Origins of mind (Q360525)

This book deals with specific aspects of emergence and of complex systems, and therefore such general texts as the references 1--5 are excellent sources of information and inspiration for reading it, although regretfully none of them is mentioned by any of contributing authors of this book. Gödel's famous quote that ``mind is not mechanical\dots mind cannot understand its own mechanism'' may serve as a very important background for this book. This essential property of complex systems was outlined by the great systems thinker \textit{F.A. Hayek} in 1942 and formulated by him more fully in ``The sensory order: An inquiry into the foundations of theoretically psychology.'' Routledge and Kegan: London (1952), without reference to Gödel (``no explaining agent can ever explain objects of its own kind, or of its own degree of complexity''), and then again in 1962 (``any coherent structure of this kind (mind) which within itself contains a model guiding its actions, must be of a degree of greater complexity than that of any model that it can contain'') [Rules, perception and intelligibility. Proc. British Acad., London (1962)], with an explicit reference to ``the celebrated theorem due to Gödel''. Still, an explanation of the ``principle on which the human mind works\dots (as opposed to the) prediction\dots of the precise result of any concrete situation'' [\textit{F.A. Hayek}, Studies in philosophy, politics and economics. NY: (1969)], is possible, and the 21 papers in the book under review present ``insights into how the biosemiotic `Weltanschauung' applies to complex organisms like humans where such signs and sign processes constitute human society and culture'' (from the back cover), often with an emphasis on `mindedness as a natural process instead of an object' (the editor's introductory paper). Mindedness is a biological phenomenon not unique to humans that cannot be reduced to computer-based models or to `the physico-chemical sciences as well as to the life sciences in their present non-semiotic form' (Brier). While biology as a science does not deal with meaning [\textit{M. Barbieri} (ed.), Introduction to biosemiotics. Springer (2007)], biosemiotics `has boldly taken on the task of understanding how meaning emerges in biological systems' (the editor), and the book contributes to the understanding of how mindedness emerged in the natural world. Most papers are accessible to non-experts. Barbieri's very well-written paper systematically presents a code view of life suggesting that the great events of macroevolution were associated with new organic codes each of which brings into existence a genuine increase in complexity, an absolute novelty different from whatever is found `spontaneously in the universe' (a comparison with a category-theoretical treatment of complexity may be in order). The genetic code was only the first in a long series of organic codes in the history of life, and Barbieri proposes a parallel between `a (nearly) universal neural code at the origin of mind' and `a (nearly) universal genetic code at the origin of life', an analogy between feelings (time objects) and proteins (space objects). All products of brain processing may be referred to as brain models, and feelings and instincts may be considered as a first modeling system (a term coined by Lotman). Later, some animals evolved a secondary modeling system that permitted them to interpret the world (`interpretive semiosis'). The third modeling system gave origin to language. (Sharov also discusses these modeling systems in his paper). While Barbieri (and Recchia-Luciani) praise \textit{D.O. Hebb}'s theory [The organization of behavior. A neuropsychological theory. Wiley: (1949)] about the distributed system of inter-neuronal connections, they do not mention Hayek's independently developed less technical but more conceptual theory covering the same ground and more and stressing the role of models. Recchia-Luciani suggests that metaphors, a typically human cognitive device according to Vico (1744), are essential for human understanding because they enable abstract thought and language, and that the appearance in the newborn's brain of cerebral structures aimed at generating and manipulating metaphors is a fundamental passage in the natural history of humans. This is in excellent agreement with Lorenz's observation that in animals, but not in humans, the transmission of knowledge is dependent on the presence of the object. However, one may also look at Wrangham's arguments that ``cooking made us human'' explicitly noted in the paper by Winters and Levine and (independently, without referring to Wrangham) proposed by Solymosi as a metaphor for thinking about conscious activity. Consider likewise Fridland's paper about the difference between human cognition and cognition in non-human animals offering a theoretical strategy for moving from imitation to conceptual thought in children. Explicit presentations are needed, in addition to imitation, `in order to get to intelligence'. Brier notes that natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities do not agree on a common definition of reality and considers this to be a basic problem in our culture. He proposes a transdisciplinary paradigm covering ``the sciences, as well as humanities and social sciences, much like the German word `Wissenschaft' '', and suggests a Wissenschaft of consciousness. He properly notes that conceptual questions antecede matters of truth and falsehood; this is familiar to good modelers who know that it is possible to understand and correct a precise and explicit but incorrect model, but if the model is vague then no one can tell if it's wrong or even usable. Finally, Brier argues that the material reality of biological systems might be `just a small percentage of the whole of living system because we missed some thing vital for [its] functioning, namely, signs and sign functions'. `Structure over content' comes to mind when reading the sometimes very technical paper by Nair-Collins: `what makes something a representation is distinct from what determines representational content', and the essential property of a representation is `maintaining the fundamental aspect of internal relational structure' (compare with Barbieri's observation that `mental images are not about things but about relationships between things', again, category theory may be referred to here). Fonseca et al. properly observe that representation is a form of internal modeling both of the environment and of future (desirable) states. Similarly, Gabora and Kitto propose that the capacity to place things in (new) contexts or to see them from different perspectives is at the core of uniquely human cognitive abilities. Arp's paper about creative problem solving is about a specific kind of composition relationship: a person composes ideas, memories, representations, stimuli, and the like `in wholly new and unfamiliar ways for that person'. Arp mentions Goguen's category-theoretical treatment of conceptual blending explaining the emergence of narratives and metaphors, but is not very explicit about category theory. Fetzer's observation that philosophers spend most of their time attempting to make vague and imprecise notions `less vague and more precise' will be familiar to a good modeler who does exactly that in his work. Fetzer also, similarly to a good modeler, emphasizes the importance of context and properly states that genetic and cultural evolution are fundamentally different. Rockwell formulates three characteristics of behavior of conscious beings: it is not completely predictable, it is not completely unpredictable, and it is explained by final causes rather than by efficient causes. He also observes, following Dennett, that patterns discovered in conscious intentional systems can describe only the broad outlines of system's behavior but cannot predict the specific details. He does not refer to Hayek who formulated this much earlier and arguably better. Rockwell's important observations that consciousness behavioral patterns are `not perceptible when you break behavior into discrete steps', and, similarly, `you can't see the purposes of a purposeful organism if you analyze it into neural firings and muscle contractions' correspond very well to the treatment of emergence. Ray presents an interesting though somewhat unusual hypothesis of `perhaps 100 or more' mental organs, populations of neurons that provide consciousness, `function as gatekeepers to consciousness', `support the facilities of language, logic, and reason', etc. Mental functions are mediated by different receptors, so `serotonin7-ization is a fundamentally creative process that may form the basis of free wil'', `alpha-2 appears to provide the basis for several philosophical and religious traditions', and `dopamine appears to be the most quintessentially religious mental organ'. Scalambrino emphasizes memory as the origin of mind and provides a nice short survey of biosemiotics ideas and a very good reference list. Sharov in his very well-written paper notes that memory is a message sent by an agent to its own future state. He considers mind as a tool for classification and modeling of objects and situations representing the knowledge an agent has about itself and its environment (Innenwelt and Umwelt, in Uexküll's terminology). Barbalet overviews Noble Ape, an open source artificial life and artificial mind project used to model aspects of the mind as it is externally represented. Finally, Negrotti emphasizes that an expert system is not a human brain or a supposed mind, but a system using a`donation'' from a human expert who `decants \dots his professional knowledge into a database'. Thus, thought is to be understood as a preverbal process; `only a small part of it can actually be externalized by language, of which an even smaller portion becomes shared knowledge in our culture'. (Fyodor Tyutchev, a great Russian romantic poet, observed that `a thought expressed in words becomes a lie'.) Summing up, this is an interesting thought-provoking book presenting many and varied fascinating viewpoints on characteristics, biological origins and evolutionary development of mindedness. Regretfully, this rather expensive book won't lay flat when open, and its spine became somewhat damaged after a single careful reading. References: [1] \textit{F. A. Hayek}, The sensory order: An inquiry into the foundations of theoretical psychology. Routledge and Kegan Paul Limited, London (1952). [2] \textit{F. A. Hayek}, Rules, perception and intelligibility. Proceedings of the British Academy, XLVIII, London (1962). [Reprinted in [3]). [3] \textit{F. A. Hayek}, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Simon and Schuster, NY (1969). [4] \textit{A. Ehresmann} and \textit{J. P. Vanbremeersch}, Memory evolutive systems: Hierarchy, emergence, cognition. Elsevier (2007). [5] \textit{M. Bunge}, Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press (2004). [6] \textit{M. Barbieri} (ed.). Introduction to biosemiotics. Springer Verlag (2007). [7] \textit{D. O. Hebb}, The organization of behavior. A neurophychological theory. Wiley, New York (1949). [8] \textit{H. Kilov} and \textit{A. Ash}, On the structure of convincing specifications. In: Behavioral specifications of businesses and systems (Ed. by H.Kilov, B.Rumpe, I.Simmonds). Kluwer Academic Publishers (1999), p. 141--160. [9] \textit{J. Goguen}, Semiotic morphisms. TR-CS97-553, University of California at San Diego (1997).[10] \textit{R. Wrangham}, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Basic Books (2010).