Minds, Brains and Science

Although almost thirty years old, Searle's (relatively) easy to read popular classic of analytical philosophy still stands up as a corrective to the exuberant claims of non-philosophers about the nature of the mind and of the world.

The book is the slightly adapted text of six radio lectures for the BBC and, like Merleau-Ponty before him, Searle rose well to the challenge of concision and clarity for an educated lay audience.

The book should be seen as a strike back by the Anglo-Saxon analytical tradition at failures to use terms (such as science) correctly and logically in the enthusiasm to promote the (then) new cognitive sciences.

In general, Searle make his case and the book was influential in forcing cognitive scientists and social scientists to stop and start to 'think' about how they thought.

Philosophy is now much more integrated into the technological projects surrounding machine intelligence and neuroscience, albeit with sloppy thinking still rife amongst the more excitable transhumanist element.

Nevertheless, the text is not a Bible and things move on. Analytical philosophy is a primary tool for removing obfuscations and defining possible meanings but it often comes to a halt in making the world meaningful.

Searle himself expresses something of this in his inconclusive approach to the hoary old determinism and free will debate.

He successfully (in my view) explains why the equally hoary old mind-body problem was a non-problem but analytical approaches that work so well here seem to fail him on free will which we will come to again towards the end of this review.

Nevertheless, his criticisms of assumptions that were then popular about artificial intelligence and the applicability of the term 'scientific' to the social sciences still, broadly, stand up.

But there are comments and criticisms to be made, if only that analytical philosophy takes us a long way in removing stupidity and obscurantism from debate but that it can get stuck in its own logic.

For example, Searle is very assertive that his claims that artificial intelligence cannot become conscious stand regardless of exponential growth in computing power.

His analysis of the difference between the syntactical and the semantic strike me as sensible but his famous Chinese Locked Room thought experiment is not as conclusive as first appears.

He describes the actuality of intelligence based on formal processes but what he does not take into account is the emergence of self-reflexion by artificial intelligence that has access to a different but equal range of (sensory) inputs and can evolve into a mode of being based on a determination to exist for itself.

Now, before we go too far, this is not to accept the nonsense of much of the singularity brigade who continue to misunderstand what consciousness is (much as Searle pointed out) but it is to suggest that, just as we evolved into consciousness from a material substrate so might a technological invention of ours.

Similarly, his rather sharp negative view of the social sciences as science is also unanswerable as it stands but we should not confuse a terminological problem with an actual problem in the world.

Writing thirty years ago, Searle was still dealing with the false claims of such analogical and magical thinking as Freudianism which constructed vast edifices and lucrative careers on a bed of sand.

Indeed, the twin intellectual absurdities of behaviourism and Freudianism implicitly underpin the very Anglo-Saxon determination of Searle to find a middle way that actually works.

Today, we are more critical but we are also in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water insofar as the social sciences are not credibly scientific but they are still useful.

The question becomes now almost a political one - how are they useful and to whom are they useful and a dash of Foucault might help us here alongside our 'analysis'.

Perhaps we need a new term for what the social sciences are, based on their probabilistic and contingent nature and (certainly and unlike the hard sciences) they need to be placed under much more aggressive individual and social scrutiny in regard to their claims.

The problem area today is something that Searle might not have predicted - the claims of 'hard' neuroscientists to be able (in due course) to provide explanations for default human behaviour.

From this comes the theoretical model of all human behaviour being predictable no less than the weather - that is, not in the specifics which prove to be unknowable after only a short period of forward analysis but in the general processes and systems.

The danger here is not only 'hubris' but the prediction becoming true not because it is true but because it can be made to be true by intervention. This 'nudge' interventionism which has become fashionable amongst the dimmer sort of centrist politician desperate to control what cannot be controled.

Such projects are either doomed to failure because of the chaotic system in which they operate or they will require the type of de-humanising tyrannical interventions that Aldous Huxley feared in order to be (or seem to be) effective.

In this respect, the work that Searle has started requires continuation for a new generation of simple minds with funds and careers on the line and weak politicians holding the grant strings.

The final area where criticism may be due is in his surprisingly limited analysis of the determinism and free will debate where there is no analytical solution because determinism is logical and yet the actuality of choice is embedded in our experience of the world.

Of course, the set of philosophers who have tended to have the most cogent criticism of determinism are the continental existentialists but, hey, this book was written at a time when the analytical and continental schools did not talk to each other.

Searle is moving towards categorising the determinism/free will problem as a non-problem as he ably does with the mind-body problem which I characterise (again, in quasi-existentialist terms) as one of consciousness being an emergent property of matter where only matter exists.

However, he cannot make the same leap and I suspect that is because determinism is logical but not true and an analytical philosopher cannot accept that something that appears logical (and the assumptions are sound) may not be true - that is, consistently meaningful.

The point here is that free will is also an emergent property of consciousness which is an emergent property of matter and that, though matter is determined all things being equal, the arrival of self-reflexion and thought, within constraints, can change the nature of the matter that would otherwise have been predetermined.

To say that the subsequent matter was predetermined is logical but not true because it is meaningless in the context of the arrival into the system of an emergent consciousness.

Searle offers a useful corrective to the dreamy new age invention of quantum physics as cause for consciousness (though one should retain an open mind) and, since then, as cause for the last ditch defence of platonic mathematical truths.

In essence, the quantum elements within classical physics simply cohere into the physical substrate from which we derive.

My consequent argument is that, just as indeterminacy is lost as the system organises itself into the material substrate of the world, so indeterminacy re-appears at the higher level with awareness of oneself as having choices, even if these choices are heavily constrained by the nature of matter.

We might take the invention of manned flight as an example where it was not determined that man fly but that a will to fly created sets of choices whereby he did fly but was constrained by the determinism of matter as to what was possible and thereby following certain technologically determined paths once the choices were made.

The other factor not taken into account in assessing free will is the illusion of the future. The future is always assumed to exist but it only exists as an extrapolation of the unfolding of materiality.

In fact, the future is as probabilistic as the social sciences. It probably will happen but it need not exist unlike the past which has unfolded already as a result of the working out of material laws (and some choices) that have been experienced.

This, of course, is the problem of time but arguments from cosmology, physics and mathematics (and science fiction) do not trump this philosophical truth that the future only exists when it has happened.

This rather puts the kybosh on a lot of ideas about time including those of J. W Dunne which were a last refuge for many spiritualists and other romantics.

In the real world, our understanding of scientific rules and processes makes the world thoroughly predictable regardless of this fact that the future does not exist until it has happened but the indeterminacy of consciousness means that the future can also be changed.

It is this latter indeterminacy that creates the science fiction hope that the future determined by the working out of what we see around us might be changed by an act of will.

Again, in the real world, human power to change the future is limited, suffers from inadequate knowledge of consequences and is often collective (that is, it averages out in the 'wisdom of crowds' or serious change gets 'croweded out' by a default thinking which is barely conscious).

We must be clear here. Being human does not intrinsically mean that a human being is capable of self-reflexive choice and so of not being determined.

It is the exercise of a capability of being human - self-reflexive choice and the 'weighing up' of intentionalities - that creates freedom.

Most people most of the time are determined by their conditions and, of course, most people most of the time may have little choice in their conditions. Free will is thus a possibility but not inherent in being human simply by dint of being an evolved ape.

Nevertheless, the fact that indeterminacy is an evolved quality of consciousness in the context of a state of being where the future is only set because of determinacy and not because it exists means that evolved consciousness can change the 'determined' future.

This is not an argument for the hysteria surrounding multiverses which is another extreme mathematical invention but it is an argument for accepting that free will and effective determinism within classical physics can co-exist, especially as the free will is extremely limited in scope.

Free will can rearrange existing molecules for micro-utilitarian purposes but it cannot change the structure of reality that permits the survival of the organism. In any case, the organism's sphere of influence is tiny and highly localised in space and time.

So, there is no free will/determinism problem any more than there is a mind/body problem.

The value of this book is the value implicit in the discussion above. It makes you ask questions. Like all the best philosophers, Searle does not assert the truth but gives a view of the truth that keeps open the door to disagreement.

In a time when we are surrounded by the rise of dim-witted text-based religious assertion, new age wish-fulfilment flummery and ecstatic claims by 'scientists' who think that science fiction is a true representation of the world, this sort of thinking is invaluable.

A great modern philosopher! John Searle is a man who cuts through much of the theoretical bullshit found in philosophy and the humanities, writing books that are relevant and accessible despite covering complex topics.

Searle is clear and straightforward as usual. He definitely knows how to get under the skin of the AI crowd.

As much as I like Searle, this is (I think) the most distilled Searle's philosophy of mind.

Not really something you read if you know Searle's biological naturalism and his reasons for it.

'Minds, Brains & Science' was a pleasure to read & dwell upon. This book can never be dated, especially for those readers who want to search for the reasons why we have a thinking process. This thinking process we know separates us from robots. However, to what extent can we have a mind & brain which is different from AI technology? This question along with others is answered in this book in keeping with the development of science during the 1980's. The book is written in a way that even non-science readers can understand. It is a quick read & in certain places, one tends to smile realizing that the author did not himself realize the great extent to which AI technology would develop in the 21st century. The growth of AI technology makes one wonder whether indeed, could it be possible that one day, our own robots will start to have a thinking process & a will of their own? The book in a easy to read manner analyzes questions regularly posed about the difference between brains & minds as well as what is science's ultimate take on the idea of a free will. I loved the simple everyday analogies & examples used by the author to analyze the theme of minds, brains & the difference between them. The author, John Rogers Searle, has made a deep study on the matter of science's & philosophy's take on the mind of a human being which can be debatable especially for those who believe in a soul, the power of a human being's free will & God. Otherwise, the book is really an interesting one to study. Five stars from me !

Minds, Brains and Science – 1984 Reith Lectures

I’ve been wondering how I ought to review this book. The options are to just say that I really enjoyed it and that I think people should read it - particularly given it is on such an interesting subject. But that seems a bit pointless. I then thought I might run through the various chapters and give a summary of them – which was what I had a mind to do until I actually sat down at the keyboard. Now, I think I’m just going to ramble. (No surprise there, I guess).

Let’s say you had a machine and you wanted to know if it was conscious or intelligent or not. How would you go about testing it to find out? I remember the first time I read about Turing and his test – but mostly about his life and how outraged I was at him being persecuted for being homosexual – if you don’t know this story then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing Turing was the man who more or less invented the modern computer and he turned his mind to how one could go about telling if a computer was intelligent. His test was to put someone in front of a computer screen and to have that person engage in a series of conversations with a real person and with a computer program. The person in front of the computer screen would only see the output, either from the person typing in another room, or from the computer program – they would have no way of knowing which was which. And that is the point of the test. If the person engaged in this conversation is unable to tell which is the computer and which is the person – well, then we would have to say the computer is intelligent.

There are still people who run versions of the Turing test today, although the questions are limited to a specific field of learning to give the programmers a chance. My favourite story about someone running the Turing test involves the person who was asking the questions (about the life and plays of Shakespeare – if I remember correctly) deciding that they were talking to a computer – rather than an English teacher – because no ‘real’ person could know so much about Shakespeare. I like to think of this as the inverse Turing test.

It sounds like a pretty good idea, this Turing test. If you can’t tell the difference between a person and a computer when you are talking to them, well, that has to mean there is Artificial Intelligence … doesn’t it? According to Searle the answer to that question is no. And to prove it he came up with his own thought experiment called the Chinese Room – which he describes in this book.

You are brought into a glass room and in that glass room there is a pile of Chinese symbols and beside them a series of instructions. The instructions are in English – a language you are fluent in – about what to do with the Chinese symbols – a language you have no knowledge of at all. The instructions say that if someone comes to the window and holds up a sign that has a squiggle, line, squiggle on it you are to locate this sign and then hold up the sign from the pile that is indicated by the instructions. People come to the window and hold up signs and you look through your instructions and hold up the corresponding signs from your pile.

What you don’t realise is that the people outside the room are Chinese speakers and their signs says things like, “Do you know where the bathroom is?” and your signs say things like, “Yes, take the first left, you can’t miss it.”

Now, the person outside the room would naturally assume you can speak Chinese – but do you? You see, you are doing exactly what the computer in Turing’s test is doing. The person outside the room can have no way of telling the difference between you speaking Chinese and you following a series of non-Chinese instructions. The outputs are exactly the same – but can you say you speak Chinese on the basis of this test? I think the answer has to be no.

This is my problem with Searle – he makes so much sense and is so clear and so apparent that it is hard not to just agree with him. And this is true even though some of his conclusions ought to make me feel a bit concerned. For example, he says elsewhere that Materialism is the greatest mistake facing social science today – now, I ought to find that a concerning statement – but he explains his concerns with Materialism so lucidly that it is hard to disagree with him.

Searle’s argument is that consciousness requires intention. It doesn’t matter if you do all of the acts, have all the appearance of being conscious, the thing that makes consciousness ‘real consciousness’ is intention.

The second half of this book looks at the nature of intention and how actions, in as far as they are actions, need to be ‘intended’. Of course, intentions are not simple things, rather we have clusters of intentions and these are realised (if at all) through the application of our will and a complex interrelationship of our skills and abilities.

He has much of interest to say about the nature of free will and whether or not social sciences will ever be ‘proper sciences’ in the sense that physics is a science. He thinks not, but interestingly because the social sciences deal with things that are neither physical nor mental – but somewhere in between – like ‘inflation’ or ‘marriage’.

To Searle the mind is a property of the brain, in much the same way that digestion is a property of the stomach. He does not say that it exists separately from the brain, just as digestion does not exist separate from the stomach – but chopping up the stomach is never going to completely explain digestion, and chopping up the brain is never going to completely explain thinking. There is a complex interrelationship between mind and brain and it makes little sense to follow the Cartesian dualism of the mind/body split and try to work out which is physical and which is mental – just as it is equally senseless to follow the strict materialist view in effectively denying the existence of all mental states.

The thing I like most about Searle is that he says things like it is pointless trying to deny that we have a subjective consciousness (a first person consciousness, if you will) that feels like we have both intentionality and free will. Any theory that denies we have intentions needs to back up this suggestion with some pretty serious explaining. However, because modern science seems to spend an awful lot of time providing explanations for the world that seem counterintuitive we almost think consciousness needs to be explained in a way that makes no sense too. Ironically, the fact some modern theories seem daft has actually stood in their favour.

Like I said, I have a very strong attraction for anyone who can explain complex ideas in simple and engaging ways. I really like people who can come up with clever and new ways of tackling difficult questions and make the answers seem to shine. Sometimes I do worry that I am being blinded by his clarity and the eloquence of his explanations – but then, it is generally better to be blinded by clarity than it is to be dumbfounded by convoluted nonsense.

I can think of no better use to put one’s mind to than reading one of Searle’s engaging books. And this is a particularly engaging one.

Um bom livro para quem gosta de filosofia e ciência. Searle conta-nos como a mente e o cérebro podem estar interligados e que influência isso tem nas nossas escolhas.
Este livro fala do problema filosófico do livre arbítrio e a tese que defende é o dererminismo moderado.
Gostei do livro pois ajudou-me no ensaio filosófico que estou a fazer

SEARLE'S SIX 1984 LECTURES FOR A "GENERAL" AUDIENCE

John Rogers Searle (born 1932) is an American philosopher at UC Berkeley. He has written many other books, such as 'The Mystery of Consciousness,' 'The Rediscovery of the Mind,' 'Mind: A Brief Introduction,' 'Mind, Language And Society: Philosophy In The Real World,' etc.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 1984 book, "The ideal series of Reith lectures should consist of six broadcast units, each of exactly one-half hour in length, each a self-contained unit that can stand on its own, yet each contributing to a unified whole consisting of the six. The series should build on the previous work of the lecturer, but at the same time it should contain new and original material. And... it should be completely accessible to an interested and alert audience ... [with] no familiarity whatever with the subject matter... One of my strongest reasons for wanting to give the Reith lectures was the conviction that the results and methods of modern analytic philosophy can be made available to a much wider audience... The overriding theme of the series concerns the relationship of human beings to the rest of the universe. Specifically, it concerns the question of how we reconcile a certain traditional mentalistic conception that we have of ourselves with an apparently inconsistent conception of the universe as a purely physical system." (Pg. 7-8)

He asserts, "Mental phenomena ... whether conscious or unconscious, visual or auditory, pains, tickles, itches, thoughts, indeed, all of our mental life, are caused by processes going on in the brain." (Pg. 18) Later, he adds, "Actions characteristically consist of two components, a mental component and a physical component... The mental component is an intention... The kind of causation which is essential to both the structure of action and the explanation of action is intentional causation... Any intentional state only functions as part of a network of other intentional states... it only determines its conditions of satisfaction relative to a whole lot of other intentional states." (Pg. 63-68)

He recounts his famous "Chinese Room" argument, and concludes, "if going through the appropriate computer program for understanding Chinese is not enough to give YOU an understanding of Chinese, then it is not enough to give any other digital computer an understanding of Chinese. And again, the reason for this ... [is that] If you don't understand Chinese, then no other computer could understand Chinese because no digital computer, just by virtue of running a program, has anything that you don't have. All that the computer has, as you have, is a formal program for manipulating uninterpreted Chinese symbols." (Pg. 32-33) He concludes, "No computer program by itself is sufficient to give a system a mind. Programs, in short, are not minds, and they are not by themselves sufficient for having minds." (Pg. 39)

He admits that "I would like to be able to keep both my commonsense conceptions and my scientific beliefs... But when it comes to the question of freedom and determinism, I am---like a lot of other philosophers---unable to reconcile the two." (Pg. 86) He adds, "we similarly can't give up the conviction of freedom because that conviction is built into every normal, conscious intentional action. And we use this conviction in identifying and explaining actions. This sense of freedom is not just a feature of deliberation, but is part of any action, whether premeditated or spontaneous. The point has nothing essentially to do with deliberation; deliberation is simply a special case." (Pg. 97)

Searle's books are "must reading" for anyone studying modern philosophy, and particularly the philosophy of mind; and this is a very accessible "introduction" to his thought.