by Michael Davidson

The 23 February 2013 special issue of the New Scientist featured a series of short articles entitled “The Self: the greatest trick your mind ever played“. These provide various arguments as to why ‘the self’ – ie ‘you’ – is deluded into thinking it exists when in fact it doesn’t.

The first thing to note is that of the seven small articles, two are by the philosopher Jan Westerhoff and three are written or partially written by “New Scientist consultants”. Two other authors are named but their credentials are undisclosed. I will only comment here on Westerhoff’s articles.

Westerhoff briefly reviews some of the philosophical arguments that tell us that ‘the self’ is an illusion. Either ‘the self’ is like
1) a continuous thread which “runs through every single moment of our lives, providing a core and a unity for them.” or
2) it is just “the continuity of overlapping mental events” – somewhat like a rope which has no single fibre running the length of the rope but still holds together as a rope.

The argument against the first model is that what we normally consider to be ‘the self’ undergoes numerous changes through our lives – such as “being happy or sad, being able to speak Chinese, preferring cherries to strawberries, even being conscious.” The continuous self, then, is “so far removed from everything constituting us that its absence would scarcely be noticeable.”

The argument against the rope model is that there is no constant part therein that we can identify with.

Since these two models are flawed we are urged to conclude that a continuing ‘self’ is really an illusion. The simpler course is to think of better models. The fact that our moods, tastes, abilities etc change through our lives does not seem to be a great strike against a simple entity – attribute – ability model. The puzzle – if it be a puzzle – of how an entity can change its attributes and remain the same entity has come down to us from the ancient Greeks as the paradox of the ‘Ship of Theseus’. The idea is that as the various planks that make up the ship are replaced because of decay, it is possible eventually that no part of the original ship remains. Is it then the same ship? Such paradoxes are thus not confined to ‘the self’.

Westerhoff states that even if there is no continuing self perhaps there is a self in the here and now – ie the self is where all the senses come together.

But this apparency of the unity of conscious experience can be disrupted as seen in an experiment which is described but not referenced. This experiment was first reported by Kolers & von Gruneau (1). In it two coloured dots (one red, one green) are displayed on a screen in quick succession in different locations. According to the article the dot appears to move steadily between the two locations and change colour somewhere between. This immediately presents a paradox, since the apparent spot cannot change colour before it arrives at the second location. The apparency of motion caused by a succession of closely related images is called the ‘beta phenomenon’ and is the fortunate basis of the multi-billion dollar movie industry.

The colour changing illusion is not seen by everyone. I personally do not see it and psychologist Nelson Cowan (2) reports that he sees the moving object as colourless.

But this experiment is apparently seen of great significance in destroying the idea that ‘the self’ is the confluence of the senses whereby we get a whole view of the world – what Aristotle termed ‘the common sense’. There are innumerable other optical illusions which show that our perceptions are modulated by our sensory apparatus but these don’t evidently have the same significance. It is no surprise that the senses can be deceived by sufficiently unusual and specifically engineered events but this does not mean that our perceptions are always wrong. Indeed if they were not usually good enough we would have no criteria for determining when they deceive and human beings would have been winnowed by natural selection millennia ago. We usually can recognise illusions as illusions.

A third aspect of ‘the self’ which needs to be explained (away) is the apparency of conscious will, ie that we are agents – “the thinker of our thoughts and the doer of our deeds.” The empirical finding on which this argument relies is an experiment by Wegner & Wheatley in 1999 (3). Approx 50 volunteers were asked to move a cursor around a screen by controlling a mouse and stop the cursor on one of about 50 small images. The mouse was shared with an accomplice of the experimenters via an ouija board arrangement, and unbeknownst to the volunteer the accomplice was instructed to force a stop on particular objects at particular times. The volunteers were asked to stop on the same particular objects and then to rate how much they were actually involved in causing the stop (between 0% = ‘I allowed the stop to happen’ to 100% = ‘I intended to make the stop’). What was variable was the interval of time from the forced stop and the moment when the object was named to the volunteer. When the object name was presented between 1 and 5 seconds before the stop, the volunteers rated their intentions at 60%+-5% as opposed to when the word was presented 30 secs before or 1 sec afterwards (45% +-5%). The result is significant at the 5% level, though 45% and 60% indicates the participants weren’t particularly certain either way. The Westerhoff article however gives no hint of this uncertainty, implying a much more definite result than is in fact the case.

Wegner & Wheatley concluded that conscious will is only an apparency – similar to magic in that the magician presents an apparent causal sequence whilst the real sequence is something else. People do what they do not through conscious will but as the result of various genetic, unconscious, neural, cognitive, emotional, social and possibly other causes. This (according to Wegner & Wheatley) is the ‘core assumption‘ of psychological science. Evidently the conclusion follows from the assumption rather than the empirical facts.

The conditions of the experiment are such that the volunteer thinks that the experimenter’s accomplices are volunteers like himself. It is not known how he views the other person: as a competitor, a team player, a spectator etc. The times where the accomplice did not manage to force the stop on the particular object chosen at the desired time (which seemed to be between 22% and 47% for any one participant) were excluded from the analysis. So there are a number of question marks as to what this experiment means. The philosopher Eddy Nahmias (4) comments “When all is said and done, Wegner has offered no evidence or arguments against this proposal: certain brain processes have the property of being consciously represented to the agent as mental states we describe as beliefs, desires, intentions and actions (for instance, my brain is currently going through the processes which I experience as something like ‘I think this proposal makes sense’. Type out the words, ‘This proposal makes sense.’ and so on). How is it that these brain processes have these experiential properties is currently a mystery… But if these processes did not have their representational properties then they would not have the causal powers they have.” I comment further in chapter 12 of my e-book “Rethinking the Mind”.

In a separate article “When are you? – you are being tricked into thinking you live in the present” Westerhoff describes an experiment by Eagleman & Sejnowski (5). Five participants sat in front of a computer screen on which a small ring moved around a large circle at one revolution per second. When the ring was in a certain position of its trajectory (9 o’clock) a white disk was flashed at the 9’oclock position +- 7° and the subjects were asked to indicate whether the flash was above or below the ring when it was perceived. In this way an estimate of how much the flash was displaced from the perceived position of the ring at the time of the flash could be made. Each participant saw the flash when the ring was displaced by around 5°. When the direction of travel of the ring was reversed at the time of the flash the percept was displaced by a similar amount in the new direction of travel. By changing the time at which the reversal takes place upto 80 millisecs after the flash the perceived position of the flash can be manipulated. This indicates that “the percept attributed to the time of the flash is a function of the events that happen in the ~80 millisecs after the flash.”

According to Westerhoff “All this is slightly worrying if we hold on to the common-sense view that our selves are placed in the present. If the moment of time we are supposed to be inhabiting turns out to be a mere construction, the same is likely to be true of the self existing in that present.” This seems to be a drastic conclusion for the sake of 80 millisecs. High class athletes find it difficult to react to the starting gun in less than 180 millsecs but athletes are not considered to be zombies as a result. Similarly the apparent fact that our present moment is stretched over 80 millisecs does not entail that there is no ‘self’.

The whole approach seems to be an example of what Francis Bacon (1561-1626) identified as the human habit of accepting data that agrees with one’s own prejudices or those of the philosophical schools and rejecting data that disagrees. This was demonstrated in an experiment (6) in which 24 proponents and 24 opponents of capital punishment were shown the results of two studies that showed evidence for and against capital punishment as a deterrent.   Since the studies were fictional (unbeknownst to the 48 students) they could be ‘engineered’ to produce positive or negative findings from exactly equivalent protocols, and could be presented in either order to eliminate the effects of sequence.   Needless to say, the subjects felt that the studies confirming their view were more scientifically valid than those opposing.   Furthermore they were more convinced that their view was correct after reviewing both pieces of evidence than before, regardless of the order in which the two studies were viewed (p < 0.001).

This series of short articles in the New Scientist hold to a materialist philosophy as the starting point. Since materialist notions fail to find any reason why there should be a ‘self’ then the ‘self’ must be denied as an illusion or delusion. All forms of materialism have philosophical difficulties, as do all forms of non-materialism, such as dualism. What is required is a neutral approach that takes the empirical data and forms theories of limited applicability and from there predict and control phenomena in that area to gradually widen the theories.

Assuming the answer to the mind-body problem in advance (materialism) and limiting the search to only the empirical data that seems to confirm this philosophical view is not only self-confirming but anti-science.

References

1. Kolers PA & von Gruneau M (1976) Shaper and Colour in Apparent Motion Vision Research vol 16 p 329-335.

2. Cowan N (1995) Attention and Memory an Integrated Framework OUP p237

3. Wegner D & Wheatley T (1999) Apparent Mental Causation Source of the experience of Will American Psychologist vol 54 no 7 p 480-492 available at http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/pdfs/Wegner&Wheatley1999.pdf

4. Nahmias E(2002) When Consciousness matters Philosophical Psychology vol 15(4) p527-554

5. Eagleman DM & Sejnowski TJ (2000) Motion Integration and Postdiction in Visual Awareness Science vol 287 p2036

6. Lord CG, Ross L & Lepper MR (1979) Biased assimilation and attitude polarisation: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence Journal of Personality & Social Psychology vol 37 p2098-2109 available at http://synapse.princeton.edu/~sam/lord_ross_lepper79_JPSP_biased-assimilation-and-attitude-polarization.pdf

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by Michael Davidson

Let us assume for the sake of argument that there is a subject or activity known as ‘science’.   Not just a bunch of separate activities grouped together because of a certain ‘family resemblance’.   What supposedly makes ‘science’ special is the ‘scientific method’.   This guarantees that the findings of ‘science’ are true.

The Royal Society  is one of the premier scientific societies in the world.   It was founded in 1660 with the motto “Nullius in verba” – “take nobody’s word for it”.   The original members credited Francis Bacon (1561-1626) with the inspiration to found their society.

Bacon’s idea of the scientific method was to proceed from repeated observations to general principles.   This process is called ‘induction’.   Induction is defined as the process whereby a premise of the form “All observed A’s are B” leads to a conclusion of the form “All A’s are B”.     Over time we can induce more and more general laws of nature.   From these laws we can then predict new facts and find out if they are true by experimental test.

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) claimed to have arrived at his laws of motion and gravitation  from the empirical observations made by  Kepler and Galileo (and his own experiments).

Unfortunately the philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) later showed that the idea of induction is flawed.   No finite number of observations such as
“this object near the surface of the earth falls with acceleration g”
can guarantee that
“all objects near the surface of the earth fall with acceleration g“.   Aristotle (483-322BC) would have said: “some does not prove all” and would have pointed at fire and smoke which rise.

In view of this logical difficulty with induction, we can divide scientific method into two separate parts.:
a) how to get from observations to principles – the problem of discovery, and
b) how to justify the principles arrived at – the problem of justification.

The second part is relatively easy.   Once we have a principle we can point to all the observational and experimental evidence that is consistent with the principle.   But how we create theories is often considered a personal subjective process which logic does not illuminate.

William Whewell (1794-1866) coined the term ‘scientist’ in 1834.   He maintained that ‘scientists’ do not proceed by induction but
“Success seems to consist in framing several tentative hypotheses and selecting the right one.”[1]
Observation and experiment are thus directed by the various alternative hypotheses, rather than being collected in some kind of magpie fashion as Bacon seemed to suggest.

A key step is the isolation and clarification of a concept:
“Scientific induction is always guided by a concept which proves its worth by binding facts together in such a way to enable us to see significant generalisations that had previously escaped us.”

Science thus depends on the creative process of forming concepts and hypotheses.   Since ‘scientists’ are human beings, their prejudices can skew the discovery of hypotheses.   Francis Bacon had already recognised and classified several such prejudices:
accepting data that agrees with one’s own ideas and dismissing data that does not;
jumping to conclusions too hastily;
the use of vague words;
clinging to fashionable ideas rather than subjecting them to test.

A 1979 experiment demonstrates the first prejudice.  24 proponents and 24 opponents of capital punishment were shown the results of two studies that showed evidence for and against capital punishment as a deterrent.

The studies were fictional (unbeknownst to the 48 students).   They were ‘engineered’ to produce positive or negative findings from exactly the same ‘evidence’.

Needless to say, the students felt that the studies confirming their view were more scientifically valid than those opposing.   Furthermore they were more convinced than before that their view was correct after reviewing both pieces of evidence .   This was regardless of the order in which they saw the two studies.[2]

There are well established concepts and principles in the sciences such as ‘the conservation of energy’ in physics, the ‘evolution of species’ in biology, the periodic table of the elements in chemistry, ‘uniformitarianism’ in geology and much much more besides.

But when we get to the forefront of research in any area of science there is great controversy.      The status of
‘string theory’ in physics[3];
sociobiology in biology [4];
morality in neuroscience (or vice versa) [5];
‘artificial intelligence’ in computer ‘science’[6]
and many others are topics of hot debate.
The story you get depends on which side of the debate the story teller sits.

The pronouncements of famous scientists on topics outside their sphere and much of what passes for ‘science’ in the press is more properly described as scientism.   Scientism is an exaggeration of the efficacy of science, the claim that the only knowledge is ‘scientific’ knowledge.

The only genuine claims according to this view are those that can be confirmed by the ‘scientific method’, though how this claim can be confirmed by the scientific method is not explained.   This claim gives rise to an exaggerated belief that we understand more about the world than we actually do.   Since the only knowledge is scientific, on this view, science tells us about the way the world really is (ie metaphysics).

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy which deals with the ultimate nature of reality: “what kinds of things exist?” and “what is their nature?”   Metaphysics should be confined to inductive hypotheses from the various sciences and be described as metaphysical rather than ‘scientific’.

Scientists tend to see the world as explained by their particular science. Thus physicists see the world as entirely described by physics.   Neuroscientists see the world in terms of our brains.    Biologists see the world in terms of our evolutionary history.   And so on.   We only need to study one subject x to find that “all is x”.     “All is x” is metaphysics.

The difference between scientific and metaphysical hypotheses according to the modern philosopher Robert Almeder is that scientific hypotheses are “explicitly empirically testable”. It is possible to state detailed test conditions which would confirm or deny the hypothesis.

But philosophical hypotheses are only “implicitly empirically testable”. That is,  there might be some available data which would confirm or deny the hypothesis but nobody is currently able to specify what those data might be or how to get them.[7]

Thus if there is no conceivable way we can prove a ‘scientific’ claim then the claim is metaphysical not scientific.

Extrapolating from scientific evidence to metaphysical world views is not wrong provided we label it as ‘metaphysical’ rather than ‘scientific fact’.

Thus we have such ‘scientific facts’ as
‘mind is brain’[8],
‘there is no such thing as free will’[9],
‘concepts are nonsense.’[10]
These are aspects of the fashionable philosophical theory called ‘materialism’.

Materialism is not an essential feature of a science.   Some ‘scientists’ classify any endeavour that questions materialism  as ‘pseudo-science’.  They brand as taboo any investigation into the efficacy of such things as ‘alternative medicine’, parapsychology, spiritualism, etc.

George Orwell (1903-1950) in his celebrated essay on literary style, dated 1945[11], classified ‘science’ as a meaningless word because it has had several meanings and has been used “more or less dishonestly”.

The intervening half century or so has not crystallised the meaning at all.   The words ‘scientific’ and ‘scientist’ have  been hijacked by so many that they are now almost devoid of meaning.   They add only some kind of mystique to whatever pronouncement follows.

I am not ‘anti-science’.      I  believe in the power of the human imagination to frame hypotheses, to make tentative inductions, to predict effects and make experimental tests.   This leads us to theories whereby we can make broad predictions and control our environments through technology.   My beef is with the prevalence of sweeping ‘scientific’ pronouncements without adequate evidence.

Thus the answer to my question “Can we really trust scientists?” is  ‘sometimes’.   Here are a few criteria:

Is the scientist
a) speaking in his or her area of expertise?
b) not generalising into the realm of metaphysics?
c) steering clear of controversies within the field – or at least makes clear his or her position on such?
d) reviewing the evidence for his or her thesis?
e) speaking  in ordinary language?
f) proposing or endorsing something that is ethical?
If so there is a good chance you can trust him or her with the information.

These are criteria that do not just apply to scientists.
There are no special considerations for scientists. The physicist Richard Feynman said it more succinctly: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”[12]

An interesting and relevant blog about the misuse of statistics is http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-01/six-ways-to-separate-lies-from-statistics.html

References

1. Whewell W  (1841,1996) The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences vol 2 Routledge  p467
2. Lord CG, Ross L & Lepper MR  (1979) Biased assimilation and attitude polarisation: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence Journal of Personality & Social Psychology vol 37 p2098-2109 available at
   http://synapse.princeton.edu/~sam/lord_ross_lepper79_JPSP_biased-assimilation-and-attitude-polarization.pdf
3. Smolin L  (2006) The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next Houghton Miflin, Boston
4. U Segerstrale  (2000) Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the socio-biology debate and beyond Oxford University Press
5. Horgan J  (2010) Be wary of the righteous rationalist: We should reject Sam Harris’s claim that science can be a moral guidepost Scientific American 11 Oct 2010   available at
   http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2010/10/11/
6. Searle J (1980) Minds Brains and Programs Behavioural and Brain Sciences 3 p417
7. Almeder R (1998) Harmless Naturalism: The Limits of Science and the Nature of Philosophy Open Court p166
8. Dennett D (1991) Consciousness Explained Allen Lane p33
9. Blakemore C  (1988) The Mind Machine BBC Books p7
10. Watson JB  (1920) Is Thinking merely the Action Of Language Mechanisms?British Journal of Psychology, 11, 87-104.   available at
    http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/thinking.htm
11. Orwell G (1945) Politics and the English Language Penguin
12. Feynman R (1969) What is Science? The Physics Teacher Vol. 7, issue 6

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by Michael Davidson

Is it possible to have a science of mind?   Is science necessarily materialistic so that we can only ever have a science of brain?   To answer this we need to understand what science is.

The English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is sometimes credited as the “father of modern science” for his philosophical work, the “Instauratio Magna” (Latin: instauratio = to reform, to repair or renew; magna = great , hence the Great Restoration) which was only partially completed.

Bacon roundly condemned his predecessors: they have laid “down the law of nature as a thing already searched out and understood, [and] have therein done philosophy and the sciences great injury. For as they have been successful in inducing belief, so they have been effective in quenching and stopping inquiry.”

Bacon saw that the way the human mind is constituted makes rational enquiry and experiment difficult. We have a propensity to generalise too hastily. We accept data that agrees with our own ideas and dismiss data that does not. We use words that are too vague in meaning. We accept the dogmas of the various schools of philosophy without subjecting them to test.

It is time to reassert Bacon’s project, to roll back the tide of scientism that declares what is and what is not acceptable science, what can and what cannot be published on the grounds that we now know the laws of nature. This ‘scientific’ view declares that people are material objects subject to the same laws as the rest of the universe which we now thoroughly understand.  Human beings are machines.  There is no such thing as ‘free will’, it is a delusion foisted on us by electrochemical processes in the brain. But in that case how is it that we seem to have free will? Who or what is this ‘us’ that harbours such a delusion? How do electro-chemical impulses in the brain provide us with this rich perceptual world? Are we really the effect of our genes and upbringing – robots programmed to react in certain ways? Or is it the case that we really are agents, able to actually cause events?

My e-book “Rethinking the Mind” considers the evidence from multiple perspectives including the philosophy of mind, the sciences of physics, biology and neurology and the technologies of computers and psychiatry. I conclude that much of the ‘common knowledge’ in these subjects which describes human beings as physical objects whose thoughts are mere by-products of brain processes determined by the laws of physics and chemistry, is actually metaphysics masquerading as science.

A more considered approach requires a better understanding of what we mean by the word ‘science’, and an empirical approach to the phenomena of mind without insisting that the evidence should fit into some preconceived scheme.

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