Mind

  (out of 5 stars)

Cognitive scientist and evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker presents a compelling argument for the existence of a language instinct in humans. Pinker relies heavily on the shoulders of Noam Chomsky, whose theories of language, especially Universal Grammar, revolutionized thinking about the ways in which humans learn to convey thoughts vocally via grammar and symbolism. Pinker's thesis is backed up by numerous studies and decades of research from many disciplines.

The book starts by laying out the argument that there exists an instinct derived through evolutionary natural selection which predisposes humans to acquire and utilize vocalized language. Pinker uses a myriad of studies as well as anecodotal accounts which illustrate the ways in which this process works well, works poorly, or is hindered following accidents and brain disorders.

A bit of a dry section follows as Pinker gets into an advanced discussion of grammar and how the brain may decide how to structure sentences. While many readers while feel their eyes grow fuzzy through these three or so chapters, the section lays the ground work for many of the remaining chapters. Pinker shows that complex language constructions, including the irregular nature of many English verbs and constructs, can be simplified into a few very basic rules and procedures which we understand as basic grammar.

From there, Pinker describes work on language itself, including the meanings and utilization of words, the similarities and diversities of languages, and the nature of baby talk. The rest of the book offers the reader the closing arguments as Pinker describes the biology behind his theory, including how genes might control the language instinct, and how natural selection may have acted upon genetic variety. The last two chapters deal with 'grammar police' (called 'Language Mavens' by Pinker) and the polishing of the main thesis with a chapter titled 'Mind Design.'

I loved the entire book, even the somewhat dry grammar chapters. I know some readers will not make it past that part, and it is understandable since it is dense and deals with a subject most of us hated in school. However, The Language Instinct stands as an amazing argument in favor of a genetic basis for the nature of language and for the ability of very young children to acquire and thrive with a few inate grammatical concepts. Recommended for anyone interested in psychology, linguistics, brain and mind, education, or philosophy of science. Four and one-half stars.

  (out of 5 stars)

David McFarland, someone well-versed in biological robots and zoology, offers up this quick philosophical (not technical) discussion of just how we go about identifying 'alien' minds. 'Alien' here refers to non-human minds, not the ET variety, specifically those of animals and robots. He assumes as fundamental the need to identify both rationality and subjectivity in an 'other' before we could ascribe to it a mind. Most of the book involves dealing with the numerous and convoluted problems associated with those identifications.

To move his ideas along, McFarland uses his dog Border as the animal example, and a conceptual security robot for the other. Throughout the early parts of the book, the reader gets an intro to 'mindless machines' and the role design plays in both animals (through natural selection, environment, etc) and robots (engineer, programmer, etc).

The bulk of the book involves traditional philosophical considerations of intent, functionality, rationality, subjectivity, feelings, knowledge, and mind. Much of this discussion will be familiar to readers of Daniel Dennett (and Dennett is frequently referenced) and/or general philosophy of mind. There are some interesting applications of these concepts to robots (especially), but I'd advise the novice philosophy reader to find a quiet room and have an optimal mind set before proceding through the middle sections (as I would advise on any good philosophy book).

Toward the end, the reader gets stronger discussions of mind as they may (or may not apply) to robots and animals. Many of the contradictions are pointed out, as well as the inherent difficulty (impossibility?) of determining the mind, mind set, or subjectivity of anything which might house them.

The end of the book falls off the truck, unfortunately. Throughout the chapters, McFarland clearly appears to be laying groundwork for his conclusions (and yes, I use this word in the philosophical not empirical sense), only to turn in a 'hedging all bets' card in the epilogue without any real opinion. He offers what may be possible, states that philosophers are all in disagreement, and proposes weakly that its basically up to the reader to determine what is going on inside that skull/robot. I recognize (both from reading this book and previous knowledge of many of the subjects) that a conclusion of any sort would not be likely in strong empirical terms, but at least McFarland should have let the reader know this was an exploration without an actual purpose other than to discuss the issues (does the Intentional Stance come into play here in his narrative?). I never expected McFarland to state whether he thought his dog had a mind, but he presented enough points of view that I expected him to accept one at some point. He never did. It was all one big lecture for the reader (enjoyable though it was).

The strongest points for me were his determination that mind and consciousness were just as much products of evolution and purpose (or for the robot, design and purpose) as any other phenotypic effect. His one strong conclusion was that we cannot expect an animal or a robot to ever have a mind or consciousness like ours. They don't have human brains, haven't been selected (or designed) under the same conditions, and therefore, if they have minds at all, those minds would conform to the specific needs and conditions of their respective developments.

Guilty Robots was worth the read, and with a stronger finish this would have been a four-star review. However, the weak ending, the progressing obscurity of our main characters (security robot, Border), and a reader-must-decide 'conclusion' somewhat spoiled an otherwise solid effort (but not enough to render it a waste of time). Three and one-half stars.

  (out of 5 stars)

I wish I had read this book many years ago, though after having read the book, I have to question whether my conscious self illusion had developed enough to know how handle the arguments Dr. Dennett presents. From the opening chapters, this book is a candy store for thinkers. Make no mistake, it is deep and will require concentration from most any reader. The rewards, like any good read, are worth the effort as Dennett makes a profound and intensely engaging argument about his philosophy of mind, consciousness, and self. He makes extensive use of the idea of Virtual Machines, software, and AI-style capabilities in building his model of mind.

Dennett opens up in Part 1 with an exploration of the groundwork for his theory, offering the reader some soft (but quickly advancing) concepts of hallucinations, 'mind stuff', and phenomenology (which he abstracts into heterophenomenology for use later). This section skirts some of the more basic philosophical arguments (of which there are general if not specific agreements) in favor of offering challenges to intuition and 'seems to be' type thinking.

In Part II, he breaks down his theory of Multiple Drafts as a more reasonable (and often, direct affront to) the traditional Cartesian Theater arguments. To put this simply, Dennett's theory argues against the firm existence of a Central Meaner (audience in the theater, ultimate decider, aka soul or top brain dog) while presenting his Multiple Drafts idea. He supposes that consciousness arises, not due to the presense of a specific observer/decider, but instead as the reflective consequence of multiple contributions to the mental state. These 'drafts', as he refers to them, are temporary versions of introspective narrative which are only true until they get edited (and these edits take place in a decentralized manner based on many factors). Because the information used to develop the self-narration comes from numerous sources whose functional-chains are often specialized and multifaceted, and because one cannot determine between two types of rewriting (Orwellian, which involves revisionist history, or Stalinesque, which includes more real-time 'made-up' explanations treated as if factual), the Multiple Drafts theory seems to satisfy these issues, as well as solve many of the problems of the tangibility and determinism found in the alternative theories.

The final Part of the book explores the numerous objections likely thrown up at this theory, and offers extended discussion of why Multiple Drafts both fits the evidence and offers the scientific advantage of being testable and falsifiable. Using many thought exercises and scientific studies of brain-damaged or abnormally-acting people, Dennett argues that the idea of quale (a rival explanation in the Cartesian Theater model) doesn't fit the evidence, is self-contradictory, and cannot be reduced in a meaningful and testable manner.

The most fascinating discussion in Explained is Dennett's thoughts on the creation and indoctrination of consciousness. His theory is basically the following: early creatures gained advantage by taking traditional basic instincts and abilities (like fight-or-flight, verticle symmetry detection, etc) and making them more active and available. Rather than only being called for under extreme conditions (or more specifically, only available when the instinct itself notices stimuli it is both equiped to notice and for which it 'cares'), an 'always-on' mentality allowed greater observation and more information collection. This lead to stronger, more efficient means of distributing observation-based data and acting upon instructions that are more likely to be advantageous. Primates in particular got especially good at saccadic eye motion (visual jumpiness that allows the eye to observe more points in its line-of-sight, thereby, collecting more data), which likely increased our ability to protect ourselves and to find food. Shortcuts were created in the brain at this point which began to lay the foundation architecture for the language to come later.

Early pre-language hominids likely used some audio mechanism to communicate very basic information in a one-directional sort of way. 'I'm looking for food' probably elicited no direct response, though it would have been a data point considered by anyone in earshot. At some point, this stopped being simply one-way, and a question/answer process evolved. 'I'm looking for food' might lead to 'I have a lot of food'. The asker, however, was likely unable to ask and then answer himself, leaving an efficiency gap to be filled. Later, a sole homo sapien likely started the process with a question, but no one else was around to answer. However, a surprising thing happened: he answered himself. 'I'm looking for food' might have been answered by his own voice (or perhaps internally) with 'Try the bush by the big rock.' Not consciously aware of self-talking (as we would define it), but in a 'I just asked about X' and 'I received an answer about X'.

While the process was inefficient, having had to be formulated, passed out the vocal chords and mouth, and received back in the ear and reprocessed, the invaluable addition of consulting one's self quickly became an advantageous Big Trick (Dennett's idea that social evolution can take place very quickly if a specific action or ability could be both possible due to genetics and available to learn from others who themselves would have developed or learned the Trick). From this point on, humans developed an efficiency we now call an inner monologue (although Dennett is careful to say that this is not just a textual 'spoken' monologue, but instead a multi-faceted creation from multiple heterogeneous contributors) which didn't require (but in many of us, still is exhibited as) vocally 'talking to ourselves'.

From this point on, the reader can infer that consciousness came about, not through a guided Observer or Meaner, but through the chaotic, pandemoniac contributions of various brain-functions and sub-functions. Consciousness is more of a bucket of interaction where subroutines can pay attention to both hardwired areas of interest (pain receptors looking for pain in the hands, for example) but also have the ability to contribute to areas of temporary interest (those same pain receptors might offer a concept of pain to the bucket in response to the information that a fire is near before a narrative leading to a hand being placed in the fire can be acted upon).

Dennett also contends that consciousness may well be taught to children (as a meme set) rather than inherited in a traditional genetically-driven manner, and consciousness is only made possible by our ability to use and understand language (at least the sort of consciousness as humans know it to be). 'Words do things with us' he titled one chapter. Dennett does argue that we have to be genetically predisposed to be able to be conscious, but that consciousness itself is only one possible arrangement of the various brain functions available to a human. One quote he uses really boils this down in a way that is both enlightening and haunting, in the words of Helen Keller:

"Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious time of nothingness...Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with another.'

This review vastly oversimplifies Dennett's discussion and leaves out dozens of key points and sub-elements which make this book a very deep and rewarding read. Highly, highly recommended for the very curious mind, but I'd advise taking this book to a quiet room for a few days and really allowing yourself to disengage some of those constantly vigilant 'demons' of expectationalism and open up your mind (and self) to ideas you may never have dreamed could be true. Believe Dennett or not on these theories, this book will make you think deep and carefully reconsider many things you took as given in your own head. Five stars.