Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id LAA12717 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 6 Feb 2001 11:24:36 GMT From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 05:26:52 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Darwinian evolution vs memetic evolution Message-ID: <3A7F8B1C.26587.1D8F0B7@localhost> In-reply-to: <20010206093644.D557@reborntechnology.co.uk> References: <3A7F16D4.836.12A542@localhost>; from joedees@bellsouth.net on Mon, Feb 05, 2001 at 09:10:44PM -0600 X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 6 Feb 2001, at 9:36, Robin Faichney wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 05, 2001 at 09:10:44PM -0600, joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > In fact, > a major focus of Roger Sperry's work was how recursion in
> > systems possessing the prerequisite complexity, such as our >
> cerebral cortexes, were capable of, and indeed utilized, top-down >
> control (in addition to the bottom-up control which remains).
>
> I don't understand this. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that
> I don't believe that causation can cross levels of explanation -- in
> either direction. Perhaps you could tell us more about it.
>
To quote from SCIENCE AND MORAL PRIORITY by Nobel
laureate Roger Sperry (the author of the famous 'split-brain'
experiments and the father of emergent materialism and the
cognitive revolution in neuroscience):
My long-trusted materialist logic was first shaken in the spring
of 1964 in preparing a nontechnical lecture on brain evolution in
which i was extending the concept of emergent control of higher
over lower forces in nested hierarchies to include the mind-brain
relation. I found myself concluding with the then awkward notion
that emergent mental powers must logically exert downward causal
control over electrophysiological events in brain activity. Mental
forces were inferred to be equally or more potent in brain dynamics
than are the forces operating at the cellular, molecular and atomic
levels. Again, in September of that year, when preparing a paper
for the Vatican Conference on Brain and Consciousness organized
by John Eccles, it occured to me that the functionist interpretation
of consciousness that I had outlined in the early fifties and still
favor must also logically call for a functional (and therefore causal)
influence of conscious experience in brain activity. It was obvious
that these combined concepts...would provide a new approach to
the old question of how consciousness may be of functional use
and exert a causal control role in brain processing. The kind of
psychophysical relation envisaged showed how mind could
influence matter in the brain, making the interaction of such
different things as mental states and physical events logically
understandable at long last on terms that were scientifically
acceptable.
In the mid-sisties, such interactionist concepts were still
complete heresy in neuroscience and I did not venture to push
them at the Vatican conference beyind mild reference to "a view
that holds that consciousness may have some operational and
causal use." To this Eccles responded by asking: "Why do we
have to be conscious at all? We can, in principle, explain all our
input-output performance in gterms of activity of neuronal circuits;
and, conscquently, consciousness seems to be absolutely
unnecessary!" This is, of course, what we had all been taught and
believed for decades, not only in science but also (by the great
majority) in philosophy. The idea that the objective physical brain
process is causally complete in itself without reference to
consciousness or mental forces represents the central premise of
behaviorism and of scientific materialism in general and has long
served as a prime basis for the renunciation of the phenomena of
subjective experience as explanatory constructs in science.
Eccles, however, already at the time a dualist by faith, training and
publication, went on to add, "I don't believe this story, of course;
but at the same time, I don't know the logical answer to it."
Nevertheless, his considered conviction on the first point was firmly
reiterated in a later session: "I am prepared to say that as
neurophysiologists we simply have no use for consciousness in our
attempts to explain how the nervous system works."
The main thesis of [my] essay...was psychophysical
interactionism, its logical support and its scientific, philosophic,
and human value implications. Essentially, it presented the view
that subjective experience as an operational derivative and
emergent property of brain activity plays a prime causal role in the
control of brain function. It differed fromprevious emergent theories
of consciousness, from C. Lloyd Morgan onward, in that earlier
emergent views of mind had been conceived of in therms that were
parallelistic, double aspect, or epiphenomenal, and had rejected
any direct causal influence of mental qualities on neural
processing. The thesis was focused on contradicting the
traditional, mechanistic assumption expressed by Eccles that
brain processing can be completely accounted for, in principle,
without including conscious phenomena. Presented in terms of
neural circuitry and concepts of neuroscience, my theory seemed
to counter and refute for the first time on its own grounds, the
classic physicalist assumption of a purely physical determinacy of
the central nervous system. Subjective mental phenomena had to
be included. Mind-brain interaction was made a scientifically
tenable and even plausible concept without reducing the qualitative
richness of mental processes. The overall aim of the paper...was
to show that this recognition of the primacy of conscious mind as
causal would alter profoundly the value implications of science
which were being downgraded by the then strongly dominant
philosophy of reductive mechanistic materialism.
At the same time, the proposed mind-brain model was taken to
undermine dualism as well by explaining conscious experience in
terms that would make mind inextricably inseparable from, and
embodied in, the functioning brain. It provided a rationale for the
evolution of mind from matter and also for the emergence of mind
from matter in brain development. Presented as a "conceptual
skeleton on which to build a body of philosophy", I desceibed it as
a scheme that "would put mind back into the brain of objective
science and in a position of top command."
After waiting more than three years during which the feedback
was mostly positive, especially from humanist groups, I tested the
theory more directly in the scientific community by presenting it at
a neurological meeting and then to the National Academy of
Sciences. A follow up article derived from my talks appeared in the
PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW and was reprinted several times. The
result was a wide exposure, including a critique and my reply to it,
within those disciplines most knowledgeable and most apt to be
critical. In these conjectural areas where the concepts are still
beyond any direct experimental verification, the next best test is to
put them in the marketplace to be churned over by hundreds of
munds from all different angles. In this respect the years 1969 to
1971 were the critical years for this theory. No logical flaw nor prior
statement, so far as I know, has yet come to light.
By the early 1970's, the modified concept of consciousness as
having causal efficacy began to gain substantial scientific
acceptance, particularly inpsychology in a pervasive resurgence of
mentalism and antibehaviorism that is still gathering momentum
[as of 1985]. Essentially, the new interpretation brought a logical
change in the scientific status of subjective experience, replacing
behaviorist principles with a mentalist or cognitivist paradigm.
Psychologists could now refute the logic and principles of
behaviorism and refer directly to the causal influence of mental
images, ideas, inner feelings, and other subjective phenomena as
explanatory constructs. The suddenness with which this began to
occur was almost explosive in the cognitive disciplines. The
movement has already been referred to as the "cognitivist
revolution" and also variously as the "humanist", "consciousness",
or "third" revolution, and has extended also into philosophy,
anthropology, and neuroscience.
And you were unaware of all this, Robin? Tsk, tsk...
> --
> Robin Faichney
> robin@reborntechnology.co.uk
>
> ===============================================================
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>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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