Surfaces & Essences - Questions
Questions:
- Is thought based on "nothing but" analogies?
- Prevailing theories of "attention" (the "pointy end" of consciousness) focus on "working memory", which has a limited ability to juggle "things". Working memory therefore tries to "cheat" by making "chunks" of percepts. For example, not four lines -- a square. In general, some kind of pattern. What is the relationship between "pattern" and "analogy". Are there not patterns that are not clearly analogies? It would seem that, once recognized, a pattern can be the source of a new analogy, but perhaps analogy is a special case of pattern and it's pattern seeking that's the "fuel" of idea creation.
- "Pattern recognition" is the mental model behind modern efforts at machine perception
- What is meant by "our" concepts? Do the insights of S&E apply to "the" mind or the mechanism of a cultural mind - the zeitgeist?
- Is there evidence that analogy is the "fuel" of perception in the brain?
- What about the idea that the brain builds a "model" of reality? That's a rather static idea compared to the dynamic image of constant analogy making. However, the "model" idea is implicit in what philosophers call the problem of "representation" - How are ideas and memories "represented" in the brain? Along the same lines, how are analogies "represented"?
Can we compare S&E to Darwin's "Origin of Species"? Both volumes include extensive quantities of data to build support for an original insight. In the case of a new insight, it's hard to simply say what it is. You need to "walk around it" so it becomes visible against the background. Jung used the same method to explain what he meant by "archetype".
Assuming that S&E reveals some kind of valid insight, it's also true that the book will endure for quite awhile. Since the only "data" used in the book is language, it could theoretically be written 100 years ago or 100 years from now. The same can't be said about most current books on how the mind works.
Oddly, defenders of "memetics" (the pseudoscience of "memes") and Chomsky -- the defender of "Linguistics" -- agree that the capacity for language (or the "infection" by memes) was a sudden event in the history of human evolution and cannot be explained by gradual evolution from something simpler. You understand language (or memes) or you don't. It seems that S&E challenges this unnecessary and implausible claim by putting forward analogy making as the basis of thought, with speech emerging as a means of communicating analogy. Even a dog can make analogies. Many brain processes can be seen as primitive versions of analogy.
Similarly, memeticists like Susan Blackmore "explain" the sudden increase in brain capacity in terms of their own theory. Any change "must" be driven by evolutionary "pressure" and that pressure "must" come from something new, which happens to be the subject of the author's study. It could be argued that brain capacity (or actually cortical surface area) is correlated with the ability to form analogies or at least recognize patterns. In view of the high cost of this innovation and the violent nature of humans, it's easy to see that an "arms race" could result in strong pressure in favour of intelligence - especially when it comes to surviving attacks from other humans. Chimpanzee lifestyle provides a model for this. You could see a secondary pressure in this arms race that would favour communication and teamwork - especially language. Academic discussion of evolutionary pressure tends to ignore the violent nature of human beings. After a certain point, avoiding being murdered by another human and/or stealing the wives of your enemy becomes the #1 "evolutionary pressure". Such "pressure" could produce big changes in a short time - a few thousand years - an eye-blink in deep time. This is a "tipping point" argument.
Many genes control the expression of other genes. The mutation we are looking for might simply be for the cerebral cortex to continue to grow and fold itself up inside the brain case. We would have no evidence of this continuous change, nor evidence that it continues to operate. However, such a change would produce increased energy demands along with increased capability to meet those demands and increased competition over resources and mates. All this seems a bit less fanciful than the convoluted evolutionary stories told by Blackmore and company. As an aside, it's worth noting that this supposed "mutation" may or may not ultimately fail for any number of reasons. It is not certain, for example, that being smarter will actually allow us to find the energy we need to be smarter, nor that we can survive the implied strategy of dominating the entire ecosystem for resources needed for our big brains.
Oddly, defenders of "memetics" (the pseudoscience of "memes") and Chomsky -- the defender of "Linguistics" -- agree that the capacity for language (or the "infection" by memes) was a sudden event in the history of human evolution and cannot be explained by gradual evolution from something simpler. You understand language (or memes) or you don't. It seems that S&E challenges this unnecessary and implausible claim by putting forward analogy making as the basis of thought, with speech emerging as a means of communicating analogy. Even a dog can make analogies. Many brain processes can be seen as primitive versions of analogy.
Similarly, memeticists like Susan Blackmore "explain" the sudden increase in brain capacity in terms of their own theory. Any change "must" be driven by evolutionary "pressure" and that pressure "must" come from something new, which happens to be the subject of the author's study. It could be argued that brain capacity (or actually cortical surface area) is correlated with the ability to form analogies or at least recognize patterns. In view of the high cost of this innovation and the violent nature of humans, it's easy to see that an "arms race" could result in strong pressure in favour of intelligence - especially when it comes to surviving attacks from other humans. Chimpanzee lifestyle provides a model for this. You could see a secondary pressure in this arms race that would favour communication and teamwork - especially language. Academic discussion of evolutionary pressure tends to ignore the violent nature of human beings. After a certain point, avoiding being murdered by another human and/or stealing the wives of your enemy becomes the #1 "evolutionary pressure". Such "pressure" could produce big changes in a short time - a few thousand years - an eye-blink in deep time. This is a "tipping point" argument.
Many genes control the expression of other genes. The mutation we are looking for might simply be for the cerebral cortex to continue to grow and fold itself up inside the brain case. We would have no evidence of this continuous change, nor evidence that it continues to operate. However, such a change would produce increased energy demands along with increased capability to meet those demands and increased competition over resources and mates. All this seems a bit less fanciful than the convoluted evolutionary stories told by Blackmore and company. As an aside, it's worth noting that this supposed "mutation" may or may not ultimately fail for any number of reasons. It is not certain, for example, that being smarter will actually allow us to find the energy we need to be smarter, nor that we can survive the implied strategy of dominating the entire ecosystem for resources needed for our big brains.
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