immanent in matter at all levels of life....
The structural changes in the system constitute acts of cognition. By specifying which perturbations from the environment trigger changes, the system specifies the extent of its cognitive domain; it 'brings forth a world', as Maturana and Varela put it.
Cognition, then, is not a representation of an independently existing world, but rather a continual bringing forth of a world through the process of living. The interactions of a living system with its environment are cognitive interactions, and the process of living itself is the process of cognition." (p. 32)
***********
But now - a decade on - I am coming round to a solid realist position concerning both the physical world and mental life. Reading Roy Bhaskar's 'A Realist Theory of Science' has been influential in this transition. My working assumption these days is that physical scientists attempt to know about "the real things and structures, mechanisms and processes, events and possibilities of the world and they are for the most part quite independent of us...They are intransitive, science-independent, objects of scientific discovery and investigation." (RTS, p. 22) The intelligibility of experimentation assumes such realism. Bhaskar contrasts his transcendental realism with classical empiricism and transcendental idealism. Transcendental realism (now commonly called critical realism) "It regards the objects of knowledge as the structures and mechanisms that generate phenomena... these objects are neither phenomena (empiricism) nor human constructs imposed upon the phenomena (idealism), but real structures which endure and operate independently of our knowledge, our experience and the conditions which allow us access to them." (RTS, p. 25)
The way I want to develop (and possibly redirect) this realist conception of science is to introduce another realm of the real and intransitive (human independent, enduring) 'structures, mechanisms, processes' etc. This realm would be - and this is the twist - precisely that identified by Maturana and Varela as the world of life-cognition. Wherever there is representation, adaptive design, function, communication, information, meaning: wherever there is this content-based realm, which I take to be intrinsic all life forms including the most simple. This 'psychic' realm - like the physical realm - has different (emergent) levels or orders of regularity, from molecular representations of single celled organisms to moral norms in human societies - each drawing on different conceptual systems to describe them scientifically, to model them. But as with the physical sciences, there exist intransitive and real mechanisms, real processes. But they are not PHYSICAL. They emerge from physical mechanisms and processes - their existence is dependent on the physical; they physical is necessary - but they are a fundamentally different domain of mechanism and process - a functional or informational or meaning-laden representational realm - with its own causal laws and regularities that are not reducible to physical, or bio-chemical processes.
So I would call myself a realist with respect to not only physical mechanisms but also cognitive/psychic mechanisms. We conduct experiments to discover real intransitive mechanisms that can be both content/information based (if we are biologists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, etc) or physical (if we are geologists, chemists, physicists, etc). The former emerge from the latter, and the latter can be analysed to uncover physical pre-conditions for the existence of the former, but the former involves a different realm of mechanistic laws that cannot be reduced to the natural laws of physics or chemistry. Causal relations between these two realms is interactive and bi-directional. Physical mechanisms - e.g. relating to a bullet being shot through the brain - can clearly impact on cognitive mechanisms, but cognitive mechanisms - e. g. intentional actions such as the motive and decision to shoot the gun - can clearly impact on physical mechanisms. The intuition behind the cliche 'mind over matter' reflects this fact. But 'cognitive' influence on matter is clearly not simply confined to conscious, intentional cognition. It extends to all functional adaptation, communication, information processing, etc, in all branches of the evolutionary tree. The nests of the weaver bird, the dams of otters, not to mention weaver bird and otter physiology and anatomy, are all shaped by the realm of meaning and information. Recent brain imaging experiments by neuroscientist Pascual-Leone have demonstrated that simply imagining piano exercises expanded the territory of the motor cortex in the participant's cortices! Living organisms are made of matter - stuff that can be weighed and is subject to the laws of physics -but the matter, as well as the matter in their ecological niches, is continually being reshaped by the realm of meaning and information.
This 'meta' framework for understanding our work, shakes up the idea that Darwin's theory of evolution is 'just mechanical' - as though one were simply talking about balls rolling down slopes. Evolution involves information, meaning, communication, representations, cognition. It involves the realm of the psyche! Perhaps we could call this realm 'Logos' - an active, creative and intelligent principle, intrinsic to all life and life's impact on its physical environment.
And here is another way of thinking about this emergent living realm:
"In the languages of ancient timess, both soul and spirit are described with the metaphor of the breath of life. The words for 'soul' in sanskrit (atman), Greek (psyche), and Latin (anima) all mean 'breath'. The same is true of the words for 'spirit' in Latin (spiritus), Greek (pneuma), and Hebrew (ruah). These, too, mean 'breath'.
The common ancient idea behind all these words is that of soul or spirit as the breath of life. Similarly the concept of cognition (here) goes far beyond the rational mind, as it includes the entire process of life. Describing cognition as the breath of life seems to be a perfect metaphor." (Capra, The Hidden Connections, p. 32)
Where this quote comes from I don't know, but it expresses an 'ontological' view - a conception of the relationship of the mind to the 'external world' it interacts with - that I was attracted to as a graduate student in Pittsburgh. It is an idea that seems to flow naturally from 'embodied cognition' accounts of our mental life. It is found in work by Maturana and Varela. It is found in commentaries on their work by Fritjof Capra in his 'The Hidden Connections'. To quote from this book:
"Cognition is the very process of life. The organizing activity of living systems, at all levels of life, is mental activity. The interactions of a living organism - plant, animal or human - with its environment are cognitive interactions. Thus life and cognition are inseparably connected. Mind - or, more accurately, mental activity - is immanent in matter at all levels of life....
The structural changes in the system constitute acts of cognition. By specifying which perturbations from the environment trigger changes, the system specifies the extent of its cognitive domain; it 'brings forth a world', as Maturana and Varela put it.
Cognition, then, is not a representation of an independently existing world, but rather a continual bringing forth of a world through the process of living. The interactions of a living system with its environment are cognitive interactions, and the process of living itself is the process of cognition." (p. 32)
***********
But now - a decade on - I am coming round to a solid realist position concerning both the physical world and mental life. Reading Roy Bhaskar's 'A Realist Theory of Science' has been influential in this transition. My working assumption these days is that physical scientists attempt to know about "the real things and structures, mechanisms and processes, events and possibilities of the world and they are for the most part quite independent of us...They are intransitive, science-independent, objects of scientific discovery and investigation." (RTS, p. 22) The intelligibility of experimentation assumes such realism. Bhaskar contrasts his transcendental realism with classical empiricism and transcendental idealism. Transcendental realism (now commonly called critical realism) "It regards the objects of knowledge as the structures and mechanisms that generate phenomena... these objects are neither phenomena (empiricism) nor human constructs imposed upon the phenomena (idealism), but real structures which endure and operate independently of our knowledge, our experience and the conditions which allow us access to them." (RTS, p. 25)
The way I want to develop (and possibly redirect) this realist conception of science is to introduce another realm of the real and intransitive (human independent, enduring) 'structures, mechanisms, processes' etc. This realm would be - and this is the twist - precisely that identified by Maturana and Varela as the world of life-cognition. Wherever there is representation, adaptive design, function, communication, information, meaning: wherever there is this content-based realm, which I take to be intrinsic all life forms including the most simple. This 'psychic' realm - like the physical realm - has different (emergent) levels or orders of regularity, from molecular representations of single celled organisms to moral norms in human societies - each drawing on different conceptual systems to describe them scientifically, to model them. But as with the physical sciences, there exist intransitive and real mechanisms, real processes. But they are not PHYSICAL. They emerge from physical mechanisms and processes - their existence is dependent on the physical; they physical is necessary - but they are a fundamentally different domain of mechanism and process - a functional or informational or meaning-laden representational realm - with its own causal laws and regularities that are not reducible to physical, or bio-chemical processes.
So I would call myself a realist with respect to not only physical mechanisms but also cognitive/psychic mechanisms. We conduct experiments to discover real intransitive mechanisms that can be both content/information based (if we are biologists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, etc) or physical (if we are geologists, chemists, physicists, etc). The former emerge from the latter, and the latter can be analysed to uncover physical pre-conditions for the existence of the former, but the former involves a different realm of mechanistic laws that cannot be reduced to the natural laws of physics or chemistry. Causal relations between these two realms is interactive and bi-directional. Physical mechanisms - e.g. relating to a bullet being shot through the brain - can clearly impact on cognitive mechanisms, but cognitive mechanisms - e. g. intentional actions such as the motive and decision to shoot the gun - can clearly impact on physical mechanisms. The intuition behind the cliche 'mind over matter' reflects this fact. But 'cognitive' influence on matter is clearly not simply confined to conscious, intentional cognition. It extends to all functional adaptation, communication, information processing, etc, in all branches of the evolutionary tree. The nests of the weaver bird, the dams of otters, not to mention weaver bird and otter physiology and anatomy, are all shaped by the realm of meaning and information. Recent brain imaging experiments by neuroscientist Pascual-Leone have demonstrated that simply imagining piano exercises expanded the territory of the motor cortex in the participant's cortices! Living organisms are made of matter - stuff that can be weighed and is subject to the laws of physics -but the matter, as well as the matter in their ecological niches, is continually being reshaped by the realm of meaning and information.
This 'meta' framework for understanding our work, shakes up the idea that Darwin's theory of evolution is 'just mechanical' - as though one were simply talking about balls rolling down slopes. Evolution involves information, meaning, communication, representations, cognition. It involves the realm of the psyche! Perhaps we could call this realm 'Logos' - an active, creative and intelligent principle, intrinsic to all life and life's impact on its physical environment.
And here is another way of thinking about this emergent living realm:
"In the languages of ancient timess, both soul and spirit are described with the metaphor of the breath of life. The words for 'soul' in sanskrit (atman), Greek (psyche), and Latin (anima) all mean 'breath'. The same is true of the words for 'spirit' in Latin (spiritus), Greek (pneuma), and Hebrew (ruah). These, too, mean 'breath'.
The common ancient idea behind all these words is that of soul or spirit as the breath of life. Similarly the concept of cognition (here) goes far beyond the rational mind, as it includes the entire process of life. Describing cognition as the breath of life seems to be a perfect metaphor." (Capra, The Hidden Connections, p. 32)
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