Philosophy of Memory

How to Make Friends and Influence People now an iPhone App: Forget Me Not

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:43:26 GMT

iPhone application 'Forget Me Not'

In my previous blog post I discussed Locke's CommonPlace book and information overload in the 16th century. Now, my attention turns to what we use today.

Whilst Google manages our common knowledge extremely well, it does not help us remember the most basic and arguably important data for success, people's names.

Dale Carnegie, in his infamous book, How to Make Friends and Influence People, said that "a man's name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language". He gives an example of a useful strategy to remember people:

Whenever he met a new acquaintance, he found out his complete name, the size of his family, the nature of his business and the color of his political opinions. He got all these facts well in mind as part of the picture, and the next time he met that man, even if it was a year later, he was able to slap him on the back, inquire after the wife and kids, and ask him about the hollyhocks in the backyard. No wonder he developed a following! [1]

The new iPhone application Forget Me Not is designed to merge Google's search functionality with the Dale Carnegie's recommendation. What I find particularly interesting about this application, are the clue recommendations:

Clue Helper screen capture from Forget Me Not

These recommendations suggest that the 21st century iPhone user is just as interested in business connections as they were in 1936, but they no longer prioritize a person's core, such as their family or values (i.e. political opinion). I can't help but feel that remembering a person's sport's team is going to make less of an impression than remembering the name of a person's child.

Does this reflect the nature of conversation amongst strangers today, particularly those preoccupied with mobile phones? Do we converse about our sport or club affiliations more than we discuss the controversial, global issues that face the world? What sort of question do you ask of someone you just met to make a good impression?

On the mnemonic side, taking the time to record details of the location you met someone is a great way to jog memories of the person. Combining spatio-temporal information and facial features is likely to enhance subsequent remembering.

Forget Me Not, would surely be ideal to utilize when attending a professional conference. You could record a person's name, their field of study, their philosophical views and so forth. Probably asking about their family will yield better networking for further occasions.

I admit that I'm struck by the degree of alien interaction that occurs at philosophy conferences. Fellow philosophers might not discuss Britney Spears or the Mets, but they often come up and talk to you by blathering about this or that argument without ever really engaging with you on a personal level. This goes for both sexes, although I'm sure female philosophers feel under pressure to avoid as much 'small talk' as possible to appear intelligent. This is yet another arena where social intelligence is ignored for the glory of analytic capacity.

Anyway, I've bought the application. I'll let you know how it goes. :)

UPDATE: This application focuses on what is memorable, memory-hooks, but not what is strategic to remember about a person.

References

Carnegie, D. (1936) How to Win Friends and Influence People. New York: Simon and Schuster. 74.

Information overload, commonplace books and the backlash against rote memory in the 18th Century

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:40:45 GMT

Locke's Common-place book

Between 1500-1700 the amount of available knowledge increased dramatically and the lack of an ordered system for cataloging this information frightened scholars [1]. Initially ideas were grouped together in notebooks by subject, but this system was supplanted by Locke's new method, that indexed memorable ideas via alphabetic order, rather than by relevant heading. This method increased one's capacity to store ideas whilst simultaneously reducing search and retrieval time and promoting lateral thought by grouping semantically decoupled ideas.

Locke also developed his theory of personal identity during this period. Locke suggested that, instead of the body defining the beginning and end of a person's self, identity was co-extensive with memory. Locke's psychological theory first garnered a skeptical reception because of the difficulty reconciling the mind's instability, variability and transience--especially during sleep or altered states of consciousness. However, Locke's theory of identity gradually gained currency at the same time his method of indexing grew popular.

Systematically indexing one's thoughts external to the body supposedly kept the mind clearer and better ordered. It is almost as though externally representing one's memories kept the mind safer from the gusts of consciousness and emotion, thus reducing the sting of philosophical objections against a psychological theory of personal identity.

Externalizing the storage function of memory enabled Locke to push against rote memorization as the primary focus for education.

Locke... criticized the habit to collect and memorize arguments on the grounds that it misguided the understanding, made an individual "a retainer to others" and did not grant any solid foundation to knowledge. He acknowledged that the accumulation of sentences that was "very familiar among bookish men" could bring them "to furnish themselves with the arguments they meet with pro and con in the questions they study." But he maintained that although such "arguments gathered from other men's thoughts, floating only in the memory," could supply "copious talk with some appearance of reason," they did not help scholars "to judge right nor argue strongly, but only to talk copiously on either side, without being steady and settled in their own judgments." Moreover, "the multiplying variety of arguments" cumbered the memory to no purpose. [2]

Here Locke speaks scathingly of peers who simply parrot back information that they have read. Instead he values true understanding, where critical consideration from the reader is required. It's amusing to consider that similar arguments still occur in education debates today.

I find this even more amusing given the obsession of modern psychology (> 1885 post-Ebbinhaus) with rote memory task performance and the ability to remember stimuli verbatim. Whilst remembering facts is a component of memory, the noteworthy job is interpreting the relationship of stimuli with other relevant parts of our lives. I think it may be (ironically) via false memory research that this valuable contribution of memory is finally getting empirical treatment.

Finally, this essential misunderstanding of memory as merely a storage and retrieval device gets to a core of my issue with the way contemporary epistemology deals with mental faculties. Whilst epistemologists are delighted to treat the 'imagination' as an active mental capacity with 'imaginings' as outputs, they still adopt simplistic metaphors when discussing memory. Perhaps Locke's solution to information overload can pave the foundation for a new way of conceiving memory today in a similarly vexed information environment.

References
[1] Blair, A. (2003) Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca. 1550-1700. Journal of the History of Ideas 64, 11-28

[2] Dacome, L. (2004) Noting the Mind: Commonplace Books and the Pursuit of the Self in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Journal of the History of Ideas 65, 611.

Torture the Tool of Memory

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:04:16 GMT

In the recent Extended Mind debate, it can be easy to forget how long discussions of 'artificial' memory have been in existence. I don't normally quote great swathes of text, but this single sentence from 1200AD, expresses such a richness of content that I couldn't resist:

Three Capetian French scholars consulting an astrolabe, ca. AD 1200

I claim it as established that all books that have been written, or have existed in every region of the earth, all tools, records, inscriptions on wax tablets, epitaphs, all paintings, images, and sculptures; all crosses, of stone, iron, or wood set up at the intersections of two, three, or four roads, and those fixed on monastic houses, placed on top of churches, of houses of charity and bell towers; pillories, forks, gibbets, iron chains, and the swords of justice that are carried before princes for the sake of instilling fear; eye extractions, mutilations, and various tortures of bandits and forgers; all posts that are set up to mark out boundaries; all bell-peals, the clap of wooden tablets in Greek churches, the calls to prayer from the mosques of the Saracens; the blarings of horns and trumpets; all seals; the various dress and tokens of the religious and the dead; alphabets; the insignia of harbors, boats, travelers; inns, taverns, fisheries, nets, messengers, and various entertainers; knights' standards ,the insignia of arms, and armed men; Arabic numerals, astrolabes, clocks, and the seal on a papal bull; the marks and points on knucklebones, varieties of colors, memorial knots, supports for the feet, bandages for the fingers, the lead seals in the staves of penitents; the small notches that seneschals, administrators, and stewards make in sticks when they pay out or receive household expenses; the slaps that bishops give to adults during sacramental annointings; the blows given to boys to preserve the events of history in the memories; the nods and signals of lovers; the whispers of thieves; courteous gifts and small presents--all have been devised for the purpose of supporting the weakness of natural memory.
Boncompagno da Signa, "On Memory" in The Medieval Craft of Memory edited by M. Carruthers and J.M. Ziolkowski. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p.111

I love the historical features of this account such as 'eye extractions'. We know that fear, pain and difficulty is more likely to cement long-term memories than mundane affairs. Still, it's rather shocking to consider torture as a tool of memory.

As I read this I think of Sterelny's account of how human civilization has shaped its environment to suit cognitive tasks larger than the mind of a single individual.

Source Monitoring: 15 years later

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:06:10 GMT

The Dream, Henri Rosseau, (1910) MoMA

Source Monitoring was first described as a framework for understanding how people attribute the source of mental experiences in 1993 (Johnson, Hastroudi & Lindsay, see also Johnson & Raye). The Source Monitoring Framework (SMF) has been used by many labs in the last 15 years to investigate how the subjective experience affects memory judgments. Features that make up complex event memories are derived either perceptually through the senses or via thought (e.g. imagined or inferred) including:

- Perceptual information (e.g. size, taste)
- Spatial details (e.g. left or right of an object)
- Temporal details (e.g time of day, season)
- Semantic information (e.g. gist, category membership, associated items)
- Emotional information (how we or others felt)
- Records of the cognitive operations engaged (imagining, logical inference, counterfactual consideration)

The output from these different modalities and processes combine to constitute an episodic memory (Johnson, 2006). In addition to information or details, the recollection of episodic memories often generate phenomenal experiences, such as emotions, mental images, smells or the 'sense of being there' etc...

The contrast between detail and phenomenality is loosely captured by Endel Tulving's (1985) 'remember-know' distinction. Participants can sometimes know details of a prior event without putting themselves in the past, so to speak--a phenomenon known as 'mental time travel' (Suddendorf & Corballis, 2007). There are a few models that try to establish how details and familiarity interact to influence a remember/know judgment of a particular mental experience.

A promising two-dimensional model positions memory details on the y-axis and familiarity on the x-axis (Rotello, Macmillan, Reeder, 2004). A person is supposed to judge a mental experience as 'remembering' when the difference between details and familiarity is minimized and as 'knowing' when the difference between details and familiarity is pronounced, e.g., I remember being a bridesmaid for my best friend because I can bring to mind many details of the event and a strong emotional conviction that I attended. However, I only know that I completed yr.12 chemistry because whilst my familiarity is very high, my ability to pick out details of the the experience is limited. Conversely, I only know the public transport system of Montreal because I can bring to mind details of the trains and buses, but cannot remember learning about them.

A consistent question in the SMF is precisely how people use detail and familiarity to judge a mental experience as a memory. What evidence do we draw on to judge a particular mental event as referring to an event x rather than an imagining x?

It seems that mental experiences are attributed to source categories according to assumptions about average differences in the features that characterize sources (e.g. more affective information for actually experienced events, more cognitive operations for imagined events...). It may be that we build up expectations for experiences over time and use those expectations to guide our judgments about them.

References:
Johnson, M.K. (2006). Memory and reality. American Psychologist, 61, 760-771.
Johnson, M.K., Hastroudi, S., & Lindsay, D. S. (1993). Source Monitoring. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 3-28.
Johnson, M.K., Raye, C.L. (1981). Reality Monitoring. Psychological Review, 88, 67-85.
Rotello, C. M., Macmillan, N. A., & Reeder, J. A. (2004) Sum–difference theory of remembering and knowing: A two-dimensional signal detection model. Psychological Review, 111, 588–616.
Suddendorf, T., & Corballis, M. C. (2007). The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it unique to humans? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30(3), 299-313
Tulving, E. (1985). Memory and consciousness.Canadian Psychologist, 26, 1–12

Sleep, False Memories and the Posterior Analytics

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:56:00 GMT

Sleep

A recent Harvard experiment (Payne et. al., 2009) shows that an afternoon nap selectively increases false recall of semantically similar critical words to presented words [see DRM paradigm]. This is because sleep plays an active rather than a merely passive role in memory consolidation. Upon waking, experimenters found that subjects remember the gist of the presented items more easily than specific words, which probably accounts for this effect.

This result may be because the DRM paradigm engages semantic memory more then episodic memory. Where as semantic memory extracts semantic regularities to emphasize what memories share in common, episodic memory stores veridical details to keep memories separate.

Sleep does more than simply consolidate memories in veridical form, additionally transforming and restructuring them so that insights and abstractions can be made, inferences can be drawn, integration can occur, and emotionally salient aspects of information can be preferentially remembered over neutral aspects. (Payne et. al., p.333, in-text references removed)

Sleep transitions the experience of particulars into generalities, universals and abstractions. When I read of this quality of sleep, I thought of Aristotle's posterior analytics (post. an.) and it's high esteem for demonstration. I think I should read it again with thoughts of memory and the nature of the mind to create representations of the world around it. On first blush it seems the will is not needed to forge rational demonstrations. Like bayesian reasoning, even the unconscious and undirected parts of our minds can process information in sophisticated and defensible ways.

References

Payne, J.D., Schacter, D.L, Propper, R.E., et. al. (2009) The role of sleep in false memory formation. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. 92. 327-334

Roediger, H.L., III, McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, Vol. 21, 803-814.

Building robots with souls?

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:18:32 GMT

The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger

One of the keynote speakers at ASCS 2009 this year was Thomas Metzinger. He presented a hypothesis from his book The Ego Tunnel, that our sense of having a soul or self stem from cognitive systems for physical self-represention. These systems are activated during normal waking life and misaligned during phantom limb or out-of-body experiences. These representations along with sensory feedback (e.g. proprioceptive, visual) create the phenomenenology of embodiment and location in reality. To give the audience a sense of how these representations function, Metzinger showed videos of Qped, a starfish-shaped self-modelling robot that has a nascent sense of self.

Qped 'starfish' continuous self-modelling robot.Video

Animals sustain the ability to operate after injury by creating qualitatively different compensatory behaviors. Although such robustness would be desirable in engineered systems, most machines fail in the face of unexpected damage. We describe a robot that can recover from such change autonomously, through continuous self-modeling. A four-legged machine uses actuation-sensation relationships to indirectly infer its own structure, and it then uses this self-model to generate forward locomotion. When a leg part is removed, it adapts the self-models, leading to the generation of alternative gaits. This concept may help develop more robust machines and shed light on self-modeling in animals. Video of robot, article

When the robot has a limb cut off, it reconfigures itself self-image and then learns a new gait to compensate.

This self-representation is present at birth, e.g. even congenital amputees can report phantom limb pain. It is not learnt through experience, but developed in-utero and presumably comes 'online' at some point during pregnancy. Perhaps this is when abortion becomes repugnant? Will self-modelling robots become the first contenders for robot rights?

Placebo & Mental Time Travel

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 02:42:12 GMT

Figure 1: Imagining a healing white light might actually precipitate the body's own capacity to deliver pain relief (e.g. opioids), but won't reduce the size of a cancerous tumour.

Placebo-activated opioids, for example, not only relieve pain; they also modulate heart rate and respiration. The neurotransmitter dopamine, when released by placebo treatment, helps improve motor function in Parkinson's patients. Mechanisms like these can elevate mood, sharpen cognitive ability, alleviate digestive disorders, relieve insomnia, and limit the secretion of stress-related hormones like insulin and cortisol.

In one study, Benedetti found that Alzheimer's patients with impaired cognitive function get less pain relief from analgesic drugs than normal volunteers do. Using advanced methods of EEG analysis, he discovered that the connections between the patients' prefrontal lobes and their opioid systems had been damaged. Healthy volunteers feel the benefit of medication plus a placebo boost. Patients who are unable to formulate ideas about the future because of cortical deficits, however, feel only the effect of the drug itself. The experiment suggests that because Alzheimer's patients don't get the benefits of anticipating the treatment, they require higher doses of painkillers to experience normal levels of relief...

...one way that placebo aids recovery is by hacking the mind's ability to predict the future. We are constantly parsing the reactions of those around us—such as the tone a doctor uses to deliver a diagnosis—to generate more-accurate estimations of our fate. One of the most powerful placebogenic triggers is watching someone else experience the benefits of an alleged drug. Researchers call these social aspects of medicine the therapeutic ritual. [Italics added] Link

This is the first time I've considered the intimate relationship between mental time travel and the placebo effect. The mental time travel hypothesis supposes that the same memory system (episodic) which allows us to vividly recollect past events is also activated when we anticipate future events. The research above suggests that patients who lack the cognitive capacity to consider the future also fail to show placebo benefits.

If this is true, then new age remedies such as visualization, meditation or hypnosis may have successful impacts on patients. Simple activities such as imagining or recollecting comfort and peacefulness could affect placebogenic triggers for pain relief.

Similarly, people who struggle to construct vivid mental images or lack empathy for the experience of fictional characters, may also be less susceptible to placebogenic triggers.

Helen Keller, Cryptomnesia and the Many Systems of Memory

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:42:42 GMT

Helen Keller is famous for being a tremendously successful deaf, blind and mute writer and activist. She is also central to one of the most famous cases of cryptomnesia, a circumstance when a person utilizes implicit information whilst experiencing no phenomenal familiarity with the content. In this case, Helen wrote the story The Frost King and was accused of plagiarizing The Frost Fairies by Margaret Canby.

In the history of analytic philosophy, there is much debate about whether a cryptomnesic experience counts as a memory. Bertrand Russell [1] thought that a real memory needed the bearer to have the sense of familiarity that it was indeed a memory. His thinking is certainly shared by Hume [2], who argued that memories, as opposed to imaginings, were particularly vivid to the person experiencing them. Martin and Deutscher [3] pointed out that the necessary conditions of a memory were not the phenomenal experience of it as a memory, but the correct causal connection to the perceptual event that precipitated it. Contemporary cognitive science echos Martin and Deutscher's observation. It recognizes a variety of memory systems, some of which may be active during cryptomnesia and some--such as conscious familiarity--may be passive, making any binary classification of Helen Keller's experience insufficient to capture the complex cognitive processes occurring in her mind at the time she wrote her story.

Philosophical issues aside, here is a great video of Helen and her teacher Anne Sullivan:

Thanks to tomble for the link.

References:

[1] Russell, B. Analysis of Mind
[2] Hume
[3] Martin. C.B. & Deutscher M. (1966) Remembering. The Philosophical Review. 75(2). 161-196

The Danger of the Extended Mind

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:54:12 GMT

To be presented at Australasian Society for Cognitive Science (ASCS09)

TITLE: The Danger of the Extended Mind

ABSTRACT: This paper accepts three claims of the Extended Mind Hypothesis (EMH): 1) External elements form part of the machinery of cognition, insofar as they causally interact with mental states. 2) The meaning of our thoughts is partly explained by reference to the external world (content externalism) and 3) Objects outside the physical brain can operate in functionally equivalent ways to many brain-based processes. I reject criticisms of EMH by Adams & Aizawa including 1) that cognition should be restricted to the domain studied by cognitive psychologists 2) that the processes of cognition are defined by the production of intrinsic or original content. Instead of engaging with these claims, I ask: What difference does it make to include external epistemic artifacts as part of the mind? I consider philosophical issues specifically relating to EMH, thus avoid issues relating to piecemeal replacement and functionalism generally. In one sense it does not matter whether we include external elements as part of cognitive processing. It does not matter if our beliefs are stored in our brains or on a notepad as long as we can access them when needed, just as it does not matter if a person’s leg is made of wood or flesh if it helps them walk.

However, in another sense it might matter a great deal to obviate differences between peripheral (e.g. edge detection in early vision, night vision goggles) and central processing. By ‘central processing’ I mean processes that lie at the core of mental life such as analyzing, understanding and evaluating, henceforth summarized by the term ‘thinking’. Thinking is a skill. Like any skill, thinking requires practice. A virtuoso thinker needs a strong capacity to concentrate and an excellent working memory. Thinking practice is internally generated and executed, even when influenced by a variety of inputs. If thinking is a skill, then failure to practice leads to cognitive atrophy. Increasing our peripheral access to data, whether via iPhones or iPlants increases the availability of information and opportunity for distraction, but not our ability to centrally process that information. Even worse, the more access we get to data, the less we bother to memorize for any particular task. This loss of mnemonic practice in turn decreases our ability to hold many ideas simultaneously and thus further decreasing our ability to think. This is the real danger of saying it doesn't matter if external epistemic artifacts are included in the 'mind'. By obfuscating the difference between peripheral and central processes, we risk confusing data for thinking

UQ Philosophy Women's Dinner

Wed, 27 May 2009 23:06:25 GMT

On Saturday night I hosted a dinner for UQ women in Philosophy. We had a whole covern turn up (13)*! It was awesome. There was enough food for forty people! Everyone seemed to have a great time and we're all looking forward to another one in the spring.

Preparing for everyone to show up. I wanted lots of candle-light for ambiance.

I discovered that tea lights look amazing in my grandmother's tea cups. The light shines right through the bone china!

Reading the dictionary by candle-light. It was a great party. I had a very interesting conversation about the rivers of Hades and the actual role of the river Styx (not as important as I'd thought!). This led to reading Robert Graves on the river Lethe and that lead to this post.

* I actually have a theory about why 13 is a good number for a non-sit down party. 12 is divisible by 2,3,4,6, which means lots of opportunities for little groups to form and manage themselves. But, with excellent division comes stability, so adding an extra person ensures more chaotic fracturing of social interactions, helping to move people around like a wooden spoon in a pot of dumplings.

Social Gaming for Good Memory

Sun, 24 May 2009 11:51:22 GMT

...it’s very important to use your brain, to keep challenging your mind, but all mental activities may not be equal. We’re seeing some evidence that a social component may be crucial... The evidence suggests that people who spend long stretches of their days, three hours and more, engrossed in some mental activities like cards may be at reduced risk of developing dementia. Researchers are trying to tease apart cause from effect: Are they active because they are sharp, or sharp because they are active?

.. So far, scientists here have found little evidence that diet or exercise affects the risk of dementia in people over 90. But some researchers argue that mental engagement — doing crossword puzzles, reading books — may delay the arrival of symptoms. And social connections, including interaction with friends, may be very important, some suspect. In isolation, a healthy human mind can go blank and quickly become disoriented...

“There is quite a bit of evidence now suggesting that the more people you have contact with, in your own home or outside, the better you do” mentally and physically, Dr. Kawas said. “Interacting with people regularly, even strangers, uses easily as much brain power as doing puzzles, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is what it’s all about.” Link

It's fairly intuitive that people are happier and more content when they have friends and family surrounding them. However, prior to reading this article I would have considered the memory benefit of puzzle solving, crosswords etc... to be fairly independent of the social component for avoiding dementia. I also would have thought diet would play a greater role.

On the other hand, loss of social interaction probably reduces mental agility across all age groups regardless of dementia. Because social isolation in non-dementia adults is reversible, it is probably ignored when considering poor cognitive performance. However, if life decisions such as moving cities, having children etc... are a serious handicap to cognition, then perhaps we should be even more concerned about the loss of community and fragmentation in our society?

Also, the benefits of socializing might also justify a moderate partying lifestyle amongst undergraduate students*.

* Although this is potentially offset by binge drinking and drug use.

The Lethe River and the Value of Forgetting

Sun, 24 May 2009 03:06:46 GMT

The Waters of Lethe, Thomas Benjamin Kennington

...the river of Unmindfulness, whose water no vessel can hold; of this they were all obliged to drink a certain quantity, and those who were not saved by wisdom drank more than was necessary; and each one as he drank forgot all things. Plato

The Lethe River was one of the rivers of Hades* also known as the river of oblivion. The river functioned as a mind-wipe and was either positive or negative depending on what type of soul a person had. Heroes and virtuous folk drank from lethe on their way to Elysium to be freed from the sorrows and suffering of a past life. Where as mediocre souls drank from the river Lethe as punishment so that they would not know who they were when they arrived to work, machine-like, for eternity in the Asphodel Meadows. Does this make forgetting a good or a bad thing? Wouldn't the heroes want to remember their feats of bravery and achievements even if it meant reflecting upon the hurt and difficulty of their lives? If total amnesia was great for heroes, why was it bad for regular souls? Did the heroes retain free will or some other attribute that enabled them to be fulfilled in their sojorn through the underworld?

Forgetting is generally frowned upon. We are told 'lest we forget' regarding World War I because remembering the actions of our ancestors is the right and respectful thing to do. Also, learning from the past is also a moral good in the sense that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it and cyclical mistakes are bad. The aim of life is to learn, retain and react differently as our experiences build and our capacities change. A good person builds their goodness by learning from their errors, not by forgetting their past and repeating mistakes. Punishments such as prison must be remembered to act as a deterant against future crime.

However, forgetting is encouraged when reminiscing becomes too painful or disabiling. Those in broken love affairs re-write the narrative of their relationship to bolster their ego and reconcile the outcome. Modern society encourages us to forget inductive evidence for stereotypes and concentrate on only the person we meet as an individual.

At some level the value of memory ties in with the problem of evil. The problem of evil struggles to explain why a omnibenevalent, omniscient and omnipotent God could allow suffering. One answer is to claim that suffering builds character. One might respond that building character does not demand the degree of suffering inflicted upon the average person in one lifetime. In the same way, forgetting might be valuable in the sense that it can reduce suffering, just as offered by the river Lethe for heroes and the virtuous.

* Other rivers of Hades included: Acheron (river of woe), Cocytus (river of lamentation), Phlegethon (river of fire), Styx (river of unbreakable oath or hate)

Dollhouse, Repressed Memory and Personal Identity

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 02:21:55 GMT

Joss Whedon has written a new TV series called Dollhouse. A brief summary is below:

Eliza Dushku plays a young woman called Echo, a member of a group of people known as "Actives" or "Dolls". The Dolls have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas, including memory, muscle memory, skills, and language, for different assignments (referred to as engagements). The new persona is... an amalgam of different, existing personalities... The Actives are then hired out for particular jobs – crimes, fantasies, and the occasional good deed... In between tasks, they are mind-wiped into a child-like state... The story follows Echo, who begins, in her mind-wiped state, to become self-aware.

The first few episodes created an interesting phenomenon amongst the audience of the show. Online discussion boards were rife with eager fans of Joss Whedon's previous work (e.g. Buffy or Firefly) expressing disappointment about their own emotional detachment from the newest series. The stunts were great, the futuristic science fiction was interesting, but something was missing. What was it?

The audience struggled, because they couldn't connect with an empty vessel as a protagonist. Whilst the idea of an amnesiac is intriguing, we don't care for Echo, because in an important sense, she ceased to exist the moment the Rossum Corporation wiped her mind. What then, does it mean to exist?

Modern philosophers consider a person to exist if they are a temporally extended psychological entity bound in a physical body; e.g., a human with consciousness and connected memories. This notion ensures that zombies are not people, but also entails that there is no immaterial soul that survives after the body ceases to be.

The psychological reality of a normal person includes their sense of self and their ability to connect up with their memories consciously. The psychological model also explains why we think that a person is 'gone' if they're in the advance stages of dementia, in a coma or a vegetative state.

Joss Whedon realizes this of course, which is why Echo's journey is not simply about an amnesiac doll, but about a girl's journey uncovering 'repressed' memories. We're meant to believe that Rossum's procedures were able to suppress Echo's psychological attributes and memories, but not exterminate them altogether. This is obviously conveyed by the name 'Echo' which implies a causal connection between the current form and the solidity of the original person.

Repression is a Freudian notion of cognitive mechanisms that cordon off painful or unwanted memories. Whilst there is no scientific evidence for such mechanisms, memories do become difficult to access for various reasons (e.g. over time or via drugs). Whilst the audience struggled to care about Echo in the beginning of the series, they became engaged as soon as her amnesia was shown to be partial; that is, once they knew she was still a person.

So, whilst Dollhouse is based on an inaccurate repression theory of memory, it recognizes the importance of memory and personal identity to establish a connection with the audience.

Teaching Turing Machines

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:58:55 GMT

It can be hard to convey the beauty, simplicity and profundity of Turing Machines to introductory cognitive science students who frequently have no background (or interest) in mathematics, logic or philosophy. Today I demonstrated a Turing Machine using students to act out the various parts.

The demonstration function was 2 + 1 = 3

I lined up nine students in front of the class to be the 'tape' and one student in front to be the 'machine head'.

The Tape

Each student on the 'tape' represented either a 1 or a 0 and stood in the following pattern

...000110000...

- '1s' stood facing the class and each represented the number '1'
- '0s' stood with their backs to the class and represented the space between numbers.

The Machine Head

The 'machine head' student started in state A. State A was visually represented by the 'superman pose' (hands on hips, looking triumphant).

When the machine head switched to state B, she put her hands by her sides.

In order to 'write' on the tape, she used her hands to mechanically turn the pertinent 'tape' student around 180 degrees so that he or she now represented a 0 or 1 respectively.

After a few minutes demonstrating the machine head's repertoire of possible actions, I positioned the machine head to the far right and gave the class the following rules to solve 2 + 1 = 3

The Instructions*

1. If the machine is in state A, and reads a 0, then it stays in state A, writes a 0, and moves one square to the right.

2. If the machine is in state A, and reads a 1, then it changes to state B, writes a 1, and moves one square to the right.

3. If the machine is in state B, and reads a 0, then it changes to state A, writes a 1 and stops.

4. If the machine is in state B, and reads a 1, then it stays in state B, writes a 1, and moves one square to the right.

The Output*

Students calculated 2 + 1 = 3 using instructions 1 through 4. Each output on the 'tape' is represented by steps (i) through (vii) represented in the diagram above. The final output was:

...001110000...

Which meant three students faced the class and the machine head stood in superman pose at a halt.

Students seemed to have fun and I hope they got a better understanding of Turing Machines by acting them out physically than simply reading about them in a book.

* Instructions and output from Crane, T. (2003) Computers and Thought. The Mechanical Mind, Ch.3, 94-95.

Francis Galton and the History of X-Phi

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:48:58 GMT

Apart from controversial work on Eugenics, Francis Galton seems to be a pioneer in experimental philosophy--when the intellectual distinction between philosophy and psychology was arguably at its most diaphanous. His statistical analysis of individual differences in mental imagery (1880) shows an early interest in testing folk intuitions against the 'expertise' of introspective peers. Then, as now, the ontological status of mental imagery was a topic of inquiry. In an early volume of Mind, he explains:

I desire to define the different degrees of vividness with which different persons have the faculty of recalling familiar scenes under the form of mental pictures, and the peculiarities of the mental visions of different persons. The first questions that I put referred to the illumination, definition and colouring of the mental image, and they were framed as follows...:-

"Before addressing yourself to any of the Questions on the opposite page, think of some definite object--suppose it is your breakfast-table as you sat down to it this morning--and consider carefully the picture that rises before your mind's eye.

1. Illumination--Is the image dim or fairly clear? Is its brightness comparable to that of the actual scene?
2. Definition--Are all the objects pretty well defined at the same time, or is the place of sharpest definition at any one moment more contracted than it is in a real scene?
3. Colouring--Are the colours of the china, of the toast, bread crust, mustard, meat, parsely, or whatever may have been on the table, quite distinct and natural?" [301-302]

Galton first asked his male friends in the scientific world for their responses to his questions because "they were the most likely class of men to give accurate answers concerning this faculty of visualizing, to which novelists and poets continually allude" [302]. He offers no reason why these men would be best able to know mental imagery. Indeed, it turns out that "the great majority... protested that mental imagery was unknown to them, and they looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the words 'mental imagery' really expressed what I believed everybody supposed them to mean" [302]. Galton describes his friends as somewhat like colour blind men before knowledge of a perceptive deficiency.

Indeed, a critic said, "these questions presuppose assent to some sort of proposition regarding the 'mind's eye' and the 'images' which it sees... This points to some initial fallacy'... It is only by a figure of speech that I can describe my recollection of a scene as a 'mental image' which I can 'see' with my 'mind's eye'... I do not see it... anymore than a man sees the thousand lines of Sophocles which under due pressure he is ready to repeat. The memory possesses it..." [302] His friends doubted that references to imagery were anything more than metaphor.

Instead of accepting the word of his peers, Galton persisted. He asked 'the folk' (including women and children) about mental imagery and he found them very forthcoming about their inner experiences. These subjects were surprised that anyone would doubt the veracity of mental images given how vividly they experienced them.

Galton ends up completing a statistical survey on adolescent boys and adult men that yields little data of interest*; nevertheless, his method of seeking empirical results from participants unfamiliar to him might strike a resonance with x-phi researchers.

* Galton found that young boys report a greater vividness of the colour conception than adult men.

References

Galton, F. (1880) Statistics of Mental Imagery. Mind, 5(19), 301-318

iPlant - Brain Acupuncture

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 04:34:31 GMT

Link

Would you like to keep some parts of your brain under greater control? If so, then you should consider getting brain implants that look like acupuncture needles!

This is not science fiction. Implants are currently used to inhibit in hyper-active brain regions.

"Many disorders, including Parkinson's, essential tremor, dystonia and obsessive compulsive disorder are characterized by hyperactive brain regions. Deep brain stimulation is replacing lesioning as standard treatment for these disorders, is EMA and FDA approved and is 'very benificial' in 80% of cases (Gritsun et al, 2006)." Link

iPlant, a company selling these device says, "iPlants could help a great number of people suffering from poor monoamine signaling, learning and self-control. Link

If they hinder overactive regions, would they also hinder normally functioning ones? If so, then a nemisis could destroy your identity by sticking some of these bad boys into your perfectly working memory systems. If The Prisoner were made today, the BBC would absolutely do an episode on these.

Ethics discussion on the iPlant website. It includes such gems as: iPlant-driven behaviour should only be engaged in when the user would normally be idle or engaged in destructive behaviour.

Mastering Dukkah for Peak Performance

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:54:04 GMT

The researchers from the University of Munster carried out the human study after results in rats suggested that memory could be boosted by a diet containing 30% fewer calories than normal.

The study volunteers, who had an average age of 60, were split into three groups - the first had a balanced diet containing the normal number of calories, the second had a similar diet but with a higher proportion of unsaturated fatty acids, such as those found in olive oil and fish. The final group were given the calorie restricted diet.

After three months, there was no difference in memory scores in the first two groups, but the 50 in the third group performed better.

They also showed other signs of physical improvement, with decreased levels of insulin and fewer signs of inflammation...

...care was taken to make sure that the volunteers, despite eating a restricted diet in terms of calories, carried on eating the right amount of vitamins and other nutrients.

...the drop in insulin levels were one plausible reason why mental performance might improve. Link

Combined with the literature on reduced-calorie diets and lifespan, this new research immediately makes me think of viticulture; i.e., wine-makers know that the best grapes grow in somewhat hostile conditions. What does this say for the human condition? Did God build suffering into the fabric of health?

Perhaps, but I find it strange that the experimental conditions offered participants the 'right amount of vitamins and other nutrients' and still called it low-calorie. Doesn't the body quickly adjust to new conditions and burn calories more efficiently? So long as the body is getting its nutrients, then doesn't a 'low-calorie diet' become just 'a diet'? Would participants waste away if they stuck to the regime, or could they continue it ad infinitum? Or, to put it more significantly, does it matter if they waste away if they live twice as long?

If the ascetic life is the right path, then the only trick left is psychological interpretation of temperance so that it is no longer perceived as a negative.

Metaphorysics

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:05:18 GMT

This is a poetic response I wrote in 2003 to a piece fo writing called "Principia Metaphysica" by Colin McGinn. It is a bit 'in-jokey', so reading the original may make it more fun to read. On the other hand, it might work alone. I'm not sure. Comments and criticisms definately encouraged. BTW, Colin's website seems to be causing trouble at the moment.

Metaphorysics

1. Philosophical poetry is a neglected genre
A neglected beast is either shot or nursed to health.
It depends how much glue we need.
What potential is in this sick creature?
"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it."
Ah Bertrand.
What is the point really? What do I really think?
I'm having a tingling sensation in my concept area-by turns painful and pleasant.

2. Philosophy is a game.
A family resemblance of rules, politics and scoring
Sometimes we run naked across the field with 'fuck you' scrawled on our buttocks.
Bluntness and crudity.
Either way, you'll want to transcend the audience and perform in the spectacle.
Are the successful philosophers the ones on the team?
Or did they just court the right metaphor?
She was the most beautiful metaphor in the kingdom, with her long flowing stream of mental images and divine aesthetic.
Compare the starving artist and the starving philosopher.
Does the latter get published posthumously?
The natural history of philosophical thought is not without interest.

3. Apparently 'Metaphysics is possible'.
Possible?-Possible to come to clarity?
The coyness of our concepts, their reticence
The maddening glimpse
The marvel is that one can come to a clearer view.
The law that can be spoken of
Is not the constant law;
The laws are empty, yet they cannot be exhausted by use.
Deep, laws are like the ancestor of the myriad creatures.
Blunt the sharpness;
Untangle the knots;
Soften the glare
Does this method create a vista or a shadow?
The imprecision of a formulation does not always count against it.
Is anyone under the blankets hoping the boogey man will go away?
Tomorrow morning you will wake up and cold argument will shine in through the window.
Natural laws constitute objects but not the logic of the world.
Do poems call the intellectual bluff?
You've gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run.
Or will this yield a breakthrough into our own concepts?
If philosophy is chastening, then poetry must be a fragmented fertility dance.
Stogid, 'straight-laced' stuff. Here comes the humor.

4. A law walked into a bar and ordered a dirty martini, the bartender felt unnecessary.

5. Stream of consciousness, rough drafts.
Does the polish of submission strip away good brain excreta?
Or slough off the dead cells of ideas?
Will the nature of laws manifest through the inkblot?
Sail a different tack
Explore the third side of the triangle.
The concept of a disposition has proved a useful one to hide behind
Laws?-Well, they're merely dispositions to have certain effects
Mental states?-dispositions to behavior.
Philosophy is hiding behind things and failing to achieve what we want.
Is poetry a sort of desire to be open and frank about how little we know?
Or an attempt to confront our own ways to avoid really answering the questions.
It has never been settled what form an illuminating philosophical account should take.
A good account of a concept should make it seem vital-indispensable and alive.
Touching philosophical nerves.
Truth is a tedious view out the window, with clouds, trees and powerlines.
It is a soft scene with infinite detail, only the sparrow flying past takes our attention. Why?-It is alive, it's swoops, it changes.
Living things are stimulating like that. Are concepts?
We are short-attention span children: Where are the scene relief clowns and funny makeup?
Roll up! Roll up!
Coming soon, The Spectacular Isolated Particular!
It can be thrilling to gain insight into one's own concepts, strangely enough
Occam's razor should excite the senses.

6. Philosophical advance often consists in a slight change of emphasis:
The wind of analytic philosophy and the sun of poetry had a bet on who was the most powerful.
They saw reality standing on a hill wearing a metaphor on top of the laws of nature.
The wind and the sun agreed that whomever could get reality to give up her metaphor would be the most powerful.
Analytic philosophy blew and blew on reality and she wrapped the metaphor tighter and tighter around her.
Eventually the wind gave up and the sun of poetry began to shine. The warmth of the sun made reality want to take off all her metaphors and she revealed the laws of nature in all their glory.
Force versus suggestion?
The psychoanalysis of philosophical poetry: penis or breast?
Thrust out the bullet from the gun,
And kill this poor neglected creature?
Or clutch it tenderly to the bosom of thought,
And nurse it back to health?

7. Does metaphysics lend itself to this kind of writing?
Is there a seething ontology beneath metaphor?
We are great armchair explorers on a dangerous path of conceptual analysis.
Analytic philosophy traveling upon a conceptual desert.
Our camels parched and our hope shot to the wind.
Yet, like a turing machine we'll never stop our tedious recursion.
Unless you pick us up and give us another program.
Is that the point of poetry?--Think outside the box?
Don't look know, you've ordered that late-night self-help tape.
Climb inside your left hemisphere.
'You-too-can-tap-your-vast-unconscious-potential'.
Is philosophy a creative art?
A palette of metaphors set against the sunset of ideas.
There might be techniques to learn.
How to bring three dimensions to two.
What do we do with those of us who cannot draw a straight line?
There are moments when you seem to have concepts in your sights, and moments when they won't stay still.
One would think concepts would either be clear or not, but they seem to fade in and out of clarity
Should we teach creative philosophy alongside logic 101?
From each according to his ability, and to each according to his need.
Is metaphor more powerful than logic?
Are we in danger of falling for false idols: rhetoric, charisma and charm?
Rhetoric, the great seducer.
Logic, the virgin bride of Christ.
Slavishly devoted to the rules
Recursion
Recursion.

8. Aristotle said that poetry is a mode of imitation.
The means is rhythm, melody and verse.
Poetry presents objects as necessarily good or bad.
It is natural for humans to delight in imitation
The truth of this is shown by experience: though the objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to view the most realistic representations of them in art.
Objects include: the lowest form of animal, dead bodies and the laws of nature (?)
Fear of certain concepts is characteristic of philosophy; we need to conquer this fear.
The poet's function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen.
That is, what is possible as being probable or necessary.

9. Here I should insert something about the importance of play in philosophical thinking
Work is the nitty-gritty, the sighing and clarification, the distinctions, exclusions, the rigour…mortis.
Play is the superficial, the exploration, the adventure and the lark.
Swim and bask in your philosophy, splash about for no reason but that it feels good.
Perhaps we should spend a decent part of our career in the kiddie pool?
All work and no play makes Jerry a dull boy.
Can there be rules to play?
Is it like improvisation in music?
There are scales and keys to slide around.
Some people are certainly good.
We can all agree with that.
What about children in the sandbox?
Is it alright for Jimmy to keep building amorphous sand-creatures and then destroying them with his fists?
Is there an 'ought' to play?
If play is important, then it must be doing some work.
For example, providing insights, brainstorming etc…
If it is work, then it can't be play.
Therefore, play isn't play.
Let's rile people up
PETA justifies extreme (possibly irrational) acts against animal violence because no vegetarian ever quit because some group of people threw paint on a fur coat.
On the other hand, some carnatarian might catch the news headline and begin to question.
Similarly, the chief characteristic of aphorisms is their utter disregard for falsehood.
Those who know the truth won't flinch and those who didn't care, might begin to question.
We could spur them to action, get them off the couch!
There is a lot of wishful thinking in philosophy

10. We've got to keep people's attention
Poetry is a two-place relation.
Without an audience it is nothing
There is no meaning without interpretation
The more interpretation, the more meaning
A chorus of responses
Challenging discord, sublime harmony
Is meaning intrinsic to analytic work?
If Two Dogmas fell in the woods, and no one was around to hear them, would they still make a sound?
Discuss.

The Simpsons Excites and Re-excites the same Neurons

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:20:02 GMT

In the study, Prof. Fried observed the neural activity in the brains of 13 epilepsy patients, as the patients watched clips from TV shows like Seinfeld and The Simpsons. A short while after, the test subjects were asked to describe what they remembered from the video clips. During recall, the exact same neurons that had fired while viewing a clip fired once again while the subject was recalling it. Soon, the researchers were able to predict what clip the subjects would recall just by looking at the neurons that lit up seconds before the recall experience was vocalized. Link

This is an exciting development in short-term memory research on the hippocampus. It is also validation for David Hume's theory of mind. Hume thought that the way we differentiate perceiving, remembering, imagining, and reasoning is by their phenomenal properties; how vividly we experience them. Specifically, he supposed that remembering was closest to perception--and generally a more vivid and lively experience--than imagining. It would be good for his theory if the neurons used during perception were more activated when remembering than when imagining. Because even if the way we differentiate between mental processes is more complicated than Hume's picture, there still might be some reliable physical differences that help us monitor the source of our thoughts.

If Hume was part of Prof. Fried's experimental team, then he'd probably like to contrast the neural activity of imagining and remembering the Simpsons. Of course, there are very difficult methodological problems with such an experiment as anyone imagining the Simpsons is probably accessing memories in order to furnish the imagining. Also, how could we test the imagining, remembering and perceiving of the same stimuli within subjects without conflating the results? Perhaps subjects could be asked first if they had seen a particular episode (and removed from the study if they had), then asked to imagine what will happen, then shown the video and subsequently asked to remember what they saw. If at any point subjects remembered that they had seen the episode before, then they would leave the study. Whilst this experimental design is not ideal; it might turn out that imagining produces a quantifiable difference in neuron firing in the hippocampus than remembering.

There has been a lot of philosophical criticism of Hume's theory on the basis that our imaginings can be more vivid than some of our memories, so vivacity can't be the way we differentiate between them: e.g., imagining lying on a beach on a tropical island on a perfect day might affect us more than remembering climbing a tree at our childhood home. I have no doubt we use many different systems to evaluate our mental experiences: We reason about ideas and contrast them with other experiences we've had, we infer the likelihood of something being true based on our theory of memory formation and retention: e.g. we know that older memories fade and horror movies can create vivid nightmares. Nevertheless, it seems likely that one of the systems we use is connected with 'how much like perception' a mental experience is. When our mentalizing seems real, we judge it more likely to be a memory than something we just imagined. New research on neuron firing patterns seems to back up this practise.

There is no 'Eternal Sunshine' drug to selectively erase memories

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 02:02:20 GMT

The popular press is excited by the prospect of a drug designed to delete memories we don't wish to retain. The story reads like a super-villian's research proposal. It's a pity the research isn't about 'memories' as most people understand them. The current research shows that mice with boosted levels of α-CaMKII exhibit behavioral calmness when returned to a terrifying cage they'd once been inside. Their lack of fear indicates that they have forgotten previous exposure to an electric shock. The results are extremely interesting, but they don't say much about deleting our memories.

The reason is that memory is not a unitary faculty and our memories are not the same as a mouse's reaction to shock. For example, the mechanisms by which we are able to recall Aunt Flo's wedding are not the same as those that enable us to tie our shoes or learn to avoid an electric fence. When most people think of a stereotypical 'memory', they consider highly conceptualized, detailed autobiographical memory from their own past. The fact that experimenters can break a behavioristically generated association in a mouse, doesn't shed light on our representational memory.

Strangely enough, Quine said something relevant to this in the opening pages of Word and Object. In this passage he argues that immediate experiences (e.g. sounds, electric shocks, pain) do not ground our language or our memories. We gauge meaning from our experiences by reference to physical objects, not the sense-data that we initially perceive.

...immediate experience simply will not, of itself, cohere as an autonomous domain. References to physical things are largely what hold [language] together. These references are not just inessential vestiges of the initially inter-subjective character of language, capable of being weeded out by devising an artificially subjective language for sense data. Rather they give us our main continuing access to past sense data themselves; for past sense data are mostly gone for good except as commemorated in physical posits. All we would have apart from posits and speculation are present sense data and present memories of past ones; and a memory trace of a sense datum is too meagre an affair to do much good. Actual memories mostly are traces not of past sensations but of past conceptualization or verbalization. Quine, W.V.O. (1960) Word and Object. MIT Press. p.2-3

The point of this passage (for the sake of this post) is that the meaningfulness of our autobiographical memories is abstracted from direct experience or even recollections of sensation. No doubt our strongest memories are adorned with emotion, mental imagery and recreated sensations; but their cognitive impact can be abstracted from these feelings. Remembering is not simply retrieval; it requires the re-creation of past events. We furnish these re-creations with our imagination more than directly retrieving inputs. Thus a variety of non-memory-based mechanisms (e.g. current emotional state) impact how we perceive the past.

Because I believe that the mind supervenes on the brain, I have no doubt that neurochemical research will reveal much about our mental states. But, we're a long way from knowing how to selectively create a spotless mind.

Russell Reconciles Materialism and Consciousness

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:37:00 GMT

Bertrand Russell wrote The Analysis of Mind (AOM) in 1921. His writings reveal influence from a variety of sources including the fledgling disciplines of both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. Behaviorism argued that the science of psychology could achieve objective results without the philosophical difficulties of consciousness or introspection. Psychoanalysis interpreted our introspective failings as a challenge to create better reflective techniques.

Russell was impressed by J.B. Watson, stating: "it is humiliating to find how terribly adequate this hypothesis turns out to be". Where 'this' was the contention that "thought processes" were merely "the habit of language". Russell also acknowledged that the psychoanalysts were onto something. He states, "What, I think, is clearly established, is that a man's actions and beliefs may be wholly dominated by a desire of which he is quite unconscious, and which he indignantly repudiates when it is suggested to him."

Even though Russell was sympathetic to the notion that some of our mental actions were driven from "unconscious" desire, he argued that this was merely a "causal law" of our behaviour and not the mysterious, mythological character psychoanalysts portray it as. Russell describes the psychoanalytic conscious vividly as "...a sort of underground prisoner, living in a dungeon, breaking in at long intervals upon our daylight respectability with dark groans and maledictions and strange atavistic lusts".

Russell comments that while psychologists were busy finding an objective, physical basis for their subject matter, physicists, with the advent of relativity were making their subject-matter less and less material. Russell seeks to reconcile the material and mental using the functional approach of William James and the "American new realists" (AOM, preface). "James's view is that the raw material out of which the world is built up is not of two sorts, one matter and the other mind, but that it is arranged in different patterns by its inter-relations, and that some arrangements may be called mental, while others may be called physical." (AOM, I) Russell reconciles monism by distinguishing matter from its arrangement.

However, Russell argues against the notion that the essence of everything mental is conscious (AOM I); suggesting that some mental acts are not-conscious. For example, perhaps one could have beliefs or desires that one is not conscious of? Russell says that a man could desire his lunch but not be conscious of it until he tells himself that he is hungry. Thus a desire is conscious only when we tell ourselves that we have it. (AOM I) He believes that "an "unconscious" desire is merely a causal law of our behaviour. namely, that we remain restlessly active until a certain state of affairs is realized, when we achieve temporary equilibrium If we know beforehand what this state of affairs is, our desire is conscious; if not, unconscious. The unconscious desire is not something actually existing, but merely a tendency to a certain behaviour; it has exactly the same status as a force in dynamics." (AOM I) Russell's talk of a dispositional subconscious mental states pre-dates Gilbert Ryle's similar argument from The Concept of Mind in 1949.

In conclusion, whilst Russell draws inspiration from contemporary theories of mind, he is not bound by them. Instead he creates a hybrid materialist view of the mental that acknowledges the explanatory force of associationism and the poverty of our own introspections, yet includes consciousness as a legitimate object of psychology to be explained.

Hippocampus

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:17:23 GMT

Image from Rose, S. (1992) The Making of Memory. London: Bantam Press. p.125

Look! This is your hippocampus. Your hippocampus is where memory begins. Short term memories are formed in this sea-horse shaped organ and then reactivated there when you dream. An electrical storm in your hippocampus, say from an epileptic fit, results in amnesia. As you age, Alzheimer's first attacks your hippocampus, creating disorientation and memory loss. Nevertheless, the hippocampus is one of an elite subset of brain regions that are capable of generating new neurons throughout life.

How to Fight a Rumour

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 05:31:19 GMT

FOR ANYONE WHO has ever worried about the power of a vicious rumor, Barack Obama's strategy over the summer [Fight the Smears] must have seemed almost bizarre.

...

New research into the science of rumors suggests Obama's approach may be a sounder strategy - and the reasons why it makes sense suggest that we misunderstand both how rumors work and why they exist.

By using the tools of evolutionary theory and new approaches to mathematical modeling, researchers are drawing a clearer picture of how and why rumors spread. As they do, they are finding that far from being merely idle or malicious gossip, rumor is deeply entwined with our history as a species. It serves some basic social purposes and provides a valuable window on not just what people talk to each other about, but why.

...

Our brains aren't terribly adept at distinguishing people who are "actually" important from people who simply receive a lot of attention.

...

Other than denying a rumor that's true, perhaps the biggest mistake one can make... is to adopt a "no comment" policy: Numerous studies have shown that rumors thrive in environments of uncertainty. Considering that rumors often represent a real attempt to get at the truth, the best way to fight them is to address them in as comprehensive a manner as possible... An effective rebuttal will be more than a denial - it will create a new truth, including an explanation of why the rumor exists and who is benefiting from it.

The more vivid that replacement is, the better [stealing thunder]. When done correctly and early enough in a rumor's lifetime, it can shift the subsequent conversation in beneficial ways. Link [Italics added]

Understanding social reasoning and information exchange is absolutely critical. So many people (especially the intelligentsia) mock and ridicule the habits of 'normals' talking around the water cooler about Britney or Paris. Yet, they too gossip about their collegues, sexual misconduct, political funding decisions and so forth. Mock all you like, but these exchanges build social credibility; the more negatives you know about a highly discussed community member, the more acceptance you can get in the network. Remember that peer acceptance is critical for advancement in every profession.

Social heuristicss such as listening to rumours and including gossips in one's social circle cuts down on the amount of social cognitive processing required by individuals, freeing them to concentrate on other concerns.

The rational strategy is to offer information about individuals relevant to your superiors. Your boss must find you socially valuable to promote you. Of course pure merit can get you quite a way along the food chain. Some professions are better than others at recognising such contributions. Nevertheless, without appreciating the role of gossip, you're unlikely to be invited to the cool kids party.

Olfaction: Epistemic bootstrap to the external world?

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:45:48 GMT

On the one hand, "...olfaction is our slow sense, for it depends on messages carried not at the speed of light or of sound, but at the far statelier pace of a bypassing breeze, a pocket of air enriched with the sort of small, volatile molecules that our nasal-based odor receptors can read.

Yet, on the other hand, olfaction is our quickest sense. Whereas new signals detected from the visual system, auditory system, proprioception (body position), nociception (pain) and gustation (taste) "must first be assimilated by a structural way station called the thalamus before reaching the brain’s interpretive regions, odiferous messages barrel along dedicated pathways straight from the nose and right into the brain’s olfactory cortex, for instant processing. Importantly, the olfactory cortex is embedded within the brain’s limbic system and amygdala, where emotions are born and emotional memories stored. That’s why smells, feelings and memories become so easily and intimately entangled...

...numerous studies have shown that smell memory is long and resilient, and that the earliest odor associations we make often stick...

...while the word and visual cues elicited associations largely from subjects’ adolescence and young adulthood, the smell cues evoked thoughts of early childhood, under the age of 10. And despite the comparative antiquity of such memories, Dr. Larsson said, people described them in exceptionally rich and emotional terms, and they were much likelier to report the sudden sensation of being brought back in time...

...Dr. Larsson attributes the youthfulness of smell memories to the fact that our olfaction is the first of our senses to mature and only later cedes cognitive primacy to vision and words, while the cortical link between olfaction and emotion ensures that those early sensations keep their bloom all life long."

Link

Perception is one of the most basic epistemic sources we have. Yet, most epistemologists spend their entire philosophical lives using examples from vision(e.g. apprehending objects) or audition (e.g. understanding assertions). Perhaps olfaction is the most basic of all the senses, in the sense that the signal from external stimuli is least compromised by interpretation during its path to consciousness? All other sensory inputs must survive selective processing by the thalamus and an unpredictable journey to various parts of the cerebral cortex.

Even though most people struggle to identify smells conceptually, they can recognise smells with great reliability and also trigger memories more powerfully than almost any other stimulus: internal or external. In fact, when considering how we bootstrap ourselves into the world; how we align our experience of the world with what exists; perhaps olfaction is the biggest piece of leather?

The Power of Repetition on False Beliefs

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:26:45 GMT

The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer's hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man's curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don't remember how you learned it.

This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.

With time, this misremembering gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength...

...Psychologists have suggested that legends propagate by striking an emotional chord. In the same way, ideas can spread by emotional selection, rather than by their factual merits, encouraging the persistence of falsehoods...

...Journalists and campaign workers may think they are acting to counter misinformation by pointing out that it is not true. But by repeating a false rumor, they may inadvertently make it stronger. In its concerted effort to "stop the smears," the Obama campaign may want to keep this in mind. Rather than emphasize that Obama is not a Muslim, for instance, it may be more effective to stress that he embraced Christianity as a young man.

In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the Supreme Court wrote that "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." Holmes erroneously assumed that ideas are more likely to spread if they are honest. Our brains do not naturally obey this admirable dictum, but by better understanding the mechanisms of memory perhaps we can move closer to Holmes' ideal. Link

Epistemology prefers to examine the value of truth, over other values such as moral impact, belief coherence, desire for social approval or emotional saliency. This emphasis goes hand-in-hand with treating memory as a passive mechanism, i.e., 'shit-in/shit-out'. The metaphor of memory as a simple storage and retrieval device does nothing to explain belief revision and why false beliefs may sometimes be justified, rational or valuable to individuals, regardless of their veritistic value.