In my experience of psychology, its history is a series of dramatic swings where saviours appear on the scene to destroy supposed anti-scientific rivals. When Watson wrote his ‘Psychology as the Behaviourist Views it’ he attacked introspective psychology as being totally unscientific. This was a bit of an exaggeration. The introspective school was an improvement on the rationalist and empiricist philosophical schools because of its use of experiments and statistical generalisations of their results, and their recognition that all people don’t think or experience the world in the same way etc. Watson was right to criticise a lot of their work. For example, the fact that different labs were confirming the different theories of Titchner and Wundt, did show that something was badly wrong with the experimental techniques they used. But I think Watson went too far with his arguments that the study of introspection was unscientific. The work of people like Dennett and Evans, have in different ways, shown that we can gain scientific data from introspection if we are careful. Watson’s rhetoric was useful in one sense though; his emphasis on external behaviour, and behaviour modification did make science more practical. We can see this with the countless people with Intellectual Disability and Autism who have had their lives dramatically improved by Applied Behavioural Analysis.

But there were a lot of problems with behaviourism, for example the downplaying of introspective data, and notably the fact that they constantly attacked theory driven science. If one looks at physics, the most successful of the sciences, it is typically theory lead. There is nothing wrong with letting theory lead the way, as long as one modifies the theory when new data comes in.

One thing the behaviourists were not though was blank slate theorists. Watson famously made a very silly claim about modifying a child in any conceivable way using behavioural techniques. He ended his famous quote by admitting that it was a wild exaggeration of the facts, but that it was no worse than the exaggerations of Nativists in the opposite direction. But people like Pinker latched onto to Watson’s silly claim as evidence that behaviourists were blank slate theorists. But the quotes below from behaviourists Quine and Skinner clearly show that they were not blank slate theorists:

 “What can be said of innate dispositions now? When I posit an innate disposition I am assuming some specific though unspecified arrangement of cells or perhaps some combination of such arrangements. It could be a nerve tract or a gland. It could consist of several structures, variously situated in the organism. It could be one structure in one individual and some different and some different structure to the same specified effect in another individual. Its innateness consists in its being complete at birth…The innate dispositions, then, are a mixed bag: innate reflexes are learned in utero, while innate dispositions of deeper sorts are handed down in the chromosome. They are a mixed lot of structures, specified primarily by what they make the animal do in what circumstances, and grouped together by the accident of being complete at birth” (Quine ‘The Root’s of Reference’ p.13)

“Yet the innate sense of perceptual similarity has, for all its subjectivity, a degree of objective validity. After all, man’s inductive expectations are reached by extrapolating along the lines of perceptual similarity: experiences that begin similarly are expected to turn out in similar ways. Our innate standards of perceptual similarity show a gratifying tendency to run with the grain of nature. This concurrence is accountable, surely to natural selection. Since good prediction has survival value, natural selection will have fostered perceptual similarity standards in us and other animals that tend accordingly.” (ibid p.17)

“Descartes thought we had innate knowledge and innate ideas. Locke thought not. I despair of sharpening the issue by defining the term ‘idea’. Definition even of ‘knowledge’ is in trouble since Gettier’s challenge of the definition of knowledge as true warranted belief. However, we need no such sharpening of the issue to see that the evidence favours Descartes over Locke.” ( Quine: The Innate Foundational Endowments 1996)

“For, whatever we make of Locke, the behaviourist is knowingly and cheerfully up to his neck in innate mechanisms of learning-readiness…Since each learned response presupposes some such prior inequalities, some such inequalities, some such inequalities must be unlearned; hence innate. Innate biases and dispositions are the cornerstone of behaviourism, and have been studied by behaviourists.

The qualitative spacing of stimulations must therefore be recognised as an innate structure needed in accounting for any learning, and hence in particular, language learning. Unquestionably much more addition innate structure is needed to account for language learning” (Quine: ‘Philosophy and Linguistics’ p.37 1968)

“Just as we point out the contingencies of survival to explain an unconditioned reflex, so we point out to ‘contingencies of reinforcement to explain a conditioned reflex” ( Skinner 1974 p. 43)

“The task of a scientific analysis is to explain how the behaviour of the person is a physical system is related to the conditions under which the human species evolved, and the conditions under which the individual lives” (Skinner 1974 p. 14)

These quotes show the absurdity of the caricatures of used by Chomsky and Pinker. But it has to be said that Chomsky and Pinker’s caricatures of behaviourism were no worse than Watson’s caricatures of the introspective school of psychology.

I think that we are making progress in psychology but I think this constant talk of revolutionary paradigm shifts doesn’t help. I believe that thinking interms of integrating past knowledge and modifying our theories in light of new data is a better approach than painting older theorists as radically unscientific. Though who knows if people like Chomsky, Watson, etc didn’t play a bit dirty and exaggerate a bit things might not have changed.

I am not a behaviourist. If I had to attach an “ist” label to myself it would be pragmatist. I think psychology and linguistics would improve vastly if it adopted a more pragmatic attitude, making use of all empirical data instead of simply restricting itself to a particular school of thought. So called evolutionary psychology used the same rhetoric as the behaviourists and cognitive scientists. By labelling themselves as ‘evolutionary psychologists’, they instantly associated themselves with evolutionary theory, and implied that other psychologists were ignorant of evolutionary psychology and denied that our evolutionary history played any role in our psychology. This though is unfair; Skinner and Freud, for example, tried hard to integrate their theories with evolutionary science. There is no option but to be an evolutionary psychologist unless one is a creationist psychologist. But the term evolutionary psychologist should not be reserved for Cosmides, Tooby, and Pinker’s hyper modularity theory. We should be wary of falling for the simplifying rhetoric of evolutionary psychologists, which implies that psychologists who don’t agree with Pinker et al are anti evolutionary theory. Nothing could be further from the truth. Take home point. Don’t believe the hype of any psychologist, and look closely at the actual data.

Evan’s ‘The Language Myth’ is an excellent reply to the accepted dogma that language acquisition can only be explained by postulating an innate domain specific language faculty. The book covers a lot of ground and evaluates virtually all of the arguments for linguistic Nativism, yet despite agreeing with the conclusion that there is no language instinct, I was not impressed with aspects of the book; at times it reads like a wild caricature of generative grammar. Such caricatures will serve to turn off generative grammarians from reading past the first chapter. Generative grammarians are no strangers to caricature. Chomsky’s review of Skinners ‘Verbal Behaviour’ was a complete mess and didn’t really deal with any of the facts as Skinner presented them. Pinker attacks those who do not agree that the evidence supports a language faculty by claiming they hold a blank slate view of human nature, this is despite the fact that these supposed blank slate theorists use innate architecture in their theories. If you disagree with Pinker and Chomsky their first reaction is to ridicule and misrepresent you. But I don’t think the correct response to caricature is further caricature. This approach makes dialogue between the disciplines impossible. And it creates an army of followers who believe the caricatures and refuse to look at empirical data relevant to the subject. The tone and caricatures used by Evan’s are counterproductive and other criticisms of the idea of a language instinct are far superior; for example, Sampson’s ‘The Language Instinct Debate’ and Lappin and Clark’s ‘Linguistic Nativism and Poverty of Stimulus Arguments’. Pinker and Chomsky have never replied to Lappin, Clark, or Sampson presumably because they know the empirical evidence provided by Sampson et al refutes their belief in a language instinct. I expect them to reply to Evans and to point out the caricatures in the book. This is a good tactic from them refuting a few caricatures presented by Evans is easier than dealing with the mountains of empirical evidence which counts against their theories.

Evans made four claims in Chapter 1 which were inaccurate:

• He claimed that Generative Grammarians argue as though all languages are like English. This is false. Rather they claim all languages including English follow universal principles which deviate because of parametric variations. They set themselves the task of empirically discovering what the universal principles and parametric variations are. They study languages from all over the world including Hebrew (one of the first languages studied by generative grammarians), Japanese, Chinese, Irish, Piradha etc.
• He argued that generative grammarians do not do comparative studies of human and non-human communicative systems. This is false. See, for example, Chomsky, Fitch and Hauser (2002) and the follow up papers.
• He attacked Chomsky’s language is a mutation theory, and implies that this view is the standard one in generative grammar. This is not true. There is much debate on the evolution of language within Generative Grammar. See Jackendoff and Pinker (2005) Berwick (2009). Etc it would be much fairer to address the diversity in the literature instead of focusing on Chomsky’s minority position.
• He called Poverty of Stimulus Arguments nothing but appeals to incredulity. The idea being that since I cannot think how language is acquired then it must be innate. This is a caricature. Poverty of Stimulus arguments are usually precisely structured and purport to show that since it is impossible for a child to learn x because they have no experience of x, and they don’t try false approximations of x, and even if they did they would not be corrected. Therefore the child cannot learn x by induction and trial and error. This is a perfectly sensible approach and not an appeal to incredulity. However we now know that children are exposed to x in their primary linguistic data, they do try false approximations of x, and they are corrected for these approximations. So the poverty of stimulus arguments are empirically refuted, though there is nothing wrong with that mode of argumentation.

In chapter 2 Evan’s sets out to refute what he claims is a key myth of the language instinct paradigm:

“Myth: Language is the preserve of humans, and humans alone; it cannot be compared to anything found amongst non-humans, and is unrelated to any non-human communicative activity” (The language Myth p. 27)

Chomsky does spend a lot of time arguing for the uniqueness of human language. And to some degree this is justified. There are clearly massive differences between human language and the communication abilities of other creatures whether bees, monkeys or starlings. Evan’s of course doesn’t deny any of this:

“Despite the range of communicative systems evident in the animal kingdom, the complexity of human language, the nature and type of texts it allows us to signal, how it is acquired, and crucially the range of functions it facilitates, are both a different quality and a different level of complexity from any other” (ibid p. 63)

Yet despite agreeing that human language is far more complicated and richer than any other animal language Evans spends the entire chapter discussing various different linguistic abilities that animals share with humans. This is because he wants to show how human language evolved out of the communicative abilities of the common ancestor that humans shared with Bonobos and Chimpanzees. He wants to contrast his position with Chomsky’s argument that language emerged suddenly as a result of a random mutation. He argues that this Chomskian position makes language a kind of singularity. Evans thinks that the empirical studies he brings together show that aspects of human language are shared with a variety of other different species. Thus he speaks of the bee waggle dance, of monkey’s who use suffixes to alter the meaning of sounds, and of Starlings who can master recursion.

The fact of Starlings mastering recursion is relevant because of claims by Chomsky et al (2002) that recursion a unique and universal feature of human language. It is obviously not unique if Starlings can master it, while Dan Everett’s research with the Piranha indicates that recursion may not be a universal feature of natural language either. Now while I think Evans makes some good points against Chomsky’s views on the evolution and uniqueness of human language he doesn’t make it clear enough that Chomsky’s views on this topic are a minority. The minimalist programme is not really accepted by the majority of generative linguists. Chomsky et al (2002) divided language into the faculty of language narrow (Recursion) and the faculty of language broad the conceptual intentional system and sensory motor system. This division seems to me to have resulted from accepting Chomsky’s minimalist programme and I am not sure there is much reason to divide up the supposed language faculty in the way Chomsky proposes. So I don’t think refuting Chomsky’s speculations on evolution and minimalism really affects the idea of a language instinct, not as the instinct is understood by the majority of linguists. But that said I do think Evan’s arguments to show a lot of weakness’s in Chomsky’s position.

It is hard to know what to make of this chapter. He does show, by means of comparative data of other species, that Chomsky’s claims about recursion being a unique feature of language are wrong. He also shows that Hockett’s supposedly unique design features of human language are actually not uniquely human and the features are shared by many other animal species. However the whole point of discussing what communicative abilities humans and animals share is to indicate that language emerged gradually from our ancestor species and didn’t require a sudden leap/mutation to produce this entirely new thing. But theorists like Pinker and Jackendoff do not support this sudden leap story, they focus on selection for communication. Evans will have to deal with their arguments in detail. In fact if he wants to critique generative grammarian’s views of the evolution of language he will need to do a detailed literature review of the main papers on the topic and not merely focus narrowly on Chomsky’s minority position.

In chapter 3 Evan’s addresses the question of whether language is innate. A lot of his arguments are supported by empirical evidence from Tomasello. Evan’s cites approvingly the following Tomasello quote:

“The conclusion in the case of individual differences and the language acquisition process is thus that input does matter. Children learn what they hear, and different children hear different things and in different quantities. What this suggests is that language acquisition is not just triggered by the linguistic environment, as proposed by generative grammarians, but rather the linguistic environment provides the raw materials out of which young children construct similar their linguistic inventories. The fact that most adults end up with fairly similar (though not identical) linguistic inventories does not negate the obvious fact that early in development children can only learn what they are exposed to. It is also useful in this context to note that when pattern finding computer programs are given CDS as input, they are able to group together, by means of distributional analysis, linguistic items in a way that would seem to be psychologically realistic for young children.” (Tomasello ‘Constructing a Language’ p. 110)

The paper Tomasello is referring to which shows computer programmes learning to group together linguistic items in a psychologically realistic way is: ‘Distributional Information: A Powerful cue for acquiring syntactic categories’ Redington et al. (1998).

It may seem that he is question begging against Nativists who claim that we don’t need exposure to learn certain syntactic constructions. However Evans (and others) have provided evidence to show that the amount of linguistic exposure a child receives is directly proportional to their linguistic abilities.

Some of this evidence is:

• Hart and Risely (1995) ‘Meaning Differences in Every Day Experience of Young Children’
• ‘Semantic generality, input frequency and the acquisition of syntax’ Theakston et al. (2004)
• Naigles, L. R. And E. Hoff-Ginsberg. (1998) ‘Why are Some verbs learned before other verbs? Effects of input frequency and structure on children’s early verb use’
• Huttenlocher, J. M. Vasilyeva and P. Shimpi. (2002) ‘Syntactic Priming in Young Children’

These papers are merely the tip of the ice-berg of empirical research, and clearly show that despite what generative grammarians claim, a child doesn’t just have their universal grammar triggered by a bit of linguistic exposure. Rather the linguistic environment a child grows in will be directly relevant in determining the richness of the language a child will learn. Evans does well in bringing together empirical data which seriously undermines the claims of those who support the principles and parameters approach.

One area of his discussion of innateness that I think could have been improved was his discussion of poverty of stimulus arguments. Evan’s does mention Pullum and Schulz’s empirical research on a child’s primary linguistic data.  But I thought a more careful discussion of the issue was warranted. Chomsky (and later Pinker), used Auxiliary  Inversion in question formation as evidence that children could learn the rule for structure dependence without receiving any evidence from their linguistic environment. In his 1975 ‘Knowledge of Language’ Chomsky has argued that a child could go much or all of his without receiving evidence relevant to learning the rule. Pullum and Scholz (unlike Chomsky or Pinker) actually looked at the linguistic exposure that children actually receive, and they showed that Chomsky and Pinker were wrong. Children are routinely exposed to enough evidence in their linguistic environment to learn the relevant rule (Sampson replicated this finding). Lappin and Clark in their ‘Linguistic Nativism and Poverty of Stimulus Arguments’ showed that domain general machines could learn the rule from less exposure to the linguistic data than a child receives. This is clear evidence against the claims of linguistic Nativists. Their reaction to this refutation has been both comical and sad at the same time. The reply by Chomsky et al has been that the rule wasn’t really meant as a poverty of stimulus argument, so the fact that it was refuted is irrelevant. This reply is strange because this poverty of stimulus argument is the most cited one in cognitive science. Pullum and Scholz cite eight different occasions that Chomsky uses the example (Chomsky 1965, 55-56; 1968, 51-52; 1971, 29-33; 1972, 30-33; 1975, 153-154; 1986, 7-8; 1988, 41-47). They also cite other Chomskian thinkers (including linguists such as Lightfoot, 1991, 2-4; Uriagereka, 1998, 9-10; Carstairs-McCarthy, 1999, 4-5; Smith, 1999, 53-54; Lasnik, 2000, 6-9; and psychologists such as Crain, 1991, 602; Macrus, 1993, 80; Pinker, 1994, 40-42, 233-234) who here endorsed the claim. However the second it is shown to be false Nativists  claim that it is not the real poverty of stimulus argument and argue there is some other piece of evidence that represents the poverty of stimulus argument.  In her ‘What’s Within’ Fiona Cowie spends a lot of time demonstrating a number of occasions that poverty of stimulus arguments have been refuted.  She then noticed the following depressing pattern:

“The nativist- say, Chomsky- articulates a version of the argument. The empiricist counters it by pointing to its evidential short-falls and/or its failure to do justice to empiricism’s explanatory potential. But no sooner is one rendition of the APS cut down than myriad other variations on the same argumentative theme spring up to take its place. For every non-obvious rule of grammar (and most of them are non-obvious), there is an argument from poverty of stimulus standing by to make a case for Nativism. And for every such argument (or at least for the ones I have seen), there are empiricist counter examples of exactly the kinds we have reviewed in this chapter, waiting, swords at the ready, to take it on.  ( Cowie: 1999, 203)”

This shows how difficult it is to get a Nativist to accept any kind of refutation. I think that Evans book would have been much better if he addressed this issue.

One area where I disagree with Evans (and Tomasello) is that I disagree with their contention that children are not corrected for grammatical mistakes. Contrary to their views I think that implicit correction does indeed play a role in helping the child to learn his first language. There is a lot of empirical research into this issue that supports the view that correction plays a role in a child acquiring their first language:

(1) Nelson, K.E., et al. ‘Maternal Input Adjustments and Non-Adjustments as Related to Children’s Linguistic Advances and to Language Acquisition Theories’ (1984)

(2) Demopoulos, M.J. et al. ‘Feedback to first Language Learners: The Role of Repetitions and Clarification questions’ Journal of Child Language 13 (1986)

(3) Saxton, M. ‘The contrast theory of negative input.’ Journal of Child Language 24 (1997)

(4) Saxton, M. ‘Negative Evidence and Negative feedback: Immediate effects on the grammaticality of child speech’ First Language 20 (2000)

(6) Choinard and Clark ‘Adult Reformulations of Child Errors as Negative Evidence’ Journal of Child language (2003).

Again this data is just the tip of the iceberg but the above papers shows both that the child is corrected for ungrammatical speech and makes use of these corrections. There is a lot of empirical data on both sides of this particular debate and I don’t mean to imply that all the evidence supports the view that children make use of corrections in learning their language. Rather I just mean to point out that Evan’s complacent assertion that correction plays no role in them acquiring a language needs a much more robust defence than he supplies.

Having dealt with the idea of innateness he goes on to attack the idea of universal rules that all that the estimated 7000 languages in the world share. This chapter is a bit quick but he does nicely make the point that no two generative grammarians seem to agree on what these supposed universal rules are. Furthermore as we study more and more of the world’s languages the less sense empirical support exists for these supposed linguistic universals.

He attacks the modularity of the mind thesis proposed by Fodor and supported by Pinker in his ‘The Language Instinct’ (1994). Pinker claimed that language and general intelligence were clearly different modules and this can be shown by the strange case of double disassociation between language and intelligence in Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and in Williams Syndrome.  In the case of Specific Language Impairment Pinker discussed the case of the KE family who allegedly had normal IQ but who had deficit in the ability to understand and produce grammatical sentences. He contrasted this case with the case of people suffering from Williams Syndrome, who Pinker claimed are linguistic savants with an extremely low IQ.

Evans does a good (but too brief) job of debunking this myth. He shows how the members of the KE family did in fact have IQ deficits, and their supposed grammar impairment could be mostly explained in terms of problems with motor control resulting from damage to the Foxp2 gene. While in the case of Williams Syndrome, Evans examines a variety of different empirical sources to show that people with Williams Syndrome are not the Savant’s Pinker claims. In fact Evans manages to demonstrate a variety of semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic difficulties with their speech. Overall he does a good job of critiquing this particular argument of Pinker. That said I think that people with Williams Syndrome do still seem to have excellent linguistic abilities relative to their general intelligence. So I plan to dedicate my next blog to discussing this issue in more detail than Evan’s manages to.

Evans also attacks the idea of mentalese proposed by Pinker. His attacks on the Computational Theory of the Mind which he incorrectly equates with Pinker’s Mentalese hypotheses are pretty weak.  He notes that there are three problems with the mentalese hypothesis:

• How meaning arises from computation (Searle’s Problem)
• How are symbols in mentalese interpreted? (The infinite Regress of homunculus (Ryle’s Problem))
• The third problem is that mentalese theories are too syntacticocentric. (Chomsky’s ‘Colourless ideas sleep furiously’ doesn’t show syntax and semantics are separate)

A few points need to be made here. Firstly by equating mentalese (a language of thought) with the computational theory of mind Evans is really showing an outdated and unnecessarily restrictive conception of computation. The subject has moved on since the 80s (though apparently Pinker and Fodor aren’t aware of this), Bayesian and Connectionist models are far superior to the old symbol crunching computation and don’t rely on any idea of a language of thought.

Secondly, one would have thought that if he was going to bring in Searle’s Chinese Room Argument into the book he would have responded to the systems objection. The systems objection reveals the Chinese room argument to be an intuition pump which misdirects our intelligence in trying to understand what is going on with the machine. As far as I can see systems objection nicely refutes Searle. Why Evans doesn’t even mention the objection is a mystery to me.

Finally he sums up by defending the Sapir Whorf hypothesis against the criticisms made against it by Pinker.   He notes that Pinker creates a caricature and then destroys the straw man he has set up. Evans explicitly quotes Whorf to show that he does not hold the views that Pinker attributes to him. He then reviews some recent empirical research which demonstrates that a weak form of Linguistic relativism is possible. But this version doesn’t rely on anything like the linguistic determinism that Pinker attacks.

Over all I found ‘The Language Myth’ interesting and thought it offered some good criticisms of the idea of linguistic Nativism. However I thought his overblown rhetoric and caricatures of generative grammar took away from the central message of the book. I thought his attacks on the computational theory of the mind weak (and could have been made much stronger by incorporating the work of Evan Thompson and Terrence Deacon). But thought that his emphasis on embodied cognition and behavioural and cross linguistic data did show many weakness of linguistic Nativists approach to language acquisition.

“Over the years, I’ve been finding it increasingly difficult to figure out which bits of Daniel Dennett’s stuff are supposed to be the arguments and which are just rhetorical posturing. In the present case, I give up.” Jerry Fodor LRB 2008

I have recently finished reading Evan Thompson’s (2007) book ‘Mind in Life’ and found the book clearly written, well argued, and challenging. Part of my interest in reading the book stemmed from the fact that I was also very impressed by Terrance Deacon’s ‘Incomplete Nature’ (2013) and wanted to see how the two books compared with each other. I next plan to read Juarrero’s ‘Dynamics in Action’ (2002) and see how it compares with the work of Deacon and Thompson. Having finished ‘Mind in Life’ I decided to re-read Dennett’s largely negative review of it ‘Shall we tango? No, but Thanks for Asking’ (2011), alongside his largely positive review of ‘Incomplete Nature’ written two years later ‘Aching Voids and Making Voids’ (2013). Now while Deacon’s book and Thompson have a lot in common including the assumption that explaining life and explaining mind are connected, and both place heavy emphasis on the importance of systems theory in this explanation; there is much they disagree on. So it is no surprise that Dennett could be largely positive about one book and largely negative about the other. Nonetheless there are aspects of things Dennett criticised Thompson for that he neglected to critique Deacon for. This can be explained as an oversight on Dennett’s part. Or it can be explained as Dennett changing his mind on the topic based on Deacon’s superior arguments. I will return to this issue later in the blog. Firstly I want to outline Dennett’s main difficulties with ‘Mind in Life’.

I began this blog by quoting Jerry Fodor in his reply to a criticism Dennett made of his views on evolution. Now while I don’t share Fodor’s views on evolution, I can understand his frustration with Dennett. Throughout his review of ‘Mind in Life’ he grossly misrepresents Thompson as someone who thinks that his book represents some wild paradigm shift in our world view. Dennett then goes on to argue that all of the facts Thompson brings together are already known by those in the orthodoxy and that Thompson would have realised this if he dealt with their actual work instead of caricaturing them by creating straw-men. The problem with this heavy handed rhetoric of Dennett’s is that anybody who has read ‘Mind in Life’ will know that Thompson doesn’t present any of his data as radical, rather he just presents it as a accumulation of theoretical insights which challenge the world view of certain rival theorists. Furthermore far from creating straw-men Thompson presents detailed quotations from the theorists he is criticising such as Dawkins. So he is disagreeing with their expressly stated beliefs as opposed to attacking straw-men. Why Dennett resorts to such heavy handed rhetoric is anyone’s guess but I think his rhetoric gets in the way of an even-handed analysis of the issues and he should try to curtail such over the top devices.

Rhetoric aside Dennett does have four clear areas of disagreement with Thompson.  (1) He disagrees with Thompson’s supposed belief that Autopoiesis provides radical new foundation for evolutionary theory.

(2) He disagrees with Thompson’s belief that developmental systems are an alternative to ‘geneo-centrism’ and Dennett’s Design Stance.

(3)  He disagrees with Thompson’s arguments against the uses of information by people like Dawkins and Dennett.

(4) He disagrees with Thompson’s preference for the first person method over Dennett’s Hetrophenomenology. (Shall we Tango? No, but Thanks for Asking p. 24)

Of Dennett’s 4 criticisms above the first three apply to the views expressed by Deacon in ‘Incomplete Nature’ only number 4 is not applicable to Deacon. Yet while Dennett attacks Thompson he asks us to applaud Deacon’s achievement (Aching Voids, and Making Voids p. 324). This is strange stuff indeed, and is in need of an explanation. To explore this issue I will first show how Dennett’s first three objections apply to Deacon, and then consider why he doesn’t criticise Deacon in the same way he attacks Thompson.

Dennett’s first two criticisms of Thompson centre on the fact that Dennett believes that Thompson is caricaturing the geneo-centric selfish gene view and is overplaying the ability of autopoeitic explanations to provide a new foundation for evolutionary theory. Firstly as I said above Thompson doesn’t think that autopoeisis provides a new foundation for evolutionary theory, he just think it is an important concept within any adequate evolutionary theory. It is true though that Thompson does think that the selfish gene metaphor is an inaccurate way of characterising evolution. However, it is worth noting that Deacon makes similar criticisms:

“Dawkins describes genes as replicators…This connotation is a bit misleading. DNA molecules only get replicated with the aid of quiet elaborate molecular machinery, within living cells or specially designed laboratory devices…

DNA replication depends on an extensive array of cellular molecular mechanisms, and the influence that a given DNA base sequence has on its own probability of replication is mediated by the physiological and behavioural consequences it contributes to in a body, and most importantly how these affect how well that body reproduces in its given environmental context. DNA does not automatically replicate itself; nor does a given DNA sequence have the intrinsic property of aiding its own replication…In fact there is a curious irony in treating the only two totally passive contributors to natural selection-the genome and the selection environment-as though they were active principles of change…

But where is the Organism in this explanation? For Dawkins, the organism is the medium through which genes influence the probability of their being replicated. But as many critics have pointed out, this inverts the location of agency and dynamics. Genes are passively involved in the process while the chemistry of organism bodies does the work of acquiring resources and reproducing…

The question being begged by replicator theory, then is this: What kind of system of properties are required to transform a mere physical pattern embedded within that system into information that is both able to play a constitutive role in determining the organization of this system and constraining it to be capable of self-generation, maintenance, and reproduction in its local environment? These properties are external to the patterned artefact being described as a replicator and are far from trivial” (Incomplete Nature pp. 129-132)

I quote this long section from Deacon because here he is criticising the “Selfish-Gene” theory of treating the organism as a passive vehicle of selection. When Thompson does this Dennett argues as follows:

 “He quotes a rathering from Levins and Lewontin: adaptationism ‘implies that the organism is simply a passive object of selection rather than an active agent or subject of the evolutionary process’ (Levins and Lewontin, 1985). How does this implication run, and does anybody believe it?” (Shall we Tango p.26)

One wonders why Thompson is accused of rathering while Dennett asks us to applaud Deacon’s achievements? It is possible that Dennett disagrees with the above criticisms of Dawkins but didn’t have time to mention this disagreement. One would think though that since Dennett found time to criticise Deacon for his unnecessarily coining new terms and for his weak account of consciousness he would also make time to at least mention that he disagreed with Deacon on the idea of the “Selfish Gene”. One wonders if Dennett has changed his mind on this topic. This though is extremely unlikely given his ultra Darwinism, and if he had changed his mind he would have presumably have made this explicit.

A similar disparity of Dennett’s analysis of Thompson and Deacon emerges when one considers their difficulties with the concept of Information, in particular Deacon and Thompson critique Dawkins for his views on DNA as an intrinsic information vehicle. Here is Deacon on the issue:

“As our analysis of the concept of information in previous chapters has demonstrated, however, genetic information cannot be simply identified with a physical substrate or pattern. Information is dependent on the propagation of constraints linking a teleodynamic system and its environmental context. This means that information is not an intrinsic property of the substrate that embodies or obeys these constraints. Although one of the crucial properties of an information bearing medium is that it can serve as a template for copying and propagating constraints, this simple quality is not what defines it. The general theory of information that we explored in the two previous chapters demonstrated that information is identified with a transmission of constraints, exemplified by some physical medium linking a teleodynamic system with its environment. Information does not stand apart from this relationship, nor does it pre-exist the teleodynamics that it informs. Another way to say this is that teleodynamic organisation is primary, and information is a special feature of some teleo-dynamic processes.

What does this mean for the role of genetic information in the origin of life? Basically, it suggests that genetic information is not primary, but is rather a derived feature of life?…A DNA molecule outside of an organism does not convey information about anything, and is mostly just goo… It is not the template replication that is the basis for the information-displaying capacity of DNA and RNA in organisms; it is the integration of the patterns that they can exhibit into the teleodynamics of the living processes that matters (Incomplete Nature: p.436)

Thompson makes almost identical claims in ‘Mind in Life’:

“Yet it is unacceptable to say that DNA contains the information for phenotypic design, because this statement attributes an intrinsic semantic-informational status to one particular type of component and thereby divests this component of its necessary embedding in the dynamics of the autopoietic network…In summary, the linguistic mode is emergent from the dynamical mode, and information exists only as dynamically embodied. (Mind in Life p. 57)

Here we again see Thompson and Deacon making virtually identical claims and Dennett attacks Thompson for caricaturing the selfish gene idea and yet he reports no difficulties with Deacon’s characterisation. Again I am left wondering why this is the case?

Dennett and Thompson do agree on is that the weakest aspect of Deacon’s book is his attempt to deal with consciousness. Dennett disagrees with Deacon because he finds his ideas too speculative. Thompson, who marries his enactive approach to a close phenomenological analysis of experience, obviously had difficulties with Deacon completely ignoring phenomenological data.

While neither Dennett nor Thompson are impressed by Deacon’s take on consciousness they are far from in agreement with each other on the best approach to take when studying consciousness. Dennett opts for a heterophenomenological approach while Thompson adopts for a phenomenology approach. I think that it is this difference that lies at the core of Dennett’s disagreement with Thompson. In my next blog I will discuss how their different approaches bear on their views on the nature of mental imagery and explore to what extent Dennett’s far from even handed treatment of Thompson and Deacon may be attributed to this major difference. In my last blog I will critically evaluate whether Deacon and Thompson’s disagreements with the selfish gene theory stand up to critical scrutiny.

“If this is rationalism, and incompatible with Locke’s empiricism, then so much for the rationalism, and so much the worse for Locke…For, whatever we make of Locke, the behaviourist is knowingly and cheerfully up to his neck in innate mechanisms of learning-readiness. (Quine: Linguistics and Philosophy p. 57)

In this blog I will discuss some basic concepts of Applied Behavioural Analysis: reinforcement, punishment and extinction. While summarising these concepts I will consider whether any of them are committed to the idea of a blank slate. Pinker in his (2002) ‘The Blank Slate’ targeted behavioural science as a blank slate position which denied human nature. I will argue here that Pinker was incorrect on this issue, behaviourism isn’t necessarily a blank slate position in fact it is largely consistent with both evolutionary theory and the idea of human nature. I will not consider whether Pinker is correct or incorrect in his attacks on other scholars and disciplines, my focus here will be entirely on behaviourism. When discussing behaviourism I will outline of how some concepts of behaviourism are used in the field so I will discuss a lot of Applied Behavioural Analysis.

Reinforcement is when a stimulus immediately follows the behaviour and increases the likelihood of that behaviour reoccurring in similar circumstances. It is a three term relation consisting of: Responding, Consequence, and Change in Behaviour. There are two types of reinforcement: positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement occurs when a response is followed immediately by the presentation of a stimulus and this presentation increases the future occurrences of said behaviour. Negative reinforcement occurs when a response is immediately followed by the removal of a stimulus and this removal increases the likelihood of the behaviour increasing in the future.

An example of positive reinforcement is as follows: Every time subject A blinks subject B who he is talking to smiles, this results in an increase in the occurrence of blinking behaviour by subject A. An example of negative reinforcement is: Every time subject A feels intense hunger he eats some food, this behaviour removes the feeling of hunger and means that the response of eating when hungry is more likely to occur in the future.

When considering reinforcement (both positive and negative) it is important to take note of the distinction between primary and secondary reinforcers. A primary reinforcer is a basic physiological need such as hunger, thirst, sexual desire, etc. Now it should by admitting unconditioned reinforcers into their theory behaviourists are not blank-slaters, they openly admit that our evolutionary history will have shaped our instincts so that certain behaviours will occur independent of learning from our current environment. Skinner is quiet explicit on this point

“Just as we point out the contingencies of survival to explain an unconditioned reflex, so we point out to ‘contingencies of reinforcement to explain a conditioned reflex” ( Skinner 1974 p. 43)

“The task of a scientific analysis is to explain how the behaviour of the person is a physical system is related to the conditions under which the human species evolved, and the conditions under which the individual lives” (Skinner 1974 p. 14)[1]

Here we can see that Skinner far from advancing some silly blank slate position holds a theory and whose methodology relies on the notion of instincts from the start. Secondary reinforcers can be use to modify some behaviour. A secondary reinforcer is something that becomes reinforcing because of being associated with the primary reinforcer. A good example of a primary reinforcer is hunger; if through using classical conditioning I associate relief from hunger (negative reinforcement) with a particular form of behaviour (pressing a lever), pressing a lever will become a secondary reinforcer because of its association with the primary reinforcer.

Careful observation and recording of what behaviours are reinforcing and what behaviours are not is vital. So, for example, while food may be reinforcing for a child who has not eaten for a while it is not likely to act as reinforcer for the child who has just eaten a big dinner. So when choosing reinforcers take into account both satiation and deprivation. Satiation occurs when a desire is satisfied fully, while deprivation occurs when you are deprived of a particular reinforcer for a sustained period. Obviously ethically when one is working with people we should not implement a schedule of deprivation to make reinforcement more likely. Rather we should observe the behaviour and schedule treatments at appropriate times. If, for example, one wanted to use food as a treatment, then it would be best to implement the treatment a couple of hours after dinner or lunch to ensure that the child will be slightly hungry.

Both positive and negative reinforcement are extremely useful ways of dealing with behavioural issues associated with autism. One area where it is particularly helpful would be in the implementation of Discrete Trial Training. Discrete Trial Training is a method of teaching in simplified and structured steps. Instead of teaching in one go, the skill is broken down and built up using discrete trials that teach each step one at a time (Smith 2001). There are five steps ( Malott and Trojan Suarez 2006, Smith 2001) in a discrete trial:

• Consequence
• Inter-trial interval

Step three is the key one as it relies heavily on the notion of reinforcement. Let us consider a very simple trial where a child is being taught to discriminate between a picture of a Dog and a picture of a Cat. In the antecedent the teacher has a picture of a Cat and a picture of a Dog. The teacher points to the picture of the Cat, and says “this is a picture of a cat”. With the prompt phase the teacher may point to the picture of the Cat as he asks the child to “Point to a Picture of a Cat”. The response phase involves the child trying to answer the question. If the child answers correctly he receives positive reinforcement (for example a sweet or a high five depending on what has been determined to be the best reinforcer for the child). If the child answers incorrectly the instructor will bring the child’s hand to the correct picture and ask the child again. When the child replies correctly based on the second prompt reinforcement is withheld, as you don’t want to reinforce the child for getting the question wrong in the first place. So in this particular training schedule the child is only reinforced for getting the correct answer.

All behavioural therapies rely heavily on using reinforcement whether positive or negative. However, some therapies use the concept of extinction to remove reinforces that lead to various types of challenging behaviour. Extinction can be used to remove different types of behaviour whether positive or negative. So, for example, if a rat in a lab is trained to press a lever through receiving the reinforcement that every time he presses the lever a pellet of food appears, then he will learn through reinforcement to press the lever when hungry. If a behavioural scientist wanted to get rid of the lever pressing behaviour he would remove the reinforcing stimulus that is maintaining the behaviour i.e. the food.

Using extinction is not however without its dangers. One danger is the occurrence of an extinction burst. An extinction burst typically occurs when extinction is used to remove a particular behaviour. This burst is typically short term and after a period the targeted behaviour typically disappears altogether. There is always the possibility of spontaneous recovery after a period of time but the main thing is to not reinforce the recovered behaviour, and it will typically disappear after again.

There are three basic steps to applying extinction to decrease a response.

• Observe what happens and identify the reinforcer.
• Determine how often a particular behaviour occurs within a particular period.
• Remove the reinforcer. (Miltenberger ‘Behaviour Modification’ p. 105)

Step 1 above is not a trivial matter and if one is trying to determine what the reinforcer is there are six key steps that should be taken:

• Determine the baseline rate of the response.
• Identify the potential positive reinforcer for the response
• Withhold the stimulus that you have identified as the potential positive reinforcer for the response.
• Measure the rate of the response. If it decreases (even after an initial increase), it is likely that the stimulus you identified, is the positive reinforcer for the response.
• If it is important to demonstrate that the stimulus is the actual positive reinforcer, reinstate the stimulus following the response.
• Measure the rate of the response. If it increases again, the stimulus has served as the positive reinforcer for the response. (Chapter 4 extinction p.37.)

Extinction is an effective procedure for decreasing challenging behaviour but it typically needs to be implemented with other procedures. In Lerman et al. (1999) they studied the effects of implementing extinction programmes they noted that typically treatment with Operant Extinction leads to two main problems:

• Extinction Burst:
• Extinction Induced Aggression:

In their analysis of the 41 different cases of people who engaged in SIB they discovered that 40% of the people being treated had one of the side effects (almost 20% of the cases showed both side effects). Bursting was slightly higher than extinction induced aggression. It is important to note that both side effects were less likely when the extinction was combined with other therapies. These findings show that side effects may be minimised when extinction is combined with other treatments (e.g. differential reinforcement). So their study indicates that while extinction treatment can be very effective it is best to be combined with other forms of therapy.

In connection with extinction it is important to note how the use of it is clearly not some hippy-dippy blank slate position. Behavioural Analysts don’t just assume that applying some technique in a route manner will automatically modify the behaviour of the subject understudy. The subjects under study can react in a variety of different ways, as seen above it may happen that prior to stopping the behaviour there is an extinction burst, or the extinction induced aggression. What should be clear that in practice analysts don’t just assume they are dealing with a blank slate, rather they take meticulous data to indicate what behaviour modification is likely to produce what behaviour and they modify their theories accordingly. So, for example,  Fisher et al (2004) have done a experimental study whose results indicate that dual treatments result in greater reductions in target behaviour than did extinction alone and suggested that competing stimulus assessment may be helpful in predicting stimuli that can enhance the effects of extinction when non-contingent attention is not available.

They begin by talking about the limitations of the extinction method. That it takes away reinforcements from the patient. That it sometimes leads to Extinction Bursts, and Extinction Related Aggression. They speak of how using Non-Contingent Reinforcement can help overcome some of these problems. Non-Contingent Reinforcement involves discovering what the reinforcer is that the child is seeking with his aggressive behaviour. Once this is discovered the reinforcer is presented to the child at fixed time intervals independent of the child’s behaviour.

It was been discovered that when Extinction is done alone Extinction Bursts sometimes occur, while when extinction is done along with Non-Contingent Reinforcement treatment the Extinction Bursts and Extinction Related Aggression don’t occur. A difficulty with the NCR approach is that the parent may not be able to deliver the particular reinforcer at times when it is needed to offset potentially destructive behaviour. As a response to this difficulty an approach has been developed which aims to develop arbitrary or competing reinforcers that may be useful in these circumstances.

They compared the effects of:

• Extinction Implemented Alone.
• Extinction Implemented with non-contingent delivery of the reinforcer that maintained destructive behaviour.
• Extinction Implemented with non-contingent delivery of competing stimuli (those identified with competing stimulus assessment)

They found that non-contingent presentation of the reinforcer that maintained problem behaviour or a competing reinforcer in combination with extinction can produce rapid reductions in destructive behaviour.

Again the above study shows that multiple techniques and empirical tests are used when trying to modify behaviour. People are not treated as blank slates. If a technique does not reduce the behaviour, various different experimental procedures are used to improve the technique. Behaviour analysts who spend years working with people with severe intellectual disabilities and/or autism, don’t expect miracles. It is a slow procedure that while it can and does improve the lives people, doesn’t provide cures for severe developmental disorders.

Another way of modifying unwanted behaviour is through punishment. In her blog ‘The Difference between Positive and Negative Reinforcement and Positive and Negative Punishment’ Kelley Prince defined punishment as follows:

“Punishment is also a useful way of modifying undesirable behaviour. A key difference between negative reinforcement and punishment is with negative reinforcement you are increasing the behaviour whereas with punishment you are decreasing the behaviour. Punishment is a process by which a consequence immediately follows a behaviour which decreases the future frequency of the behaviour. Like punishment a stimulus can be added (positive punishment) or removed (negative punishment)”.

The important point to note is that the concept of punishment is not a concept that has to do with the intrinsic negativity of a consequence. Rather punishment is simply a contingency between an antecedent, a behaviour and a consequence. If we are to count something as positive punishment then the probability of a given behaviour occurring must decrease after a particular stimulus is presented as a response to the behaviour. So, for example, if every time a child talks out of turn in class we sent them the back of the room, this will count as a punishment if this consequence results in a decrease in the behaviour of talking out of turn. If however this consequence does not decrease the child’s behaviour then we cannot call the consequence a punishment even if it intuitively feels that it is a punishment. The same is true of negative punishment. In negative punishment something that is typically reinforcing is removed as a result of behaviour that we do not want. So if a child is talking out of turn in class and we know that the child finds attention reinforcing we could remove the attention from the child. If the removing of the attention results in the child decreasing the behaviour of then this is a form of negative punishment.

In his ‘On The Status of Knowledge for using punishment: A Commentary.’ Horner (2002) correctly notes that punishment is an effective treatment for problem behaviours. However it has some down sides. It can lead to escape and avoidance procedures. It can also sometimes result in negative emotional and aggressive actions. For that reason punishment is only used when it positive or negative reinforcement have been shown to not work. Furthermore when punishment is used it is combined positive reinforcement it usually works better because you are not just punishing the subject for bad behaviour but are also rewarding the subject for good behaviour.

His major thesis is that development of a  comprehensive technology of behaviour change requires more detailed research on punishment with special attention to (a) conditioned, intermittent and delayed punishment, (b) Interaction effects of reinforcement and punishment, (c) the value of functional analysis in the design of punishment interventions, (D) greater attention to treatment failures to identify how punishment may be used more effectively in clinical interventions.

His central point is that punishment is a fact of life. It occurs in all areas of organism interaction with each other and the world. Yet we have not researched into the nature of punishment nearly enough. He argues that this is a big gap in the literature that needs to be addressed. So punishment like extinction is a form of treatment that is effective but can be have negative consequences when used on its own. It is vital that more research is used in this tool in order to achieve a better understanding of how to modify things like self injurious behaviour.

Again with punishment we can see with Horner (2002) above that the use of punishment is linked to the evolutionary history of our and other species. So there is no denial of instincts being passed on because of the different evolutionary history of different species. Furthermore different species may find different things as punishing, and so may different people. Whether something is considered a punisher is to be determined by the effects on the subject being studied. Again there is no denial of human nature no claim that humans are blank slates, just the uncontroversial method of deciding what a subject finds punishing by looking at their behaviour.

In this short blog I have outlined a few key concepts in behaviourism and showed that these concepts do not deny human nature nor and are consistent with evolutionary theories. Thinkers like Steven Pinker have attacked and caricatured behavioural science and has convinced many people that it is an absurd blank slate position. In this brief blog I have tried to show that behaviourists are anything but blank-slate thinkers. I think that if Pinker and his ilk want to criticise behavioural approaches they will need to deal with actual theories of behaviourists and critique them as opposed to attacking straw men.

In (2011) Jerry Fodor co-authored a book with Piattelli Palarmi called ‘What Darwin Got Wrong’. The book was universally slated and its critics noted that the book was attacking a straw man. Evolutionary psychology was one of the fields that Fodor and Piattelli attacked, in my view they were attacking a straw man. I am sure that Pinker and his supporters agree. I find it interesting that Fodor and Piattelli use the construct a similar straw man when attacking behaviourism:

“In fact, the two theories are virtually identical: they propose essentially the same mechanisms, to compute essentially similar functions under essentially identical constraints. This raises a question about which prior discussions of NS have been, it seems to us, remarkably reticent: it is pretty generally agreed, these days that the Skinnerian account of learning is dead beyond resuscitation. So if it is true that Skinners theory and Darwin’s theory are variations on the same team, why aren’t the objections that are routinely raised against the former likewise raised against the latter? If nobody believes Skinner anymore, why does everyone believe Darwin? We are going to argue that the position that maintains the second but not the first is not stable.” (Fodor and Piattelli ‘What Darwin got Wrong’ (2011) p. 3)

I think that in both cases Fodor is simply caricaturing theories without engaging in them seriously. I am sure that Pinker agrees with me on the evolution aspect, but would support Fodor’s caricature of behaviourism. I would urge Pinker to look closer at behaviourism before making unjustified attacks on a promising discipline. I should note before finishing that I am not a behaviourist, but I think that if people like Pinker want to critique a discipline they should do so in a fair and objective way.

[1] Quotes taken from Ludvig (2002) ‘Why Pinker needs behaviourism’.

 PECS AND VERBAL BEHAVIOUR

In this blog I want to briefly discuss PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System), which is used as a communication device to help people with various different intellectual disabilities and/or Autism communicate better. The PECS programme is heavily influenced by B.F Skinner’s (1957) book ‘Verbal Behaviour’. Now in virtually all cognitive science courses students are informed that Chomsky has conclusively refuted Verbal Behaviour. Later scholars like Stephen Pinker and Fodor (amongst many) have repeated the claim that Skinner was refuted by Chomsky, and Pinker has even upped the ante by claiming that Skinner was a blank slate adherent. Because of this consensus in cognitive science about the falsehood of Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour it is surprising that PECS is used so prevalently in the hospital I work in as well as in the majority of western hospitals to help children to learn to communicate better. The fact that Skinner’s theory of language learning is a useful tool in helping people with intellectual disabilities to communicate is surprising considering that his theory is generally considered to be conclusively falsified in the Cognitive Sciences.

For my PhD I did research into the debate between Chomsky and Quine on the nature of language. Like with Skinner, it is generally assumed that Chomsky has conclusively refuted Quine’s behaviourist conception of language. When I began my PhD it was with the assumption that Chomsky’s theory of language acquisition was superior to Quine’s, and that since Quine had such a huge influence on philosophical naturalists; exploring what aspects of Quine’s theory of language acquisition was false would be useful. But to my surprise I discovered that some of Chomsky’s arguments were absolutely terrible and didn’t prove anything like what him and his adherents believed. Furthermore I discovered that Chomsky’s criticisms of Quine were based almost entirely on misreading of Quine’s texts. A close analysis of Quine’s texts shows that most of Chomsky’s attacks on Quine were simple caricatures. Furthermore the empirical evidence amassing over the last 50 years has repeatedly refuted key claims of Chomsky’s about the inability of connectionist models to learn grammatical constructions, the supposed poverty of stimulus facing the child, and the amount of correction the child receives from their peers. I concluded that contrary to what is typically believed Chomsky has not refuted any aspect of Quine’s project and in fact the empirical evidence indicates that Quine’s approach is a live option which needs to be tested in much more detail than it has in the past.

Quine and Skinner were friends and in ‘Word and Object’ Quine claimed that his theory of language acquisition followed closely Skinner’s theory. However I am not an expert on Skinner so I do not know how far Quine and Skinner’s views on language coincide. Bearing that in mind I will not make the assumption that because Chomsky caricatured Quine he therefore caricatured Skinner. As far as I am concerned it is at this point an open question whether Chomsky is correct in his analysis of Skinner. So I will begin this blog by outlining the nature of PECS how it follows Skinner’s ‘Verbal Behaviour’ and how successful the approach can be in teaching some children language. I will then discuss Chomsky’s ‘Review of Verbal Behaviour’ and see whether the points he raised in that paper apply to the PECS programme. I will consider a variety of possible responses to Chomsky’s criticisms. In the last section I will deal with the objection that since PECS is typically used with people who have developmental difficulties its success or failure is irrelevant to Chomsky’s criticisms of Skinner.

                                      PECS AND VERBAL BEHAVIOUR[1]

Skinner argued that it is more useful to attend to the functional control of verbal behaviour than its form. He focused on four types of verbal operants which were defined in terms of consequences in certain kinds of stimulus conditions:

• Mands: Some examples of Mands are: Requesting specific Items, requesting assistance, and rejecting offered items or activities.
• Tacts: Tact is evoked by a particular object or event or property of an object of event. Some examples of Tacts are naming objects, events and activities, including the relationship between such items or events.
• Intraverbals: Intraverbal is used to define behaviour that is under the stimulus control of other verbal behaviour, initially from other people but increasingly from oneself as one’s verbal repertoire expands. These include echoic such as when I say ‘Hello’ and the other person says ‘Hello’, and non echoic such as when I say ‘How are you?’ and the other person says ‘Not too bad’.
• Autoclitics: These Verbal Operants are under the control of the speaker own verbal behaviour. (Bondy p. 313)

When thinking of the operants becareful to divide them into your 3 term relation Antecedent, Behaviour and Consequence (ABC). It is important to note that Skinner also discussed impure verbal operants and those under mixed or multiple controls are also postulated by Skinner (Bondy p. 311).

With Autism the behaviourist doesn’t assume that that people are blank slates, when people behave differently this fact is noted. Thus when it is noted that for young children with autism social reinforcement is less effective than other type of reinforcement the behaviourist will modify what type of reinforcement is used. So the aim is to use the most effective tools to modify behaviour. The Mand is usually the first verbal operant taught within PECS.

                                  PECS Training and Verbal Operants.

Training on PECS begins with a reinforcer assessment where a behaviour analyst/teacher tries to discuss what objects are reinforcing for the particular child under assessment. The training typically involves three people. There is the subject being trained, the teacher/behavioural analyst who communicates with the subject who is being trained, also a third person (behavioural analyst/teacher) whose role is to physically prompt the subject being trained.  The training begins with the communicator trying to entice the child with the item we know they want. When the child reaches for the item the prompter (from behind the student) physically assists the child to give a picture of that item to the communicative partner (Bondy p.320). When the child is being physically prompted his communicative partner keeps his hand open palm up to the child. When he receives the picture he says ‘Oh, Cookie’ and immediately reinforces the child by giving him the object. There is no verbal prompting prior to the exchange therefore this is a MAND not an INTRAVERBAL. Strictly speaking it is a MAND-TACT because the object is present when the child requests it. Bondy notes “The aim of Phase 1 is to shape the non-verbal reach into verbal behaviour directed to the listener rather than the reinforcer” (ibid p.321)

The physical prompts of the prompter are gradually faded (using backward chaining). Typically after a few trials the child is requesting objects using pictures with people who are within arms reach. When this occurs the behavioural analyst begins to move out of reach of the child so the child learns to seek out people to give the pictures to. At this early stage it is important that different teachers/behavioural analysts act as the communicative partner so the child doesn’t associate only one person with the act of giving pictures to request objects. It is also important to reinforce the child for moving towards the picture so he will learn to search for it if it is not immediately present.

The next part of the training introduces discriminating between pictures. One way of doing this is to show the child two pictures one of a highly desired object and beside a highly undesirable object. If the child really likes ice-cream and has been trained to use a picture of ice-cream as a MAND, then a picture of something irrelevant like a picture of a piece of wood. If the child picks up the picture of the piece of wood this indicates that he is not distinguishing between the actual content of the pictures and is rather using the plastic the picture is printed on as a general way of getting what he wants.

Mand/Autoclictic frame: The child is manding with the picture and a Velcro picture is added to beside the picture this new picture says “I want” (this is called a sentence strip) and the child is taught through backward chaining to use the “I want” picture in combination with this particular picture and then with a variety of other pictures. This is taught using the usual three person process where one of the analysts guides the child’s to add the picture (of say Ice-cream) to the ‘I want’ picture.  When the child does this and hands the sentence strip to the teacher, the teacher reads out the sentence and gets the child what he wants. In this process the child is taught to place the ‘I want strip’ on the card and add pictures as he wants something.

The child is also taught to use interverbal tacts where “I see”, “I hear” “I have” is added to the sentence strip. Using these various techniques children with no language have been trained to become quiet competent users of verbal behaviour (some never speak because of problems with their vocal cord). This PECS  programme has been very effective in teaching language to people with intellectual disabilities and autism see Adkins, T and Axelrod, S. (2002), Albis, J, and Reed (2012), MacFarland, S, and Umbreit, J (2012). So it is interesting to consider why this programme has been so successful given the supposed fact that Verbal Behaviour has been refuted by Chomsky.

Mac Corquodale Reviews the Review.

            Kenneth Mac Corquodale analysed Chomsky’s arguments against Verbal Behaviour and showed that the arguments resulted from a misunderstanding of Skinner’s project. Skinner viewed ‘Verbal Behaviour’ as a research project which was to be tested experimentally. Chomsky though treated ‘Verbal Behaviour’ as a completed project and ridiculed the lack of experimental proof put forth by Skinner, this misunderstanding lead Chomsky to misread the book from the start.

Mac Corquodale noted that Chomsky’s Review has two parts:

• A criticism of the Analytical Behaviour that Skinner brought to Verbal Behaviour.
• A criticism of the application of Skinners theory.

Chomsky offered methodological arguments against Skinner and not empirical evidence. So in this sense the debate on the issue is still wide open. Mac Corquodale claims that Chomsky makes three methodological points against Chomsky:

• Verbal Behaviour is an untested hypothesis one which therefore has no claim upon our credibility. Mac Corquodale replies that Skinner knew well that his theory was a hypothesis, but he believed that it was a hypothesis that is plausible given the behavioural data he had amassed. Skinner believed that his hypothesis would stand up to experimental scrutiny but obviously we wouldn’t know until the hypothesis was tested. Chomsky on the other hand seems to think that because Verbal Behaviour is a hypothesis this a priori proves that it is false. This is a very bad argument. Chomsky also makes the claim that Skinner is technical terms with all the favourable connotations of sounding scientific; however the terms are really just metaphorical extensions vague ordinary language concepts. Chomsky criticises Skinner’s use of stimulus, he argues that the supposed relation between stimulus and response doesn’t exist. He claims that we often say words in circumstances where an object is not present etc. Mc Corquodale correctly notes that Chomsky is wrongly assuming that one stimulus is associated with one response, this is not what Skinner had in mind, as can be seen by a closer reading Verbal Behaviour. More points are also made firstly none of Chomsky’s arguments tell against the use of the term stimulus. The stimulus is real. The question is whether a particular word is brought under stimulus control. If Chomsky thinks Skinner is wrong to offer the hypothesis that a particular a particular word is under a particular stimulus control then he needs to test the issue. At this point in their careers both thinkers were forming hypothesis. Chomsky uses heavy rhetoric to undermine the possibility of any empirical testing. This again is an unscientific approach. Chomsky also attacked Skinner’s notion of ‘Reinforcement’. He argued that Skinner believed that slow and deliberate reinforcement of a child is necessary for a child to learn verbal behaviour. Skinner said nothing of the kind. He also argued that Skinner ignored the role that imitation played in a person learning language. But Skinner entirely agreed with this point (though he didn’t share Chomsky’s view that verbal behaviour was innate). Chomsky attacks Skinner’s use of probability saying that it is false. However Chomsky actually argues against a notion of probability that Chomsky doesn’t use (Hull’s version). Chomsky also doesn’t distinguish between the momentary probability that a word will be spoken with the overall probability that a word would be spoken. This leads to him badly misinterpreting Skinner’s theory.
• Skinner’s Technical terms are no more than simple paraphrases for more traditional treatments of Verbal Behaviour. Mac Corquodale argues that when one analyses the traditional terms and the functional relationships that Skinner talks about one sees that they are far far from isomorphic. So Chomsky’s argument fails badly.
• Speech is a complex behaviour whose understanding and explanation require, a complex meditational, neurological-genetic theory. Chomsky criticises the simplicity of the model offered by Skinner. Mac Corquodale argued that simplicity is a typical goal in science and that we cannot do know independent of the experimental research whether a particular theory is too simple. Chomsky seems to want to stipulate a priori that what is too simple. And his rhetoric seems to imply that there is no point in trying to test Skinner’s hypothesis empirically. Chomsky also criticises Skinner for not going into the neurological facts that underlies the behaviour. However Skinner argues speculating on internal mediators does not necessarily help with predicting and controlling verbal behaviour. He thinks that there are obviously lawful internal neurological laws but that they may not help predict and control verbal behaviour.  I think that Skinner is probably in correct on this but it is and he would have benefited from using connectionist and Bayesian models along with his analysis of verbal behaviour and circumstance of talking. However his approach is still better than a lot of cognitive scientists who almost entirely ignore verbal behaviour and corpus data.

Chomsky also criticised Skinner’s notions MAND TACT INTRAVERBAL and AUTOCLICTIC.

• MAND: Chomsky criticises this notion because he argues that it is impossible to have information concerning the speakers motivational circumstances so the behaviour analyst cannot make the correct diagnosis of whether a response is a mand or not. He also argues that the hearer as reinforcement mediator could not know how or whether to reinforce “relevantly”. To these points Mac Corquodale replies that with careful observation behaviour analyst will be able to determine whatever behaviours determine the behaviour. Just because Chomsky cannot do so when speculating from the armchair it does not follow that it cannot be done in a scientific manner. The behaviour analyst doesn’t need to know the subjects motivation in order to be an effective mand conditioner. Suppose the subject is hungry and says “more bread” if the behaviour analyst provides the bread then he has reinforced manding behaviour of the subject. This occurs independent of whether behavioural analyst knows that the subject is really hungry.
• TACT: Chomsky argues that teachers of first born children could not teach them to tact because they do not have a history of reinforcements. But Mac Corquodale argues that this is not the case because parents have a long history of hearing TACTS from other speakers. One important criticism that Chomsky made that it was obscure how to explain the Tacting of private events like headaches. Skinner replied to this problem as follows:

“that only those internal stimuli that have obvious external correlates which are observable by the reinforcement mediator can become discriminated, so that, as he says, it is the community that teaches one to “know himself”.(ibid p.32)

Obviously those familiar with the philosophical literature on this topic (see Ryle, Wittgenstein, Bennett and Hacker) will know that Skinner’s brief comment isn’t enough to prove he is correct (he discusses the topic in detail in his 1959 pp 272-286). But it does show that Skinner is sensitive to these issues while Chomsky seems to imply that Skinner is simply ignoring the issues.

From my own reading of ‘Verbal Behaviour’ I agree entirely with MacCorquodale’s analysis and criticisms of Chomsky’s review. Chomsky’s review contrary to popular opinion has not refuted Verbal Behaviour. To this is could be replied that in the 55 years since Skinner wrote ‘Verbal Behaviour’ there has been mountains of data collected which refutes any hope of a behaviourist analysis of language. I will discuss this data in the next section.

More recent “Refutations” of the Possibility of Verbal Behaviour explanations

There have been some good arguments for an innate domain specific language faculty however in light of recent empirical evidence I believe they nolonger stand up to critical scrutiny. 
Twelve lines of evidence are typically offered in favour of a language faculty and which theorists assume refute any possible explanation of language acquisition:
(1) Poverty of Stimulus Arguments: We have knowledge of grammatical structure x but we have not been exposed to x in our primary linguistic data. Therefore the knowledge must be innate. The primary example they give of a construction that is learned in the absence of experience is auxiliary inversion. Pullum and Scholz show that this example is used over and over in the generative literature. They cite eight different occasions that Chomsky uses the example (Chomsky 1965, 55-56; 1968, 51-52; 1971, 29-33; 1972, 30-33; 1975, 153-154; 1986, 7-8; 1988, 41-47). They also cite other Chomskian thinkers (including linguists such as Lightfoot, 1991, 2-4; Uriagereka, 1998, 9-10; Carstairs-McCarthy, 1999, 4-5; Smith, 1999, 53-54; Lasnik, 2000, 6-9; and psychologists such as Crain, 1991, 602; Macrus, 1993, 80; Pinker, 1994, 40-42, 233-234) who here endorsed the claim. Corpus analysis by Pullum and Scholz (1996, 2002), and by Sampson(2002) show that children are exposed to the relevant construction at least once every 10 days. While the mathematical models of language learning. So, for example, Clark and Eyraud (2007), Perfors et al (2006), Reali and Christiansen (2005) have all developed programmes which can learn from less data than discovered by Pullum, Scholz and Sampson. So I think that this particular instance of a poverty of stimulus argument doesn’t work
(2) The KE family: A family with Specific Language Impairment. Their general intelligence is supposedly unimpaired but they have specific impairments in their grammatical competencies indicating that grammar is not learned by general intelligence but by an innate grammar module. 

Recent research by people like Farraneh Vargaha-Khandem have shown that the KE family do not suffer from a language specific impairment at all. They have general intellectual disabilities, and some of their supposed grammatical mistakes resulted from them having difficulties in motor control. (Studies of this case are un going but the evidence so far doesn’t support Pinker et al)
(3) The speed language is acquired: Children acquire language much faster than we would expect them to based on inductive and trial and error learning. Children also acquire their first language much faster than an learns his second language. 
This is basically an intuition pump. Chomsky never specifies how fast is so fast that we need to postulate innate competence (Sampson 2004)
(4) There are universal rules of natural language.
There are indeed some linguistic universals, but this doesn’t tell us whether these universals result from people trying to describe similar features of the external world or are innate. Some supposed universals (Recursion) are A not unique to language so don’t support the postulation of a language faculty, and B are not necessarily universal see Dan Everett’s work with the Piraha. 
(5) We are the only species who learn natural language, an animal exposed to the same linguistic data as a human doesn’t acquire a language. 
This is true but it doesn’t necessarily support the postulation of an innate domain specific language faculty. Our memory and ability to track statistical features in our environment is superior to other animals. Pinker/Chomsky’s argument doesn’t prove whether a innate domain specific language faculty is necessary it just shows that we need some innate architecture which other animals don’t have. 
(6) There are critical periods for language learning if a child doesn’t learn language within a certain period then he will find it difficult to acquire language when older. 
This argument derived from Lenneberg does not work because. Lenneberg’s data shows all learning pre-puberty is done faster than post puberty so this doesn’t support a domain specific language faculty. (Sampson 2004)

(7) There is supposedly a language gene Foxp2. 
Foxp2 despite advertisements is not a grammar gene. There is a lot of work being done on this. But there is good evidence that it is more important for motor control than language. (It is still an open question though a lot of work needs to be done before conclusions can be drawn.) For motor skills and Foxp2 see White et al (2006), Groszer et al (2008), Fisher (2008)
(8) People are not corrected for incorrect grammatical constructs.
This was argued for in a variety of different experimental works. see for example, Marcus 1993, 53-85; Gropen, J., S. Pinker, et al., 1989, 203-57; Crain, S. and M.Nakayama 1987, 113-25. However more recent evidence by Choinard and Clark (2002) shows that children are implicitly corrected for bad grammar and these implicit corrections do indeed make a difference to linguistic performance.
(9) In some cultures children are not spoken to by their parents at all but they still acquire a language. This shows that the language was not taught but grew. 
This case is a bit of a myth. Firstly in the case at hand the children are spoken to by older children, they can hear their family speak to each other, and if the children utter something ungrammatical the parent corrects the child. 
(10) Children who are brought up by parents who only speak pidgin English manage to construct a grammatically complex language of their own. 
This argument is interesting. And does offer some evidence to support Pinker/Chomsky.
(11) Impossibility arguments: It is impossible to learn certain grammatical constructions from the Primary Linguistic Data. The Gold Theorem. 
Lappin and Clark (2001) have shown that these impossibility arguments can be over come mathematically.

12) Williams Syndrome: The opposite of SLI. Children with Low IQ typically are linguistically competent. Brock (2000) has done an extensive study of the linguistic competence of people with Williams Syndrome and has found that it is in fact abnormal. So we cannot say that language is necessarily unimpaired despite low IQ in people with this disorder. (Here any claims need to be carefully analysed all the data is not in). People with Williams Syndrome to seem to have linguistic abilities which go beyond their general IQ)

Most of these arguments which are supposed to support a genetically programmed language faculty and by extension show that behavioural or other explanations cannot work in principle. However we have seen that these arguments do not stand up to critical scrutiny. This does not show that Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour is the correct account of language acquisition but it does show that further research is necessary to discover the truth or falsity of the research programme and that Chomsky’s a priori arguments should not be used to argue against this doing this research.

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH INSPIRED BY VERBAL BEHAVIOUR

Michael (1982, 1988), Hall and Sundberg (1987) (, Caroll and Hesse (1987), Yamamoto and Mochizuki (1988) all used a behaviour chain procedure to teach mands to children with intellectual disabilities. Rogers, Warren and Warren (1980) studied manding without using the chain procedure instead they got the children to play with preferred objects and asked the children to mand for the ones they wanted. Simic and Butcher (1980) used two different kinds of foods and trained the subject to say I want a when the analyst entered the room with a tray of food. Savage-Rumbaugh (1984) and Sundeberg (1985) trained non-human subjects to mand[2].

Sautter and LeBlanc’s  (2007) paper showed that between 1992 and 2007 the majority of Verbal Behaviour research focused on two areas (1) Mands (2) Tacts. Furthermore the majority of research in applied verbal behaviour has been with people with intellectual disabilities and/or autism. So Dixon et al, argue that more research needs to be done on people who are developmentally typical, while more research also needs to be done on more complex forms of language.

Their results showed that of the 99 articles they analysed 77percent were done atypical Members of the population. Of that number, 63 of the articles focused on children and 23 used adults.  Only 27 percent of the articles investigated typically developing members of the population, and 19 of those examined children and 10 were with just adults. Only four studies (4%) examined both AP and TP in one article. (ibid p. 202).

They conclude that the vast majority of research in this area has been with children with developmental disabilities and/or autism. And while this is important and welcomed data the scope of the research needs to be widened to include a much bigger section of typically developing people if Skinner’s ‘Verbal Behaviour’ is to be championed as an adequate theory of language acquisition. Furthermore they correctly note that we need to go beyond Mands and tact’s and do experimental and empirical research into things like Autoclitics. They note that with recording devices and mountains of internet conversations taking place we are swimming in data and have the technology to record it and analyse the functions of various speech patterns. So if Verbal Behaviour research needs to takes these limitations in the research done and overcome them if the research programme is to remain alive.

I noted above that PECS is an effective way of treating people with Autism and Intellectual disabilities to communicate. However I cautioned that this fact may offer Skinner’s analysis of how developmentally typical people acquire language. Dickson et al (2007) have shown that the majority of research in Verbal Behaviour is done on Children with Intellectual disabilities and children with autism. Further empirical research is required before we should lend our support to Skinner’s Theory of ‘Verbal Behaviour’ but the book should not be dismissed a-priori as Chomsky tried to do.

[1] In this section I am following Frost and Bondy’s (2002) ‘The Picture Exchange Communication System: Training Manual’.

The Weirdness Genera part 1
This is the first of a four part series of blogs on ‘The Weirdness Genera’. My friend Robert King an evolutionary psychologist is currently working on a paper on the universal themes that appear in horror films/stories and their evolutionary significance. I look forward to reading his paper when it is published. However there is an aspect of horror that I have tried to goad him (unsuccessfully) into considering in his paper: the bizarre horrific world as revealed by artists like Kafka and David Lynch. This is a genera which is not easily categorised as horror. In fact I am not sure that the bunch of films/books that I am interested really constitute a genera at all (or are instead a mixture of generas that I am incorrectly lumping together). I am not a critical theorist, or a student of film or literature so my thoughts on this topic will probably make a series of mistakes a critical theorist will gladly point out. So rather than use a series of labels from critical theory I will instead list some of the data I am interested in and what aspects I think they have in common that justifies me in lumping them together. For convenience sake I will call this disparate type of work ‘The Weirdness Genera’.
I am interested in the literature written by Kafka; his ‘The Trial’, ‘The Castle’ and his various short stories, The films and television programmes by David lynch: ‘Mulholland Drive’, ‘Twin Peaks’, ‘Inland Empire’ etc, and television series like, ‘The Twilight Zone’, ‘Tales of the Unexpected’, and ‘The Outer Limits’. The programmes, books and television programmes above fall into a continuum with Lynch and Kafka’s more extreme work having a surreal dream(nightmare) like structure; to programmes like ‘The Twilight Zone’ which in some sense are conventionally narrative with strange unexpected twist at the end. If I were to use one word to describe one characteristic that these works of art share it would be WEIRDNESS hence the name ‘The Weirdness Genera’.
My area of specialty is Analytic Philosophy and Cognitive Science. A cursory glance through both disciplines will reveal that neither discipline is particularly concerned with ‘The Weirdness Genera’. If one wants to study Kafka or Lynch through a philosophical or a psychological lens then one will be more likely to find psychoanalytic interpretations through the followers of Freud and Lacan, and philosophical interpretations through people influenced by continental thinkers like Sartre and Heidegger; or those who merge psychoanalysis and continental philosophy, for example, Zizek. I think that ‘The Weirdness Phenomena’ needs to be addressed by the tools of analytic philosophy and cognitive science if we want to understand them clearly.
Before continuing I should make the obvious but important point that WEIRDNESS is not an objective feature of our environment it is rather how something seems relative to our particular mode of cognition. It is an effect that particular environmental stimuli will have on particular creatures. So in this blog I will be discussing how certain environmental stimuli (films/books/television programmes) seem weird to me and most other people, and my explanation will centre on facts about typical human cognition as well as facts about the structure of ‘The Weirdness Phenomena’.
The most accurate theory of the mind currently available conceives of the mind as an anticipation generator which uses Bayesian modelling to construct and test the anticipations our cognitive models develop (See Clark 2011 and Hurley et al 2011). On this view one of the key features of the mind is its constant mental models it uses to anticipate what will happen next, or what could happen next if state of affairs X occurred. In Hurley et al 2011 they noted that from an evolutionary point of view the costs of constantly generating these anticipations is massive in terms of the energy needed. However since generating successful anticipations will lead to better survival of a particular species then this ability will pay for itself so to speak. Not all of this anticipation generation is done unconsciously. A substantial amount of our thoughts, discussions, daydreams, etc are used to build models of the future. One of evolutions “tricks” to get us to engage in this kind of thinking is to give us pleasure when we root out some inconsistency or problem in our thinking. This is similar to the way that we are programmed by evolution to enjoy sweet things because sweet things typically contain a lot of sugar and are helpful to our survival in certain environments. Hurley et al think that the pleasure we take in rooting out inconsistencies in our mental models is one of the foundations of our ability to find things humorous. This is their famous incongruity resolution hypothesis. I think that their approach suitably modified plays a role in both why enjoy and are freaked out by films etc which have the weirdness factor.
The feelings aroused by the weirdness genera can be understood in terms of frames of expectations and problems of relevance. To consider frames it is useful to consider the following question:
A man and his son were in a car accident. The man died on the way to the hospital, but the boy was rushed into surgery. The surgeon said “I can’t operate, for that’s my son!” How is this possible?

The majority of people when asked this question go through a variety of different solution the first man adopted the boy and the Doctor is his biological father. Surprisingly few people answer consider the possibility the surgeon is the boy’s mother. This is because of the implicit sexist assumption that a surgeon is a man. Typically upon having this pointed out people are amused by their blindness to the obvious answer. It will be my contention that art exhibiting the weirdness phenomena can be explained using the idea of framing.
In my next blog I will use this technique to interpret Kafka’s short stories ‘The Judgement’ and Lynches films ‘Mulholland Drive’ and ‘Inland Empire’. The blog after that will use the method of frames to interpret specific episodes of ‘The Twilight Zone’ and ‘Tales of the Unexpected’, while in my last blog I will compare the framing method with the psychoanalytic and continental philosophy approaches.

HUMAN ANIMAL AND NON-HUMAN ANIMAL BRAIN INTERFACES
“If a Lion could talk, we wouldn’t be able to understand it” (Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations p. 235)

In his recent paper Harish Shah a futurist speculated on the possibility of developing human to non-human brain interfaces as a means for humans to communicate with other non-human animals. He even speculated on animals of different species using the same technology to communicate with each-other. Shah was talking about a really interesting area of research. He quiet correct to note that our ability to control a mechanical arm using brain interfaces does indeed imply that we should be able to use similar technology between humans and non-human animals.
However I would like to sound a brief note of caution to his optimistic speculation. Firstly one needs to be very careful when one uses the word ‘communication’ to avoid using the same word in different contexts when the word means different things in different contexts. When I communicate to others using language there is a lot going on at the personal level (intentional stance) and the sub-person level (brain processes). So at the sub-personal level the Broca’s area in the cortex important for producing speech and Wernicke’s area in the cortex used for understanding speech. Now in producing speech different areas of the brain will be communicating with other, so my Wernicke’s area will be in communication with my temporal lobes and occipital lobes if my speech involves the use of any image. All of this is very crude and my reason for bring up this preschool model of brain areas communicating with each other is so I can emphasise how un-language like it is. When different brain areas communicate with each other they do so in-terms of things like topographic maps etc (see Paul Churchland’s ‘Plato’s Camera’). So when a brain interfaces with a robot arm it is important to note that the sub-personal level nothing language like, which involves consciousness awareness, occurs. The person in the experiment may be consciously aware of a desire to move his arm, or may be directed to do so by one of the scientists in the team, but the brain moves the arm because of un-language like computational interfaces between the brain and the robot arm. These facts are important to think about when assessing Shah’s speculations.
Shaw speculates as follows:
“Brain signals exist in animals, though perhaps operating in different ways or at different frequencies than humans. However it is a matter of time, before the same type of thought reading apparatus used for human-to-human interaction can, and will, be adjusted to identify, decipher and read animal thoughts.”
“And then now think, if we figure a way, to relay our thoughts or intended messages, to your pets or other animals, in a way, they can understand? Going to the zoo will become a very different experience from what it is today. Imagine if you could have a conversation with a lion. For example, you think the question, “How are you feeling today?”, which gets converted into data, and then signal, which is transmitted to the brain of the lion, in a form, which the lion is able to interpret and understand, in response to which, the lion thinks, a thought that is captured by a brain interface device picking up it’s brainwaves, converting it, translating into a human language you understand, converting it to voice sound, relayed back to you, which you hear in your head, whereby the lion’s response may sound to you perhaps like, “The same as I do every day when humans like you come by across that barrier. Hungry.”
Here there are a couple of points to note I would imagine that it will be very soon possible through brain implants (in the Rats Motor cortex) to give me partial (or full control) of a rats behaviour directly via my own brain. But this control will again all be done via the sub-personal computational processes we discussed above. With this type of interface I will not have any communication (at the personal level) with the rat.
What about direct interface so we can communicate linguistically via the interfaces with non-human animals? Such interfaces may not be as feasible as Shah seems to think. In a 2002 experiment Hauser and Fitch compared the grammar learning abilities of Tamarin monkeys and humans in learning grammars. Their studies showed that while Tamarin Monkey’s could learn context free grammars easily they could not learn phrase structure grammar, where as humans could learn both. Neuroscientist Angela D. Friederici decided to test this study from a neurological point of view. Since she did not have detailed neurological studies for cotton-top tamarins; so she instead she compared human and Macaque brains. She used a study by Petrides and Pandya (1994) which analysed the cytoarchitectonic structure of the frontal and prefrontal cortexes of the brain in human and macaque brains. Anterior to the central sulcus (cs) there is an area called BA 6. Friederici notes the following:
“BA 6 is particularly large in humans and in the monkey. However in the monkey the areas that seem relevant for language, at least in the human brain, are pretty small in the macaque” (The Brain Differentiates Grammars p. 186)
“For the group that learned the Finite State Grammar, we found activation in the frontal operculum, an area that is phylogenetically older than the Broca’s area, for the comparison between grammatically correct and incorrect sequences. Interestingly enough, difficulty cannot be an explanation here because behaviourally, no difference was found between the short sequences of the FSG and the long sequences, In the imaging data a difference was learned in the delay of activation peak and early peak, with an early peak for the short, and a late peak for the long FSG. But what do we find for the Phase Structure Grammar learning group? Here again, not surprisingly, the frontal operculum is active, but now additionally Broca’s area comes into play, And again when we compare the short sequences and the long sequences, difficulty does not matter.” (ibid p.187)
Now the fact that just the phylogenetically older areas of the brain were used for processing of Finite State Grammars (an artificially made grammatical rule), whereas in the phrase structure grammar ( the actual structure of human language) both the phylogenetically older area and the phylogenetically newer area are used is interesting. Because the areas involved in learning a Phrase Structure Grammar (the newer areas in the brain) are much smaller in the Macaque brain. This of course is why the Macaque’s cannot learn the Phrase Structure Grammar Rules but can learn the finite state rules. The macaque doesn’t have a sufficiently developed cortex.
Firstly I should note that the above experiment is one of many and it would take me well beyond the remit of this blog to go through all of the many experiments. Here I merely want to note these are the types of experiments we need to take note of (as well as mathematically modelling the verbal behaviour of human and non-human animals) if we want to understand the potential of human-non-human interfaces for communication. Shah doesn’t go into the important detail of what area of the human’s brain the animal is connected up to, and what area of the animal’s brain the human is connected up to. So one could ask are the implants placed in the pineal gland of both human and animal so they can communicate with each other via their respective Cartesian theatres? This joke of a question may sound a bit unfair on Shah, but it is important to understand exactly how he thinks the process will work before we can evaluate his claims.
Another mistake that Shah makes is in acting as though the animal and human will speak to each other in English (or some form of mentalese). Firstly the vast majority of animals will not have the ability construct grammatical sentences using a phase structure grammar in the way we do. So even if (and it’s a big if) they do think in propositional attitudes. The attitudes will be so different from ours that they will not think in ways that will be recognisably human. Furthermore we know from studies of animals that some animals are not social in the way we are. Very few animals recognise pointing as an attempt to share information about a shared object of experience. So with such interfaces the animal will be as powerless (because of his type of brain) to make the animal share information because this is not something this particular type of animals does.
Now one could reply to my objection that I am misrepresenting Shah because he is actually talking about animal thoughts being translated into English before they are communicated to us. But things are even worse in this case. If we translate and beat a lion’s thoughts into our grammatical form, and into terms we typically use (see Lakoff and Johnson for how much of our ordinary language is shot through with metaphors) we will be changing them to such a degree that we will not be justified in calling them an ordinary lion’s thoughts. Dennett makes this point forcibly:
“Wittgenstein once said, “if a lion could tlak, we could not understand him”. I think on the contrary, that if a lion could talk, that lion would have a mind so different from the general run of lion minds, that although we could understand him fine we could understand him just fine, we would learn little about ordinary lions from him” (Consciousness Explained p. 446)
So Shah’s translation claim doesn’t really help him make his case for the type of animal human interfaces he is arguing for.
An incredible amount of human thought is done unconsciously; we do not yet have enough data as to how much of animal behaviour that looks purposiveful actually involves conscious thought. Let alone that the animal will be prepared to communicate this knowledge with us. This is why passages like the one below are fanciful to say the least:
“And because it is a probable eventuality, it is valuable to forecast a scenario, where the technology becomes an actual reality. Imagine what could happen if we could use such technology to converse with animals, as we converse with each other in the present day. What would the subjects be? Perhaps spirituality, where we ask animals if they understand the concept of life and death, and if so, what it means to them? Do different animals believe in an afterlife? Do they believe in a heaven or a hell? Do they believe in karma or a greater entity? Do they worship in their own way?”
It is possible that we could have direct access to the images and memories of some animals by interfaces between their temporal lobe etc and our occipital lobe. However such memories will not necessarily have a propositional form, or they could have a propositional form imposed by us as our brain interacts with theirs. Furthermore our occipital lobe being a different character than theirs may modify the images etc to some degree. So instead of getting direct knowledge from the animal about its world we would be interpreting it from the point of view of our own mode of cognition.
One final difficulty I have with Shah’s behaviour is that he seems to think that such communication if possible would have ethical consequences:
Imagine if we could ask different species of animals, how they feel about different things? For example, if we could ask a chicken about its sentiments that humans take its eggs or its life, for food consumption? Only time would tell, when such communication is possible, if it’s response, if any, or whatever it is, would suffice to convert the entire human population to vegetarianism. What would different animals say to us, if we asked how they felt about humans in general? Would they say they think we are cute and adorable? Or would they say we frighten them? Or would they say, we look tasty?”
“Perhaps with a means to communicate across species barriers, with brainwave computing, we will able to negotiate with different animals. For example, we engage sharks to reach an understanding, where we would not hunt sharks for human consumption and sharks would not attack swimmers and beach-goers, more so, if a man goes overboard a ship’s deck, sharks would come to his aid. Perhaps we could discuss means of co-existing and cohabiting better, so as not to impede or violate each other’s spaces.”

I somehow don’t see these ethical consequences after all humans have the ability to communicate with each other and it hasn’t stopped them from exploiting each other in the least. Furthermore as I have said I see little chance of this direct communication he speaks of ever occurring. For the time being if we want to communicate with animals the best way is to understand their form of life and immerse ourselves into their world as they interact with each other. And to test your beliefs about their beliefs with as many experiments as possible.

INCOMPLETE NATURE, EMERGENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS
INTRODUCTION
Terrence Deacon’s 2013 book ‘Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter’ has been generally greeted with acclaim by the philosophical community (With some exceptions see Mcginn and Fodor’s reviews). His book which attempts a naturalistic account of how mind emerged from matter is challenging and extremely well argued. In this blog I will try to summarise and analyse some of the primary arguments in Deacon’s book.
His ‘Incomplete Nature’ begins with an extremely interesting analogy. Deacon speaks about how for many years the number zero was banned from mathematics. Mathematicians feared zero because of its strange paradoxical characteristics so they did not admit it into their mathematical systems. Deacon begins his book with the following quote:
“In the history of culture, the discovery of zero will always stand out as one of the greatest single achievements of the human race. (Tobias Dantzig)
Deacon argues that a similar situation now occurs for what he calls ententional phenomena. The word ‘ententional’ was coined by Deacon as a generic adjective to describe all phenomena that are intrinsically incomplete in the sense of being in relationship to, constituted by, or organized to achieve something non-intrinsic. This includes function, information, meaning, reference, representation, agency, purpose, sentience, and value (Incomplete Nature p.549). Deacon argued that ententional phenomena like the concept zero have a primary quality of absence. These absential features mean the relevant phenomena are determined with respect to an absence. So, for example our intentional states are directed towards some state of affairs which may or not obtain so it has an absential. These absential qualities are something that science up until now has found it impossible to give a causal account of. This is a serious state of affairs because something like my ‘belief that P’ can have obvious causal consequences, e.g. me moving my body to position x. Deacon correctly notes that ententional phenomena are treated by scientists in a similar way to the way mathematicians treated zero. Scientists and philosophers treat ententional phenomena as something spooky and paradoxical which need to be contained or outright eliminated from our ontology. Deacon proposes that admitting ententional phenomena into our ontology will greatly increase our theoretical powers in science in a similar way to the way admitting zero in to mathematics greatly increased our calculation capacities. So the aim of his book is to admit the reality of ententional phenomena and show how they arrived onto the scene naturalistically. He argues that his theory can explain how a form of causality dependent on absential qualities can exist; he claims that this explanation is compatible with our best science.
It is interesting to briefly compare Deacon’s view with the views of Ladyman et al as expressed in their ‘Everything Must Go’ which I discussed in my last blog. While Ladyman et al treat ententional phenomena as real patterns but patterns which do not exist in our fundamental ontology; Deacon treats ententional phenomena in a more realistic way. So, for example on p.38 he talks of the universe as being a causally closed system. (All basic causal laws of the universe also follow a closed system, all change comes from within). This seems radically at odds with Ladyman and Ross who argue that causality plays no role at the level of basic physics, though it does play a role in the special sciences. However a closer examination of Deacon’s views shows that his views on causation are actually pretty close to those of Ladyman et al.
Deacon outlines the thesis of his book as follows:
“As rhetorically ironic as this sounds, the thesis of this book is that the answer to the age-old riddle of teleology is not provided in terms of “nothing but…” or “something more…” but rather “something less…” this is the essence of what I am calling absentialism” (Incomplete Nature p.43)

When speaking of his explanations in term of absence he makes claims about processes and substances which are striking analogous to claims made by Ladyman et al:
“Showing how these apparently contradictory views can be reconciled requires that we rethink some very basic tacit assumptions about the nature of physical processes and relationships. It requires reframing the way we think about the physical world in thoroughly dynamical, that is to say, process, terms, and recasting our notions of causality in terms of something like the geometry of this dynamics, instead of thinking in terms of material objects in motion affected by contact and fields of force” (ibid p. 44)
He argues that while it is intuitive to think of the world in terms of billiard ball causality, when it comes to basic physics this notion has been abandoned in terms fields of probability rather than discretely localizable stuff. It is failure to overcome this billiard ball conception of stuff which leads to people to think that something must be added to make a mind.
He argues that our ultimate scientific challenge is to precisely characterize the geometry of dynamical from thermodynamic processes to living mental processes, and to explain their dependency relationships with respect each other. It is worth at this point considering Deacon’s criticisms of the metaphysical views of Jaegwon Kim.
DEACON ON EMERGENTISM AND KIM
Deacon argues that the reductionism which began with Democritus and produced many successful research programmes, for example, the reduction of chemistry to physics, is favoured by most contemporary theorists. This view has lead a lot of philosophers to think that smaller is more fundamental (philosopher Thomas Wilson dubbed this “smallism”). Deacon correctly notes that this view is not necessarily true:
“It is not obvious, however, that things do get simpler with a descent in scale, or that there is some ultimate smallest unit of matter, rather than merely a level of scale below which it is not possible to discern differences.” (Incomplete Nature p.153)
Nonetheless he points out that a lot of science has been successful as a result of thinking of objects in terms of their component parts. He claims that, despite the success that of thinking of objects as made of component parts has had in science; it has the difficulty that it focuses attention away from the contributions of interaction complexity. This, he complains, suggests that investigating the organisational features of things is less important than investigating its component properties.
When discussing emergence Deacon gives Sperry’s example of how consciousness is a product of certain configurations of matter which are only found in the brain. Though this is not a new type of matter the configuration can have certain causal consequences that other configurations of matter do not have. Sperry uses the analogy of how a wheel is a particular configuration of matter. This configuration does not involve new stuff but it does have causal consequences that are unexpected; i.e. the wheel can move in ways that other configurations of matter cannot. So Deacon thinks we can have emergentism without lapsing into any kind of mysterious dualism.
He notes that Jaegwon Kim is generally considered to have refuted certain forms of emergentist theories. He sums up Kim’s argument as follows:
“Assuming that we live in a world without magic, and that all composite entities like organisms are made of simpler components without residue, down to some ultimate elementary particles, and assuming that physical interactions ultimately require that these constituents and their causal powers (i.e. physical properties) are the necessary substrate for any physical interaction, then whatever causal properties we ascribe to higher-order composite entities must ultimately be realized by these most basic physical interactions. If this is true, then to claim that the cause of some state or event arises at an emergent higher level is redundant. If all higher-order causal interactions are between objects constituted by relationships among these ultimate building blocks of matter, then assigning causal power to various higher-order relations is to do bookkeeping. It’s all just quarks and gluons- or pick your favourite smallest unit- and everything else is just a gloss or descriptive simplification of what goes on at that level. As Jerry Fodor describes it, Kim’s challenge to emergentists is: why is there anything except physics?” (Terrance Deacon ‘Incomplete Nature’ 2013 p.165)
Deacon claims that Kim’s challenge can be attacked from the point of view of contemporary physics. He argues that the substance metaphysics which Kim uses to support his mereological analysis is not supported by quantum physics. Deacon’s point is similar to a point made by Ladyman et. al in their ‘Everything Must Go’, while Tim Maudlin has made similar points in his ‘The Metaphysics Within Physics’. The problem which all those theorists note is that there are not any ultimate particles or simple ‘atoms’ devoid of lower level compositional organisation on which to ground unambiguous higher-level distinctions of causal power (ibid p.167).
On page 31 of their ‘Every Thing Must Go’ Ladyman et al. also attack Jagewon Kim’s 1998 book ‘Mind and World’ for claiming to be a defence of physicalism despite the fact that it doesn’t engage with any contemporary physics. They note that there are no physics papers or physics books even cited by Kim in his book. This is besides the fact that Kim’s arguments rely on un-trivial assumptions about how the physical world works (ETMG p.31). According to Ladyman et al. Kim defines a ‘micro-based property’ which involves the property of being ‘decomposable into non-overlapping proper parts’ (Kim 1998 p. 84 (quote taken from ETMG). This assumption does a lot of Kim’s work in defending his physicalism, however as we know from Quantum Entanglement, micro-components of reality are not decomposable in this way. They explicate their criticism of Kim as follows:
“Kim’s micro-based properties, completely decomposable into non-overlapping proper parts, and Lewis’s ‘intrinsic properties of points-or of any point sized occupants of points’, both fall foul of the non-separability of quantum states, something that has been a well-established part of micro-physics for generations” (ETMG p. 32)
Ladyman et al are attacking Kim’s metaphysics because it is done without regard to our best fundamental physics. As we can see their criticism of Kim is entirely in agreement with Deacon’s criticism. Deacon, however is not merely criticising Kim for ignoring contemporary quantum physics in metaphysics. He is making the further claim that contemporary quantum physics shows that Kim’s arguments against reductionism do not work.
Deacon correctly argues that in quantum physics when we get to the lowest level we have quantum fields which are not dividable into point particles. He notes that Quantum fields have ambiguous spatio-temporal origins, have extended properties that are only statistical and dynamically definable, etc. So given the fact that quantum world behaves in this way Kim’s analysis into mereological (part/whole) features fails
Kim’s in effect argued that since at bottom it is all just quarks and gluons, and that everything else is just a descriptive simplification of what goes on at that level, then we are forced to ask, why is there anything other than physics? Deacon notes that the emergentism which Kim is criticising is connected to the idea of supervenience which argues that “There cannot be two events exactly alike in all physical respects but differing in some mental respects, or that an object cannot alter in some mental respects without altering in some physical respect” (Davidson 1970). People who argue for emergence, have to account for how something can emerge which is entirely dependent on the physical; but is not reducible to it. Kim thinks that his argument shows that this type of emergence is not possible.
Kim in effect argues that since there can be no differences in the whole without differences in the parts then emergence theories cannot be true. Kim claims that in our theory we want to avoid double-counting. So if we map all causal powers to distinctive non-overlapping parts of things this leaves no room to find them uniquely emergent, in aggregates of these parts, no matter how they are organised (Incomplete Nature p.167)
Now Deacon replied to this by criticising Kim for not keeping up with developments in quantum mechanics. Philosopher Paul So made the following reply to Deacon: “What I do remember is that Kim’s problem with Emergentism is that emergent phenomena like mental states may not have causal powers. Specifically, If mental states supervene (or ontologically depend) on physical ones, then its really physical ones that do all the causal work, whereas mental states just appear to have causal powers. I agree that Kim may need to learn more quantum mechanics to substantiate his claim, but I don’t think Deacon’s objection really refutes his primary concern; I don’t think Kim’s assumption about particles being fundamental constituents of the physical world is essential to his concern. What is essential to his concern is how an emergent phenomena like mental states can do any causal work if its really the phenomena from fundamental physics that do all the work. We could just replace particles with quantum fields and his concern could still stand. If emergent phenomena such as our mental states ontologically depend on quantum fields, then it appears that quantum fields do all the causal work (though in a statistical manner).” (Paul So personal communication)
Now I should first note that Deacon’s concern is with the fact that Kim’s argument is dependent on a part-whole analysis, and this part/whole analysis is simply impossible at the quantum level. It is only at the macro-level that we can do the type of mereological analysis that Kim suggests. Deacon discusses the philosopher Mark Bickhard who argues against Kim:
“A straight forward framing of this challenge to a mereological conception of emergence is provided by cognitive scientist and philosopher Mark Bickhard. His response to this critique of emergence is that the substance metaphysics assumption requires that at the base, particles participate in organisation but they do not themselves have organisation. But, he argues, point particles without organisation do not exist because real particles are the somewhat indeterminate loci of inherently oscillatory quantum fields. These are irreducibly process like and thus by definition organised. But if process organization is the irreducible source of the causal properties at this level, then it cannot be delegitimated as a potential locus of causal power without eliminating causality from the world. It follows that if the organisation of a process is the fundamental source of its causal power, then fundamental reorganisations of process, at whatever level this occurs, should be associated with a reorganisation of causal power as well” (ibid p.168)
The above quote shows why Paul’s objection doesn’t refute Deacon’s argument. However, it is worth noting that simply because, Kim hasn’t refuted Deacon this doesn’t vindicate emergentism; rather he merely shows that a particular argument does not work. He will need a much more extensive discussion of the philosophers who reject emergence if his positive thesis is to be sustained.
DEACON ON AUTOGENS
“The reciprocal complementarity of these two self-organizing processes creates the potential for self-repair, self-reconstitution, and even self-replication in a minimal form” (Incomplete Nature p. 306)
So what we are looking at here is a co-facilitation of morphodynamic processes. By an autogen Deacon means the whole class of minimally related teleodynamic systems. Something is an autogen if it is a simple dynamical system that achieves self-generation by harnessing the co-dependent reciprocity of component morphodynamic processes. He notes that though considered in isolation or co-dependent, together they are reciprocally self-limiting, so that their self-undermining features are reciprocally counteracted. As a result an autogenic system will establish its capacity to re-form before exhausting its substrates, so long as closure is completed before reaching this point (ibid p.308). The two processes provide boundary conditions for both providing a supporting environment for each other.
Deacon also argues that an autogen can also reproduce. He argues that fractured components of a disrupted autogen will be able to create new autogens by the same process with which the autogen was created. In trying to think through how the first life arose from non-life Deacon begins with the notion of Autocatalysis. Typically a closed molecular system will tend toward some steady state, with fewer and fewer chemical reactions occurring over time, as the overall distribution of reactions runs in directions that offset each-other – this is the second law of thermodynamics at work (ibid p. 293). Deacon notes that with chemical systems maintained far from equilibrium, where the conditions for asymmetric reaction probabilities are not reduced, non-equilibrium dynamics can produce some striking features (ibid p.293). Deacon claims that the most relevant classes of non-equilibrium chemical process is autocatalysis.
A Catalysis is a molecule that because of its allosteric geometry and energetic characteristics increases the probability of some other chemical reaction taking place without itself being altered in the process. (ibid p. 293), hence it introduces a thermodynamic element into a chemical reaction as a consequence of its shape with respect to other molecules.
An Autocatalysis is a special case of catalytic reactions in which a small set of catalysts each augment the production of another member of the set, so that ultimately all members of the set are produced. This has the effect of creating a runaway increase of the molecules of the autocatalytic set at the expense of other molecular forms, until all substrates are exhausted. Autocatalysis is thus briefly a self-amplifying chemical process that proceeds at ever-higher rates, producing more of the same catalysts with every iteration of the reaction. Deacon notes that according to some people autocatalysts are extremely rare (though Stewart Kauffman has argued that they are not a rare as believed). In fact Kauffman has argued that Autocatalysis is inevitable under not too extreme conditions. Manfred Eigen has studied hyper-cycles where autocatalysts lead to more autocatalysts. Deacon notes that obviously for such autocatalysts to occur we need a rich substrate to keep things going. When the raw materials are used up the interdependent catalysts dissipates. So he argues Autocatalysis is SELF-PROMOTING, but not SELF-REGULATING or SELF MAINTAINING. These catalytic networks of molecular interactions characterize the metabolic processes of living cells, so it is far from impossible.
Deacon begins his discussion of evolution by quoting from Batten, et al’s 2009 paper ‘Visions of Evolution: Self Organisation Proposes What Natural Selection Disposes.’. Deacon argues that while a lot of evolutionary theory tells the story of random mutations and natural selection being the primary story in evolution, there is growing evidence that self organisation plays as big a role as random mutations. Deacon correctly argues that strictly speaking the theory of evolution is substrate neutral (hence a precursor to functionalism), so it doesn’t really matter to selection whether it is working on a change as a result of self-organizing process or a change as a result of random mutation.
He argues that this substrate neutrality has clear implications for emergence. If like Dennett we think of evolution as an algorithmic process that can be implemented on various different machines we can the relevance of it for emergence. When a particular functional organisation is selected over thousands upon thousands of years the same physical process is not necessarily used all of the time. He likens this the way that 2+2=4 can be calculated using different devices, a human brain, a calculator, a page, fingers, etc. Likewise an adaptation is not identical to the collection of properties constituting the specific mechanism that constitutes it (ibid p.425). In some ways it is less than the collection of properties, as only some of the properties are relevant to the success of an adaptation. While in some ways an adaptation is more than its properties, as it is the consequence of an extended history of constraints being passed from generation to generation (constraints that are the product of many different substrates) (ibid. p.425)
Later Deacon describes Evolution as follows:
“Evolution in this sense can be thought of as a process of capturing, taming and integrating diverse morphodynamic processes for the sake of their collective preservation.” (ibid p. 427)
He gives some clear examples of morphodynamic processes:
(1) Whirlpools, (2) Convection Cells, (3) Snow Crystal growth (4) Fibonacci structures in inorganic matter.
And he argues that the above morphodynamic processes are interesting because:
“…What makes all these processes notable, and motivates the prefix morpho- (form), is that they are processes that generate regularity not in response to the extrinsic imposition of regularity, or by being shaped by any template structure, but rather by virtue of regularities that are amplified internally via interaction dynamics alone under the influence of persistent external perturbations.” (ibid p.242)
When discussing Autogens Deacon does seem to be invoking a kind of intrinsic intentionality when cashing out what he believes are the earliest forms of information (in his sense) using Autogens. Deacon argues that early autogens had information (in the sense of aboutness) because a particular form of chemical bond was sensitive to what environment was good for it. This is a strange argument and is worth looking at closely.
“They argue that an autogeneic system in which its containment is made more fragile by the bonding of relevant substrate molecules to its surface could be considered to respond selectively to its environment” (ibid p.443)
Here the use of the word information (as in aboutness) is extremely strange. In what sense could the bonding of substrate molecules to the surface of an autogen convey information? Deacon notes that this bonding (or lack thereof ) will have consequences for whether particular autogens survive in particular environments.
So, for example, if the autogen’s containment is disrupted in the context where the substrates that support autocatalysis are absent or of low concentration, re-enclosure will be unlikely. So stability of containment is advantageous for persistence of a given variant in contexts where the presence of relevant substrates is of low probability. He correctly notes that this is an adaptation. (So different autogens are selected by different environments). While these autogens cannot initiate their own reproduction (their differential susceptibility to disruption with respect to relevant context is a step in that direction) (ibid p.443)
“It seems to me that at this stage we have introduced an unambiguous form of information and its interpretative basis. Binding of relevant substrate molecules is information about the suitability of the environment for successful replication; and since successful replications increases the probability that a given autogenic form will persist, compared to other variants with less success at replication, we are justified in describing this as information about the environment for the maintenance of this interpretative capacity.” (ibid p. 443)
I suppose one could say that it is indeed information in Bateson’s sense (a difference that makes a difference) but there is nothing at that point that HAS the information, we see the information as theorists, but the information is not grasped by anything. We could view the information as a real-pattern that exists whether or not there is anyone around to observe it.
Deacon then asks the obvious question: what is the difference between the information which the autogen has, and the information of say a thermostat? He says that in the absence of a human designer a thermostat only has Shannon Information. His argument is that while things like thermostats provide information about particular aspects of their environments this is not a significant as it may seem. A wet towel can provide information about the temperature of a room, or the tracking of dirt in from the street has the capacity to indicate that somebody has entered the room. He notes that while things like wet towels can provide information as to the temperature of the room, there an infinite number of other things that the wet towel is informative about depending on the interpretative process used. He argues that that is the KEY DIFFERENCE. What information the physical process provides depends on the idiosyncratic needs and interests of the interpreter. So, he claims, that there is no INTRINSIC END DIRECTEDNESS to these mechanisms or physical processes.
He makes the startling claim that this INTRINSIC END DIRECTEDNESS is provided by autogens tendency to reconstitute itself after being disrupted. This seems like the dreaded teleology being introduced for even simple non-living autogens. His argument involves noting that the autogen is tending towards a specific target state, it also tends to develop towards a state that reconstitutes and replicates this tendency as well. This tendency has normative consequences, autogens can receive misinformation (bind with other molecules that are not catalytic substrates and will weaken it). Such autogens lineages will tend to be wiped out. So where there is information (non-shannonian) there is the possibility of error (because aboutness is an extrinsic relationship and so is necessarily fallible).
I am not sure what to make of his claims here to be honest. For me Dennett put paid to the idea of intrinsic aboutness as far back as his (1987) ‘Error, Evolution, and Intentionality’ where he attacks Fodor’s notion of intrinsic intentionality. It seems to me that his arguments go through against Deacon without modification. If Deacon is arguing that the normativity of these autogens is a ‘real-pattern’ I would have no problem but I am having trouble understanding his idea of INTRINSIC END DIRECTEDNESS.
Deacon not only speaks of autogens having relations of aboutness to the world, he goes further and argues that autogens have a type of consciousness. He even argues that individual neurons in our brain are conscious:
“The central claim of this analysis is that sentience is a typical emergent attribute of any teleodynamic system… A neuron is a single cell, and simpler in many ways than almost any other single-cell eukaryotic organisms, such as an amoeba. But despite its dependence on being situated within a body and within a brain, and having its metabolism constantly tweaked by signals impinging on it from hundreds of other neurons, in terms of the broad definition of sentience I have described above, neurons are sentient agents” (Ibid pp.509)
This claim of course means that for Deacon an autogen is conscious. Now in above we noted that for Deacon an autogen has intrinsic end directedness because there are aspects of its environment that are good for its survival and reproduction. Deacon has here offered an interesting proposal as to how consciousness and aboutness emerges that manages to avoid panpsychism, or the exceptionalism which claims that only humans are consciousness and it magically emerges for us and us alone, or eliminativism which says that experience does not exist. However, I don’t think he has really offered any evidence to support his theory over the theories of his rivals. Though it is certainly an interesting proposal that if researched further could lead to answers.
CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN
As Deacon’s key exemplar of consciousness he focuses on Pain and Suffering. I think this is an interesting and useful starting point. In Dennett 1978 ‘Why you can’t make a computer that feels pain’, he tried to discuss whether it would be possible to build a computer that feels pain. Dennett’s conclusion was that you couldn’t build a computer that feels pain because the ordinary language conception of pain is radically incoherent. So if we try to model pain (as a coherent phenomena) we will have to radically modify the ordinary language concept, once this concept is so modified that we can model it in a computer, it will not share all of the features that we typically associate with pain. So it is no good a theorist saying that a computer does not experience pain because intuitively I think that pain must have properties x and y, because we know that people’s intuitions on the nature of pain form a radically incoherent set. Most people upon reading Dennett respond that an ESSENTIAL feature of pain is its intrinsic horrible feature. So since there is no evidence that computers feel pain in this ESSENTIAL sense then we cannot build a computer that feels the essential characteristic of pain its awfulness. Now Dennett could reply to this by arguing that pain has no essential features. He could point to congenital asymbolia where people feel pain but do not mind the pain (hence don’t find it intrinsically awful), to show that pain does not have an essential feature of awfulness. Likewise he could point to the fact that people who have congenital analgesia do not experience pain. Now what is interesting about this disorder is that people who suffer from it typically injure themselves at night because they do not adjust their body when asleep. Now people without the disorder typically adjust their bodies if in an uncomfortable position (even while asleep), which indicates that we can feel pain even while asleep. It is hard to know what to make of these claims but Dennett notes that the fact that we can have unconscious pains, and pain which doesn’t feel awful indicates that we should not comfortably speak of essential features of pain. Hence he thinks we should not let our intuitions of the supposedly essential features of pain being un-modelable in a computer too seriously. Deacon agrees with some of Dennett’s opponents that we cannot have a computer that feels pain. But Deacon’s reasons are not mere reliance on ones intuitions about the nature of pain. Deacon describes emotion as follows:
“In the previous section, we identified the experience of emotion with the tension and work associated with employing metabolic means to modify morphodynamics. It was noted that particularly in cases of life-and-death contexts, morphodynamic change must be instituted rapidly and extensively, and this requires extensive work at both the homeodynamic (metabolic) and morphodynamic (mental) levels. The extent of this work and the intensity of the tension created by the resistance of dynamical processes to rapid change, is I submit experienced as the intensity of emotion” (Incomplete Nature p. 527)
So for Deacon for a machine to experience emotion it needs work (the tension associated with fighting against the 2nd law of thermodynamics), so a machine in the sense of Dennett 1978 (which is just a description of a physical regularity); cannot experience emotion.
Of course Daniel Dennett today may has moved closer to Deacon’s views, as can be seen in his talk ‘If Brains are Computers what Kind of Computer are they?’ http://youtu.be/OlRHd-r2LOw . Dennett’s talk of selfish neurons forming a collation with each other is very close to Deacon’s views on the nature of neuronal activation.
Throughout the book Deacon makes claims about the nature of possibility that need to be thought through very carefully as it is hard to square with physics, biology, or anything else; is he arguing for a possible world type scenario? Does his view commit him to modal realism a la Lewis? Or is it the type of possible world proposed by Kripke? In ETMG Ladyman et al discuss modal realism one wonders whether Deacon’s (who is a naturalist) is defending a similar type of modal realism as them. Unfortunately though one of the central ideas in the book is that what doesn’t happen, or could have happened but didn’t effects the physical world, Deacon didn’t really explicate what he means by possibility. So I need to think through what the metaphysics of possibility implied by his thesis really amounts to. Thinking through and comparing Williamson’s views on the nature of possibility as sketched in his new book ‘Modality as Metaphysics’, with Ladyman et al’s OSR and Deacon’s Incomplete Nature may be helpful.
In this blog I have merely described some of Deacon’s main arguments to defend his position on how mind emerged from matter, and gestured towards some strengths and weakness in his view. In my next blog I will discuss his conception of information, and modality in detail and compare his views with those of Ladyman et al.
I think that his book is a useful starting point in helping us think through these complex issues. Though aside from the need to factor thermodynamics into our computational theories of how the mind and life work, I think that he didn’t provide sufficient evidence to support his claims of Autogens having end-directedness or sentience. That said he book represents an interesting attempt to deal with some very old and intractable problems.