Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA10212 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 20 Jan 2002 20:04:09 GMT Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.0.20020120144722.03524c40@pop.cogeco.ca> X-Sender: hkhenson@pop.cogeco.ca (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 15:01:30 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@cogeco.ca> Subject: Re: Knowledge, Memes and Sensory Perception In-Reply-To: <LAW2-F53UO6g7Yusjzp0000772e@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 07:05 AM 20/01/02 -0800, you wrote:
>>Did you ever read Michael Gazzaniga's early work, in which he
>>mentions something which he called the "confabulator" which performs
>>exactly that function. It generates plausible explanations that we
>>use to fill in the blanks when we don't know the answers. I haven't
>>read any of his later stuff, maybe he has refined/renamed the concept.
>>
>>frankie
I quoted the heart of Gazzaniga's excellent work on the "confabulator" in
Memes Meta-Memes and Politics, an article I wrote in the late 80s. The
rest of the article can be found here:
http://www.evolutionzone.com/kulturezone/memetics/henson.memes.metamemes.and.politics.
In some places, especially where evolutionary psychology can be applied, my
thinking has moved on from this article, but most of it is still
valid. Keith Henson
***********************
Some mental agents are "wired in". The most obvious ones pull our
hands back from hot things. Others are not so obvious, but one which has
considerable study is often called "the inference engine." Split brain
research has established it to be physically located in the left brain of
most people, close to or overlapping the speech area. This module seems
to be the source of inferences that organize the world into a consistent
whole. The same hardware seems to judge externally presented memes for
plausibility. This piece of mental hardware is, at the same time, the
wellspring of advances, and the source of vast error.
---------------------
Footnote----- *The new
models even offer an explanation for that difficult problem, the origin
of consciousness. Each agent is too simple to be conscious, but
consciousness incidentally emerges as a property of the interconnections
of these agents.
--------------------------
In Society of Mind, Marvin Minsky uses the analogy that
consciousness emerges from non-conscious elements just as the property of
confinement emerges from six properly arranged boards, none of which (by
itself) has any property of confinement. (And you thought Ids and Egos
were complicated.)
Being able to infer, that is to find new relations in the way the
world is organized, and being able to learn inferences from others must
rank among our most useful abilities. Unfortunately, outputs of this
piece of mental hardware are all too often of National Enquirer quality.
Unless reined in by hard-to-learn mental skills, this part of our minds
can lead us into disaster. Experiments detailing the kinds of serious
errors this mental module makes can be found in Human Inference by
Nesbitt and Ross and in The Social Brain by Michael Gazzaniga.
(Sidebar) *****************************************
Gazzaniga demonstrated the activity of the inference engine module with
some very clever experiments on split brain patients. By the module
failing, we can clearly see how it is doing the best it can with
insufficient data.
What Gazzaniga did is to present each side of the brain with a simple
conceptual problem. The left side saw a picture of a claw, and the right
side saw a picture of a snow scene. A variety of cards was place in
front of the patient who was asked to pick the card which went with what
he saw. The correct answer for the left hemisphere was a picture of a
chicken. For the right half-brain it was a show shovel.
"After the two pictures are flashed to each half-brain, the subjects
are required to point to the answers. A typical response is that of
P.S., who pointed to the chicken with his right hand and the shovel
with the left. After his response I asked him 'Paul, why did you do
that?' Paul looked up and without a moment's hesitation said from
his left hemisphere, 'Oh, that's easy. The chicken claw goes with
the chicken and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.'
"Here was the left half-brain having to explain why the left hand was
pointing to a shovel when the only picture it saw was a claw. The
left brain is not privy to what the right brain saw because of the
brain's disconnection. Yet the patents's own body was doing
something. Why was it doing that? Why was the left hand pointing to
the shovel? The left-brain's cognitive system needed a theory and
instantly supplied one that made sense given the information it had
on this particular task . . . ."
The inference engine was a milestone in our evolution. It works far
more often than it fails. But as you can see from the example, the
inference engines will wring blood from a stone; you can count on its
finding causal relations whether they exist or not. Worse yet, the
inference engine probably can't detect when it doesn't have enough data.
Even if it could, it has no way to tell that to the verbal (conscious)
self.
(end sidebar) *********************************************
There are both genetic and memetic controls on the dangerous beliefs
that arise in this module, though they don't always work. I can't point
to genes for skepticism but (provided it did not interfere too much with
necessary learning) this characteristic would be of considerable survival
advantage. Being entirely uncritical of the memes you are exposed to can
be a fatal trait, or it can result in reduced (or no) fertility. The
classic example of a genetically fatal belief is the Shaker religion,
but intense involvement with a wide variety of memes (or derived social
movements) statistically results in fewer children.
[I can post the rest in 3-4 chunks if there are no objections]
===============================================================
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