Better Living through Software

The main impediment to my writing reviews of the growing queue of finished books (more than 40 now), is the existence of new books to read.  Today I started reading “De La Mettrie’s Ghost”, by Chris Nunn.

Rather than wait until completing the book to review it, and thus choosing yet another new book over review of the old, I’ve decided to just comment whenever I feel strongly about publicly commenting on something I read.

In the first two chapters of “De La Mettrie’s Ghost”, Nunn does a fine job of summarizing both the philosophic and mechanistic views on the nature of consciousness.  I was delighted to see that he uses both Descartes and Popper in almost the opposite way that I would have, but with justification.  He describes the history of mechanistic models of consciousness (mind as machine) as being originally ‘hydraulics’, then ‘telephone exchange’, then ‘loom’, then ‘computer’.  Admirably, he acknowledges that even the ‘computer’ model of human consciousness is fatally and embarrassingly flawed.

It’s interesting to note that this exact same pattern has happened in models for economics and other attempts at modeling social behaviors.  Each new model (hydraulics, networks, processors) is slavishly worshipped as being the new truth, then discarded as being superstitious and naive when a new one comes along.  If the models were actually getting better at predicting anything within the realm that they claim to model (economics, consciousness, etc.) one could forgive this.  If true predictive progress were being made, one might even laud the idea that “science advances a funeral at a time” or “we all stand on the shoulders of giants”.

But as much as I hate to be buzzkill for the true believers, there is little evidence for the idea of progress.  The models appear to have more to do with the fads and passions than with any predictive ability.  The periodic lurching from model to model is a testament only to human fickleness.

In the days of Descartes, a certain pride in the power of the mechanistic model could have perhaps been winked at.  But now that we’ve given the modelers 200 years to prove themselves (and to fail), there is little excuse for anyone to be too credulous of a model, and little justification for the modelers to be too prideful.  These people should be the most humble humans alive.

This, combined with Nunn’s surprisingly honest admission of the failures of the past, is why I was shocked to read his conclusion.  He says, “The brain, neuroscience now conceded, cannot be very like any of our present day computers.  Nevertheless there must be something in the analogy since both brains and computers process information, while consciousness contains an ever-changing stream of information about all sorts of things, not unlike the data on the screen of a working laptop.” [emphasis mine]

Ignore for a moment the use of the quintessentially Orwellian “not unlike” — this statement contains a staggering presupposition which isn’t identified as such.  The author insists that “brains process information”, as if it’s established and unquestioned fact.

OMGWTF?!?!  Is it possible to imagine a more circular argument?  It’s like Paddy O’Doule hoisting himself aloft by his own belt-buckle.  Or worse, Paddy hoisting himself aloft by lifting a photograph of his belt-buckle!

The concept of “information” is a model that we use in computer science and mathematics.  It is derived from our very limited understanding of consciousness and is no more a definition of consciousness than is the concept of a “lens” or a “servo mechanism” (two other historically popular models with charlatans).

It’s child’s play to recall scenarios which blow apart the idea that “brains process information”.  Of course, if you’ve convinced yourself that this is what the brain does, that might be all that your brain does.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Dickie Dawkins’ brain was found to be purely an “information processing machine”.

I’m not discounting this book, since the author appears to adhere to a high standard of honesty and scholarship.  The author probably wasn’t even aware of the presupposition in his statement.  I expect the book to be worth my while.  But statements like these are a fantastic demonstration of the hubris of reductionist, mechanistic thinking.  Even when engaged in a critical analysis of the failures of reductionism, the author is utterly incapable of escaping the reductionist mental frame.  In fact, he uses the reductionist mental frame as the lens through which he evaluates consciousness, rather than vice-versa.

Thankfully, it appears that only intellectuals and scientists are ensnared by this idiotic mental trap.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 9:53 pm and is filed under book reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.