Sunday, March 12, 2006
Extraordinary Confabulations
Pinker quotes biologist Robert Trivers on the subject of self-knowledge from the foreword he wrote to the 1976 edition of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene:
If . . . deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray -- by the subtle signs of self-knowledge -- the deception being practiced. Thus, the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naïve view of mental evolution.
The conventional view may be largely correct when it comes to the physical world, which allows for reality checks by multiple observers and where misconceptions are likely to harm the perceiver. But as Trivers notes, it may not be correct when it comes to the self, which one can access in a way that others cannot and where misconceptions may be helpful. Sometimes parents may want to convince a child that what they are doing is for the child's own good, children may want to convince parents that they are needy rather than greedy, lovers may want to convince each other that they will always be true, and unrelated folks may want to convince one another that they are worthy cooperators. These opinions are often embellishments, if not tall tales, and to slip them beneath a partner's radar a speaker should believe in them so as not to stammer, sweat, or trip himself up in contradictions. Ice-veined liars might, of course, get away with telling bald fibs to strangers, but they would also have trouble keeping friends, who could never take their promises seriously. The price of looking credible is being unable to lie with a straight face, and that means a part of the mind must be designed to believe its own propaganda -- while another part registers just enough truth to keep the self-concept in touch with reality. ...
Though modern psychologists and psychiatrists tend to reject orthodox Freudian theory, many acknowledge that Freud was right about the defense mechanisms of the ego. ...
[T]he healthy parts of the brain engage in extraordinary confabulations to explain away the foibles caused by the damaged parts (which are invisible to the self because they are part of the self) and to present the whole person as a capable, rational actor. A patient who fails to experience a visceral click of recognition when he sees his wife, but who acknowledges that she looks and acts just like his wife, may deduce that an amazing impostor is living in his house. ...
In social psychology experiments, people consistently overrate their own skill, honesty, generosity, and autonomy. They overestimate their contribution to a joint effort, chalk up their successes to skill and their failures to luck, and always feel that the other side has gotten the better deal in a compromise. People keep up these self-serving illusions even when they are wired to what they think is an accurate lie-detector. This shows that they are not lying to the experimenter but lying to themselves. For decades every psychology student has learned about "cognitive dissonance reduction:' in which people change whatever opinion it takes to maintain a positive self-image. ...
Self-deception is among the deepest roots of human strife and folly. It implies that the faculties that ought to allow us to settle our differences -- seeking the truth and discussing it rationally -- are miscalibrated so that all parties assess themselves to be wiser, abler, and nobler than they really are. Each party to a dispute can sincerely believe that the logic and evidence are on his side and that his opponent is deluded or dishonest or both. Self-deception is one of the reasons that the moral sense can, paradoxically, often do more harm than good . . .
Unless, of course . . .
But no. Right there is one bit of evidence on our side. Science continues to ask itself these questions, as well as conducting reality checks by multiple observers. As Bertrand Russell said once: "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." Maybe that won’t always save it in every case and every time but the odds are in science’s favor.
I am just running through Steven Pinker's Blank Slate and it has certainly been a revelation on couple of issues.
Something that had been bothering me for quite some time has been partialy aswered by Pinker.
The Blank Slate, Nobel Savage and the Ghost upstairs are being shredded page by page. I am only halfthrough it and would love to see what comes next.
Anything in Biology that is not seen in the light of evolution does not really makes sense - As quoted by one evolutionary biologist (forgot his name)!
This applies not only to the brain as a physical entity but also to its workings!
It slowly comes out that there are only the clothes and not the emperor as suspected.
[T]he faculties that ought to allow us to settle our differences . . . are miscalibrated so that all parties assess themselves to be wiser, abler, and nobler than they really are. Each party to a dispute can sincerely believe that the logic and evidence are on his side and that his opponent is deluded or dishonest or both.
But for a psychologist to be apparently so self-unaware has to put the whole book under a cloud.
And, apart from torching more than a few strawmen, he presents little actual support for a genetic rather than cultural basis for much of the behavior he sets out to describe, once he is finished getting even with old enemies. I do think his accounts are well-founded and are, despite more than a whiff of "just so" about them, convincing descriptions of the underpinnings of human behavior. But in the example I cited in my post, there is nothing (that I can see) that requires a genetic explanation rather than a cultural one.
And, by the way, the biologist you are thinking of is Theodosius Dobzhansky and the saying (and title of a lecture) is "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution."
Yes. I just went through Stevens bashing of Gould, Rose and Lewontin. But that’s not really important.
Now coming to the complexity of the whole issue, which as per you is a requirement of proof for the genetic basis for a non-existence of a blank slate. Being an evolutionist and a self confessed anti creationist (that I infer from your blog), you would surely be aware that Darwin did not know Mendel’s findings yet did know that something in was driving the selection. It took Crick and Watson to expose it.
Neuroscience, being even now at a nascent stage, has to go a long way in identifying itself with its genetic roots. Phantom limbs do not require cultural explanations.
I however was in a different dilemma. Evolution by natural selection literally demolished the holy spaces in just about every place. Blank slate seemed a fair outcome from an evolution point of view and moreover just explained away prejudices, both the religious and the racist varieties. Inherent, inbuilt etc seemed to be used only for abuse!
Yet I, being a very keen observer (I believe so) of many things was unable to come to grips when coming to the suitability of many a people to certain activities, albeit being contrary or with no training. If you can call them drifters, on certain situations just sprang up and hitched themselves successfully and ended up as captains. This is not a result of observing certain isolated events.
An inkling was that given a decent base, containing not even remotely that was required to mold, the inherence started playing as the chance comes. I repeatedly pondered on this and was really troubled. This was quite contrary and anything in those lines was seemed to leading me towards eugenics and allied claptrap.
To summarize, the two questions that would bother anybody who have understood the essence of evolution and confirm to the views of Steven Pinker are;
1. Evolution being time’s child, seems to have had very less of it for such inherence to be imparted in the brain. Your doubts might have been the resultant of this. I am not sure. But the point is we evolutionist all know that Lamarckian concepts are only fantasy and hence there is only one way ahead which is natural selection. Then how do we account all this in a short homosapien evolutionary time?
2. This sort of determinism rather troubles me inspite of it looking quite true. It opens a whole Pandora’s box. Maybe the second part of the book, which I have started, might provide some answer.
For the first point it occurred to me today that I had answered it a bit through one of the pieces that I had written for myself some months ago. I reproduce below some lines of it (had titled this as “The Ghost upstairs”)
“Driven by evolution, the reinforcement between motor and the brain was continuous. The network had been quite busy, giving meaning to the genes orientation and adaptation. Brain provided the comprehensive framework, repository and dispenser of reactions that were needed to advance the cause of survival.
There were side effects though!
……………….
There is no guessing how an aspect of its physical structure can be used. It’s many and shall be used in whichever way that it can to help its survival. If you can call the morphs main function as prime function, the other aspects that can be executed can be called as the side effects. Except that here, over a period of time the prime function and the side effects merge and become undistinguishable. Still being physical morphs it can clearly discerned.
The same is the logic by which the brain has evolved. Only that the side effects are not obvious! People discern them in different ways. The prime function is providing the comprehensive framework of a reality projector to put the organism in place in the environment and aid its survival. Then what about the side effects? Those are many but the principal side effect seems to be one. Its called consciousness!
The way to test the effectiveness or the purpose or to put it more simply the functional possibilities of a physical change in an organism are many and is happening continuously in the real world. The organism gets to use all its resources as aids to live and survive. The difficulty is in trying to estimate the same for the brain for the reasons mentioned.
When such is the case, no one should be surprised to finds a ghost upstairs!”
What I had written is that there is speedier evolutionary step that goes on inside the brain when compared to physical adaptation to niches. If this accounted for, I feel what Pinker says should be true. The rate of brain evolution is much much faster and hence can account for cultural traits without being Lamarckian.
However the second point is so unsettling that we have to reconcile to the fact that some will succeed and some will not inspite of equivalent inputs on identical platters.
As a solace people like Mahatma Gandhi and Thomas Paine have thought us that being human we are also capable of much compassion and egalitarianism, towards whomsoever!
<< Home
