The meat thinks: On (Un)Certainty; why religion is ineradicable; a Modest Proposal
January 31st, 2010 by Alan
“I used to think my brain was the most wonderful organ in the universe. Then I realized who was telling me this.”
Emo Phillips
(From a fictional exchange between two extraterrestrial intelligent machines, regarding the dominant life-form on Earth:)
“So…what does the thinking?”
“You’re not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat.”
“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat.”
“Yes, thinking meat. Conscious meat!… The meat is the whole deal? Are you getting the picture?”
“They’re Made Out Of Meat,” quoted by Robert Burton, M.D. in his book On Being Certain: Believing You’re Right Even When You’re Not. Story available at www.terrybisson.com/meat.html .
How the meat thinks — how mind emerges from neurons and neurotransmitters — is still a mystery, and one that won’t be solved anytime soon.
But at least we know where certain thoughts and emotions come from. It turns out that certain regions of the brain are responsible for what Burton calls “a feeling of knowing” without proof or empirical data. This brain activity results in deja vu (mistaken feeling of familiarity), its evil twin jamais vu (mistaken feeling of strangeness), the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon (”Wait! Don’t tell me - I know this.”), as well as all kinds of intuitive activity (sports, music performance, etc.) and, of course, religious faith, which would not exist if our minds were incapable of knowing without proof.
This feeling of knowing probably had evolutionary benefits — better to harbor suspicions than to be caught unawares. Today it’s almost ubiquitous in everyday life. It is what enables major league batters to begin their swing when the ball is only nine feet from the pitcher. By the time they know they’re actually swinging (or think they’ve seen bat meet ball) the contact (or lack of it) has already happened. It’s what enables musicians, especially improvising musicians, to let go and do what they do. Contemplation of each movement is impossible — it’s all happening too fast.
The feeling is easily exploited. The Big Kahunas, when it comes to knowing without thinking, are marketing, politics, and religion. Here’s where the most wealth and power are at stake. All depend heavily on thoughtless knowing…on the creation of fake ideals and objects of worship. All three present an exclusive and divisive world-view (we have the best product, the best country, the best god). All ask for loyalty, with an implied promise: If you buy the beer, OF COURSE you get the hot babe — that’s what the commercial says. Vote for the politician who says, “We can” and you can…what?
Needs you didn’t know you had
And, very importantly, all three create products for which there is no need, solutions to problems people didn’t know they had, gadgets they didn’t know they wanted. The sustained success of all three depends on that: you may not have known it, but you NEED Obama to fight for you, you NEED the Pope to intercede for you, you NEED tiny Oreos in tiny packages. You are pathetic and helpless.
PLEASE quit
And if you believe the Prez when he says, in his State of the Union speech, that he “won’t quit”…well, that’s all I needed to hear. My response: Barack, PLEASE quit. I LOVE politicians who quit trying to control my life while they bail out their rich friends with my money. But there’s no such animal. Let’s see, $787 billion (the amount of federal bailout) distributed among 300 million people is $2,600 for every American. Just give us back our money. We’ll spend it or save it, benefiting the economy either way. I don’t NEED politicians fighting for me. Stop fighting whatever it is you’re fighting, i.e., other politicians who have different plans for controlling my life.
Religion’s roots
I now have a better understanding of why religion is so deeply rooted in the mind. Burton deals with this issue too, in his most ambitious — but most confused — chapter on faith, which he equates with a sense of knowing — in this case, knowing meaning and purpose. More on that in a future post.
He says you can go in either of two directions with your feeling of knowing: science or religion. He chides Richard Dawkins for his evangelical fervor, concluding that Dawkins’ answer to what constitutes a meaningful life is as much a matter of the feeling of knowing as faith and prayer are for a priest, rabbi, or imam. You have the feeling first, then you gather support. As Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen said, “Verdict first — then the evidence.” That’s how the mind seems to work. Dawkins’ “choice” about what gives his life purpose and meaning is no more valid than the rabbi’s.
Science and religion are not equal.
I think not. Burton is WAY too easy on religion. He ignores the degree to which believers must deny reality and invest themselves in outrageous fantasies for which there is no evidence. Once you establish that you can believe one thing without proof, then you can believe anything. Fantasies flower, enveloping the believer’s entire waking life with ritual and observance, if one is so inclined.
And such is the social respect for religion that a believer is not ashamed to don phylacteries in public (most recently on an airliner, triggering terrorist fears — who knows what’s in those boxes?), without (well-deserved) ridicule. One is not ashamed to take money for homeopathy and past life regression.
Now, I have nothing against fantasies, as loing as they’re not mistaken for reality — and as long as believers keep it out of public view and not coerce or persecute those who are different…or try to take over societies and control education, which they are always trying to do, because these are the ways to keep conflicting beliefs away from the flock, so that they can go on believing without proof.
Burton gives religion a generous pass on its behavior. Crusades, Inquisitions, jihads, witch trials, suicide bombers…these are most certainly NOT equivalent to the outputs of Dawkins’ beliefs: inquiry, knowledge, reasoned argument, and understanding of human beings and the universe.
Unlike politicians, marketers, and clerics, Dawkins doesn’t try to give people answers to problems they didn’t know they had.
Why religion persists
The inescapable conclusion is that for reasons social, ethnic, and neurological, the capacity for religious belief (and that includes New Age sewage) will be encouraged, indeed relentlessly programmed from a very early age. It becomes a habit of mind.
A lucky few of us escape. It doesn’t really take much. When my Mom would babble about God’s will, my father would cut her off with “What’s God got to do with it?” All he had to do was ask the question. That — plus a lack of serious indoctrination (we were wishy-washy Jews) — was enough to trigger my skepticism, which can usually override my belief without proof, although I’m still capable of intuitive activity (jazz improvisation) that goes by too fast for conscious thought.
A Modest Proposal
In a future post, I’ll deal with religion’s products-you-didn’t-know-you-needed: forgiveness, salvation, absolution, and answers to Big Questions. For now, given that religion is ineradicable and the progress of secular humanism is glacial even in this supposedly enlightened land of ours, we can do one thing which would be equivalent to ending racial segregation. It would recognize that religion is nothing special where Caesar is concerned. It would have immense symbolic and economic repercussions (and help with the deficit).
Two words: Tax religion.
As we pursue complete separation of church and state, here’s one positive thing humanists can do: Make them pay the same taxes as the rest of us. In hundreds of leafy suburbs, churches and synagogues sit on VERY pricey real estate. Why should I subsidize their primitive rites with my tax dollars? Let’s also tax their bake sales and every other revenue stream. George Carlin observed that for an omnipotent deity, God always seems to have a problem with money — he’s always asking for it. But I’m sure he’ll come through with the extra cash, if believers just pray hard enough.
Where are the laws that give religon a free pass economically? Is any secular organization working on this? Is there any politician willing to take on this issue?
If religion is perpetual, let it pay its own way — perpetually.
Alan,
To sum up my reaction in one word to this post: Really. As an atheist long before reading “The God Delusion”, I still never thought about let alone questioned why religion and the public practices by the religious are given special deference in our society.
The brain no more thinks than the computer that runs programs is processing data. If a crude analogy is appropriate, the computer is to the brain what the mind is to Excel. Its the software that does the work on the abstract level.
You can have a great set of hardware, and load lousy software, and the opposite as well.
The mind is code, and self modifying, able to modify the hardware vis new synapses (a neural net type of hardware).
We must admit that we know little of the mysteries of self and consciousness; merely knowing which part of the brain is involved does not explain anything. And this is, in my opinion, a failure to model the mind as a black box, and the person as a set of behaviors.
God cannot be explained by biology, for the same reason a person cannot be explained by only genetics; we are focusing only on the hardware and leaving out the software. And the software of the mind is only partially set in genetics; rest is self-created!
Think of your own life and development-you made conscious choices, thought, reflected, mused, slept, used subconscious processes, dreamed etc. The mind must grow, and as it does, it modifies the brain, thus the two are one, yet separate.
The mind is capable of grasping the infinite, and in this we reflect on other minds, projecting a possible infinity that is a mind. There is nothing that makes this an impossibility, thus the only question would be what one takes for evidence.
(I think I meant to say the mind to the brain is as Excel to the computer.)
Rick,
Respect for religion is one of the givens of society. Politicians could shame religion and marginalize it, as they did with smoking. But they never will.
Shalom,
A.
To Ghost:
(1) I have been reading computer analogies to the brain for decades, including a critique by a Berkeley prof called “What Computers Can’t Do.” I don’t know why so many folks begin with an implied “Given that the computer is an accurate model of the brain…” and just march on from there.
But I don’t accept that at all! I never did accept that analogy as given. I would require rigorous proof and physical evidence.
(2) Agree that the brain’s a block box (so far).
(3) No idea what this means: The mind is capable of grasping the infinite.
(4) For God, substitute “Imagining anything cannot be…”. God is just another figment.
shalom,
Alan
The computer is Not a model of the brain, but a neural net computer as a close analogy. Software, depending how it’s written, can be made so as to modify itself; code-as-data. And the software runs as a layer on the hardware. Sort of like when you program your thermostat- you instructions are the software. The hardware can interphase with software in feedback loops etc.
My point is not that we have the model that can mimic the mind, but that it’s coceivable how it can be done. For example, replacing individual neurons in a brain with synthetic artificial electrical circuitry piece by piece, so that no function is lost. If function can be mimicted, then eventually the biological brain can be replaced, section by section, till it’s all artificial - with no loss of memory or consciousness, like a bridge being remade brick-by-brick, out of new material. The mind would then run on the artificial hardware.
As for grasping infinity, I’m pointing out that computers are finite state machines, but the human mind is capable of higher abstractions that the computer is not capable of. That is we can calculate that which cannot be computed. We are capable of inference of minds of others than our own. Some take this a step further to postulate a mind outside the body; a mind that creates reality with it’s thought. It’s an elegant explanation for many things. Is it true?
If an author wrote a play, the characters would be living in the reality of that play, yet dependent on the scripts, stage, etc set up for them. Given enough complexity, such as with self-aware characters, and virtual worlds, they could ponder their existense much like we do ours. Artificial minds in simulated worlds; what if we are such a world.
Again, thanks for your thoughtful comments. Replacing neurons with circuitry sounds great, but a long time off. Maybe I’m missing something, but I’ve still not read any explanation of how self-awareness and subjectivity arise from meat, which would preclude silicon from doing the same thing.
Also: What do people mean when they semantically split their selves (”I know I have to…”)? What does it mean, neurologically, to “talk to ourselves”? We may not have the imagination, or even the language, to figure it out.
Even if the external world is not as we perceive and describe it (e.g., the eye assembling all the thin images from the scan of its most accurate point), we have to act as if it is.
The evidence from a second, unpredisposed mind is the minimal requirement for veracity. Otherwise, whatever we dream can be true.
Regarding your last par., the “Matrix” metaphor is one of the best ever. So much of reality is consensual, our minds co-opted by forces we don’t even see.
shalom,
Alan
Meat is not the thinker, just like wire is not the signal it conveys. It’s the set of electrical paterns that flow thru the brain that constitute the mind, which is what does the thinking; a very subtle but crucial distinction.
Altering the brain alters the mind to the extent that the brain is the biological conduit, yet the mind alters the synaptic connections in the brain when it acts. So they alter and have feedback on each other.
Artificial neurons is not a new idea; look them up in google. Here is a short intro into what’s up:
http://www.neurotechreports.com/pages/hybrids.html
How does self awareness come from the mind? From a general observation, it seems to arise from processes of memory, the gained ability to see onself as a separate being by reflection on internal states in relation to past, present, and future, and being able to track internal states, first biological ones, then mental ones. Sort of like a monkey looking in the mirror and realizing that it’s their own reflection by touching their own body. While there are degrees of self awareness in most animals, it seems not to be a human only trait. It was observed in Chimps, Gorillas, Dolphins, some dogs, parrots, and possibly elephants; it’s the ability to be abstract about the self and use of symbols to represent things and internal states that we excel at.
I will now go build my bionic brain to upload my mind to when this biological one dies…
PS Look Here for progress in bionic brains
http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/story.php?id=8470
OK,
Thanks for all the explanations and links, which I will check out. Count me in on the bionic rebuild, although there are certain memories I can do without.
If I have comments/questions, I’ll post them here. What are your thoughts on the questions in the 2nd par. of comment 7?
shalom,
A.
If I understand your question correctly, you want to reduce mind and consciousness to neurology, but that is not possible because neurology explains the physical level only; it is psychology that’s more appropriate in explaining mental constructs. Since there is feedback between brain and mind, there are effects from one to other, but they are not prescision instruments. Like saying “happy birhday” to a lonely relative vs just giving them a serononin booster. Or playing with a child and making them feel loved, instead of giving them amphetamines.
This is because I believe in the mind/brain dualism; the mind runs in/on the brain like a current of electrical signals runs thru a conductor, and while altering the physical path changes the current flow, it’s an extreemly crude way of adjusting what should transmitted, say a different word or pharase or concept.
This reduction of psychology to neurobiology is for this reason
misguided. Changing the level of neurotransmitters is generally helpful, but doesn’t address the root mental illnesses that are
not strictly biologically based.
What is semantically splitting a sentence? Why should it matter, I ask my self. It is following the Socratic method in aquiring knowledge, where you pose questions to yourself which you yourself atempt to answer, for one. Perhaps a rhetorical device as well.
What is the horn of a hare weigh and where is the gold mountain?
OK,
The research is fascinating, but we’re a long way from a computer that can cay, “Sorry, Dave, but I’m afraid I can’t do that”…though I’m not surprised to learn of the precursors of self-awareness in animals, just as they have the precursors of language and social organization.
As a linguist, I’m interested in semantic self-splitting and the neurological correlates.
In a sentence like “I don’t know if I can control myself.”, the brain recognizes three selves: the “I” that executes behavior (”myself”), the “I” that makes decisions about execution, and the overarching “I” that oberves and judges the other two (”I don’t know…”).
Mind is — but is not the same as — brain activity. Where else could it come from? Isn’t dualism like watering and admiring flowers without trying to understand how they come from the ground?
The mind seems to be a self amending process, that occurs in the brain. The brain makes the mind possible, but the mind has an existense of it’s own; otherwise we would only need one word and one concept: brain.
I don’t see any conflict between a brain that’s the machinery and a mind which is the processes that operate within it. This by no means imply a lack of understanding. Just you can’t reduce mind to brain; the mind is an emergent prossess.
The mind is like the flame as the brain is like the candle.
Reductivism has a flaw. Like a mathematical proof that needs axioms, the truth of which can’t be proved, but must be accepted nevertheless so as to give the proof a foundation, there must be an unexplainable level of existence that can be used to describe the rest.
Example: atoms in terms of protons/neutrons/electrons, they in terms of quarks, they in turn in terms of strings etc till either a progressive infinity of sub-particles, or eventually the smallest that can exist- which cannot be explained in terms of something else! If an infinity, then we can’t really get to the last one since the progression is infinite! Thus our knowledge is incomplete. If a lowest level, unknowable, thus our knowledge is not universal. This echoes Godel in mathematics.
OK,
Let me ponder the dizzying implications and add more thoughts later. I just finished Burton’s “On Being Certain” and am doing much thinking about thinking.
Interesting input comes from my 40+ years experience as a jazz pianist. I like to say that I have “sub-brains” in my hands, else how would I know what to play without thinking (consciously) about it?
More to come.
shalom,
Alan
A learned skill perfected till its like a reflex is more like a sub-program well coded for efficiency and called when needed without much conscious thought.
Its like walking and running; once learned, its automatic and instant. Or speech, reading, even driving. Not much thinking, yet the mind processes are involved.
The brain responds to stimuli with growth of neuronal connections, sort of like taking software and coding it as hardware for efficiency. (Software programs can be recast as hardware for speed and hardware emulated by software for flexibility in computing).
Maybe this is the answer: both brain and mind can alter each other to increase the effectiveness of each.
to Guess Where….
“Emergence” requires some practice to get your mind around, just as a toddler has no concept of time or space.
It’s interesting that we can go so far below the atom. Strings, vibrations, information…why shouldn’t one believe that there’s a limit? Of more interest is the level at which our brains process reality, because that’s where we live.
shalom,
A.