Strokes of Insight?
Friday April 25, 2008
Neuroscience, unfortunately, often proceeds on the back of things that go profoundly wrong with the brain. We know a lot about what the brain does and how it does it from research with patients whose brains have suffered various kinds of damage.
This makes a lot of this research both fascinating and rather melancholy reading. An exception is last week’s New Scientist interview with neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor, who suffered an enormous stroke the size of a golfball in her cerebral cortex in 1996. The stroke left her with virtually no cognitive functioning, but in the years that followed, she systematically rebuilt her brain from the inside out, painstakingly bringing neural functions back ‘online’. This process, however, was not merely one of reconstructing what was there before, but instead (to use what is perhaps a crude metaphor) of taking advantage of the earthquake to do some serious rebuilding of the property.
When the anger circuit wanted to run again, I did not like the way it felt inside my body so I said “no” to its running. Every time it tried to get triggered and run again, I brought my attention back to it – I did not like the way anger felt so I shut it down. Now that circuit rarely runs at all, mostly because I feel it getting triggered and nip it in the bud.
Dr. Taylor herself recognises the connections between this kind of retraining and meditative practices of observing but not engaging with neural circuitry; but along the way, the interview also raises raises all kinds of fascinating questions about the relationship between mind, awareness, the body and the stories we spin about ourselves.
You will need to be a subscriber to New Scientist to read the interview, but you can go to her website here to find out more, or else have a look on the TED website at her interview. Meanwhile, I’ll be getting hold of a copy of her book, My Stroke of Insight
Have your say! [1]
Unconscious Decision Making
Tuesday April 15, 2008
I don’t want to bang on about this one topic ad nauseum, but nevertheless, in the light of my previous post and the discussion that it has generated, I thought that visitors to thinkBuddha might be interested in some recently published research into the subject of free will.
John-Dylan Haynes and his fellow researchers at the Bernstein Centre for Computational Neuroscience wired up their subjects to fMRI scanners and asked them to press a button with either their left or right hand when the urge took them to do so. Meanwhile different letters flashed up before them on a screen, and they were asked, after the event, to say which letter was on-screen when they decided to press a button.
This, of course, looks very like the famous experiment by Benjamin Libet concerning the timing of volitional acts. The difference, however, was in the use of fMRI scans. When Haynes’s team analysed these, they found that there was activity in the prefrontal cortex up to an astonishing ten seconds before the decision was enacted, and that this activity could be used to reliably predict which button the subjects later pressed. In other words, our brains decide before we do (this, of course, makes sense of many things in my life: like, for example, why I am writing this in a coffee shop, rather than sitting at home and getting on with the job application forms that are on my desk…). This brings to mind a line from one of Natalie Goldberg’s books about the brain being an involuntary organ. When I first read that, it seemed to make sense of rather a lot.
If you want to find out more, then Wired Magazine has a good article on this research, with proper diagrams and everything, instead of feeble visual puns on the theme of brains/caulflowers. There’s also an article in New Scientist, which you may or may not need to log in to read.
Have your say! [4]
The Hard Truths of Science?
Friday February 22, 2008
In a couple of recent posts, I have written about the curious cultural trope of presenting a scientific, materilist view of the world as one that entails a kind of grim assent to difficult-to-swallow truths. So the psychologist Pyszczynski writes of the “horrifying possibility that we humans are merely transient animals groping to survive in a meaningless universe, destined only to die and decay,” Bertrand Russell writes of building the foundation of our lives upon unyielding despair, and more recently in his book The Robot’s Rebellion
I am sceptical of this trope. It is not that I have a problem with the science, it is just I have a problem with the emotional tone of these assertions about what it is to approach the world from a scientific viewpoint. The Epicureans are, in this context, instructive. They were advocates of both materialism and of the systematic study of the world; and yet the character of their writing was markedly different from that of these more contemporary commentators. Here is Epicurus writing on the study of celestial phenomena:
We begin by recognizing that knowledge of the phenomena of the sky, whether discussed along with other doctrines or separately, has no other purpose than for peace of mind and fearlessness, just as it is in all our other pursuits […] Each of these phenomena allow several differing explanations for its creation and its nature, all of which may agree with visible evidence. Rather than committing to explanations based on unwarranted assumptions and dogma, we may only theorize as far as the phenomena allow. For our life has no need of unreasonable and groundless opinions; our one need is untroubled existence. So if one is satisfied, as he should be, with that which is shown to be less than certain, it is no cause for concern that things can be explained in more than one way, consistent with the evidence. But if one accepts one explanation and rejects another that is equally consistent with the evidence, he is obviously rejecting science altogether and taking refuge in myth.
There are several things that are of interest here, for example the Epicurean claim – perhaps influenced by ancient Scepticism – that competing explanations for which there is equal evidence should be equally favoured, at least until more evidence is in. However, what interests me most is the suggestion of Epicurus that the purpose of understanding the world is “no other… than for peace of mind”. The Epicureans knew all too well the human tendency to project elaborate stories upon the world, stories before which we then find ourselves trembling. For the Epicureans, the practice of close attention to the world leads to the quenching of the fretful fires of the stories that we compulsively weave. And although the Epicureans do not flinch from the possible horrors of existence – after all, Lucretius’s On the Nature of the Universe ends with the most harrowing portrait of the plague of Athens – at the same time, they maintain a commitment to this idea that through knowledge, even through knowledge of that which appears terrible, we can come to see ourselves at home in the world.
The curious obsession with presenting the findings of science as hard truths that compel our assent whilst offering us only misery (and, of course, a certain noble heroism) in return is a mistake. It does none of us any favours. Those who seek to communicate science, I think, could do with rather less of the abyss, and rather more of this kind of Epicurean sensibility, if they wish public understanding of the sciences to flourish. They could do with taking the lead of Carl Sagan, one of the great science communicators of the last century, whose wonderful Cosmos
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Have your say! [1]
Vain, Deluded, Pigheaded, Secretive, Bigoted...
Thursday February 14, 2008
… but that’s enough about me. How about you?
I’ve just finished reading Cordelia Fine’s highly entertaining book A Mind of its Own: How your brain distorts and deceives
Over the past few years of studying philosophy, I have discovered that when many philosophers talk about mind, they tend to go all misty-eyed, even mystical. And then they say all kinds of astonishing things that, whilst they may be true of their minds (who knows? they are philosophers, after all – perhaps they have extra-special minds), seem to bear little relation to the cage of unruly and disruptive monkeys that is my own mind. Nevertheless, I am increasingly convinced that all the evidence suggests that the philosopher’s Mind – noble, true, immaterial, the seat of pure reason – is more or less a fictional creation. Whilst for some this might sound like the worst possible news, I tend to think the opposite, if only because in the end what is actually going on is a much more interesting business than the philosophers have imagined. After all, it can be both fun and instructive to catch the brain at it, to spot those vanities and delusions, that propensity for pigheadedness, the skimpiness of our conscious processing, those flickers of bigotry.
But what are the implications of all of this research when it comes to the question of how we live? Here Fine is a bit more ambivalent. She comes down hard on bigotry – and certainly the experimental findings are not particularly edifying – but at the same time seems to have a rather more kindly view towards, for example, our tendencies to be vain and deluded. When writing about vanity, for example, she quotes the findings of the psychologist Pyszczynski, who claims that this built-in tendency may be ‘a protective shield designed to control the potential for terror that results from awareness of the horrifying possibility that we humans are merely transient animals groping to survive in a meaningless universe, destined only to die and decay’ (29). There are those, Fine writes, who lack this vanity, who have balanced self-perceptions and are realistic in their predictions of the future. ‘They are the clinically depressed’ (28). In other words, a bit of vanity can keep your sanity.
And it is here that I have to depart from Fine’s argument. I am not sure that the clinically depressed are particularly realistic in their predictions of the future or balanced in their self-perceptions. There are certainly some research findings that suggest this, but I wonder about the hidden assumptions in such research. For example, the story that Pyszczynski tells, although masquerading as the most sober account of our place in things, seems to me to be yet another delusive creation. It has all of the force of Classical tragedy – terror, transience, decay, meaningless, horror; but this overwrought recourse to amateur dramatics should itself alert us to the suspicion that, once again, we are spinning another drama in which the self is setting itself upon a pedestal: a hero, once again, although a tragic one. And if this assumption is built in to research into depression, then anybody who is depressed will find themselves scoring highly on the realism of their predictions of the future or the balance of their self-perceptions. Furthermore, even if the depressed are rather good at predicting bad outcomes, it may be that they are less good at predicting, or at securing, good outcomes. A gentler, kinder sense of things is not necessarily more delusive than the operatic tragedy. Reality and horror are not synonyms. There are, in the world, genuine pleasures, true kindnesses, real delights and wonders.
Nevertheless, these kind of findings do call our habitual sense of ourselves into question. And whilst some may continue to believe that, through heroic efforts, we can overcome the many flaws of the human mind, I myself can see no reason good to believe that this is so. Yet whilst I do not think that we can eliminate these things, I can’t bring myself to agree with Fine that some of the distortions and deceptions of the mind are worth guarding. I think that what is demanded is something more subtle: to continually remind ourselves that what the brain spews out is not the best guide to reality, the ability to recognise that our convictions are not as firmly based as we tend to believe, the cultivation of an engagement with the world that does justice to those things that we hold to be important, but that also recognises how tenuous this hold actually is.
Have your say! [6]
More on the Transhumanist Debate
Friday November 23, 2007
Several weeks ago, I posted here about a New Scientist article written by Danielle Egan on the subject of Transhumanism. Transhumanism is a broad-based movement that sets its sights upon the enhancement of human capacities by technological means. This, of course, is something that technology has always done ever since the first of our distant ancestors started poking at things with sticks; but arguably the possibilities for extending human existence (either in terms of human capacities or in terms of longevity) by technological means are greater than they have ever been. In my original article, I echoed some of the concerns raised in the New Scientist concerning the aspirations and ideals of at least some of the Transhumanists, in particular those voiced by Marvin Minsky. The original article can be found here.
No sooner had I published this article than I received a comment on the site from Marvin Minsky, claiming that the New Scientist article had substantially misrepresented his position. It was a tricky call, but claims to misrepresentation are something that it is worth taking seriously, and so I temporarily unpublished the first article, whilst waiting to see if there was any more substantial response to the article in the letter pages of the New Scientist – surely the most obvious place for such a response. Given that I rarely unpublish anything once written, I also published a second article (see here) explaining my decision. This second article reiterated some of my concerns regarding both the nature of some of the aspirations within Transhumanism and questions ethical responsibility that the original article posed.
The story, however, did not end there. Not long afterwards, Danielle Egan, the writer of the original article, got in touch to tell me that she stood by what she had written. She also sent me an extract from the unedited transcript that seemed to support her original claims.
As no further comment has been forthcoming in the letters pages of the New Scientist, a week or two ago I contacted both Marvin Minsky and Danielle Egan to let them know that I would be republishing the earlier article, and that I would be adding a further post to the site to explain the background to some of this. I am adding a rider to the two earlier posts to suggest that they, and this present post, should be read together. This, I believe, should give a fair overview of the issues at stake as the content of these posts must, I think, be necessarily understood in the context of this on-going discussion.
I welcome considered responses to any of these three posts, although I would ask anyone who wishes to comment to read all three articles before doing so.
Original article can be found here.
My subsequent post is here.
Have your say! [2]
Transhumanism, Journalism and Ethics
Thursday October 18, 2007
This post is part of a series concerning Marvin Minsky, Transhumanism and the New Scientist. Please read all three posts together before commenting. The other two posts can be found here and here.
Yesterday I wrote a post on the subject of Transhumanism, and put down some responses to a report in the most recent issue of New Scientist from the meeting of the World Transhumanist Association in Chicago.
In the previous post, I wrote as follows:
The New Scientist article was reporting from the World Transhumanist Association meeting in Chicago. The meeting is clearly a forum for a discussion of ideas that are deliberately provocative and outlandish (solving the problem of the population explosion by “uploading” ten million people onto 50-cent computer chips, anyone?), and so it should perhaps be understood in this light; but at the same time it was curious, not to say disturbing, reading. It may be that suffering, stupidity, disease, aging and involuntary death are undesirable. The jury, however, must remain out at the moment on the matter of whether they are unnecessary.
The New Scientist article included extracts from an interview with Marvin Minsky, which I quoted from liberally an in good faith. Since posting this article, however, Prof. Minsky has got in touch and suggested that the claims made in the New Scientist article were substantially wrong, in particular concerning his comments on the question of the relationship between science and ethical responsibility. Here is a section of the response that he sent me:
What I said to that reporter was almost exactly the opposite of what she reported! I argued that, so far as I could see, few scientists are especially good at predicting or evaluating the long-term effect of what they discover. So ideally, that would be the job of people who excel at those skills.
So what I actually tried to explain was that our societies needs scientists to be free to discover new possibilities—but the public should learn to understand that scientists are not especially good at making judgments about what other people should do!
In real life, of course, such decisions end up in the realm of politics, and that’s where the public ought to look—provided that they try harder to elect people with better qualifications.
Given that the accuracy of the article from which I was quoting has been called into question, I have decided to unpublish the previous post, as I do not wish to misrepresent Prof. Minsky’s views.
Having said this, I must confess to remaining unconvinced by the virtues of transhumanism; and at the same time, I think there is more to be said about the relationship between scientific research, on the one hand, and ethical responsibility on the other. What proportion of AI research funding, for example, comes from organisations whose concerns are primarily military?
Ethics, in the end, may not be to do with panels of experts making judgments about what other people do. It may be something rather closer to home, about our ethos, about the decisions that we make from day to day. And from this responsibility, nobody is exempt.
Have your say! [2]
My New Brain
Friday July 13, 2007
Regular readers of thinkBuddha.org will be relieved to hear that a few days ago, I got myself a new brain. About time too, I hear you say. I have actually coveted a second brain for a long time, and so was delighted when I opened the box that Elee gave me as a present after my PhD exam, and found a little pink cauliflower nestled inside. I’m still keeping my old brain for day-to-day use, but the new one will come in handy for special occasions.
The reason I have long yearned for a second brain is that, although I am very interested in the things that the brain does and spend a not inconsiderable amount of time reading about all these things, for whatever reason, my own brain simply doesn’t seem to want to retain the information. What I needed, I realised some time ago, was a brain that I could get my hands on, that I could take apart and put back together again, a brain that I could poke at. Hence the second brain, plastic, colour-coded and easy to take dismantle so that I can get to know the brain’s architecture in greater depth. This autumn, I’m teaching a course in consciousness (what is it? do we have it? how much of it do we have? what difference does it make?), so having a second brain on hand will be useful for this.
For me, finding out about the brain is a part of the same broad process of inquiry to which meditation also belongs. In one sense, they are both processes of making friends with your own head. What strikes me more and more is the gulf between what we think is going on with our own heads, and what actually is going on, and through meditation and reading about the way that the brain works, I have come to be a bit more sceptical about my everyday folk psychology. This is not to say that I subscribe to the view that somehow Buddhism will one day be vindicated by science, as in the entertaining headline on the Buddhist Channel three or four days ago: Meditation tests prove Buddhists right ! It is not about proving Buddhism or Buddhists right. After all, there is much about Buddhism – at least in many of its traditional incarnations – that is almost certainly wrong, and also a great deal, perhaps (although this is not necessarily the same thing) that we could well do without.
So it is not because any of tribal, religious or mystical commitments that I still believe that meditation has much to say about the brain. It is because of this long and baffling process through which, in meditating, I have come to suspect that the world view that the brain generates and in which we spend most of our days is – whatever its survival value – a bizarre fiction. And begin to unravel this fiction is a fascinating business.
(See my earlier articles on Buddhism and Science and the Dalai Lama on Brain Science).
Have your say! [4]
