The miracle of self-reflection. Column in ComputerreOnline #54

Dmytro Shabanov The Wonders of Self‑Deception The Miracle of Self‑Reflection Frogs. Fast‑Maturing and Stout‑Seeded Column in KompyuterrOnline #53 Column in KompyuterrOnline #54 Column in KompyuterrOnline #55 The previous column was devoted to the phenomenon of self‑deception. Why, then, is it so difficult for many of us to understand the true motives of our actions? We chronically misunderstand ourselves as biological beings, failing to see innate components in our own behavior. Problems in perceiving our own biologicity appear even in how my columns are received. When I, for example, talk about the unusual reproduction of Pustun frogs, I do not touch the prejudices with which readers self‑identify, and they believe what they read. Statements about how our biological nature manifests are not taken any more lightly. A reader of Computerry surely knows himself better than a clever biologist! My description does not match the self‑image that the reader holds. What does the mismatch of these two descriptions lead to? If the psychic defenses that guard one’s self‑view remain unshaken, a text that writes about a person as a complex animal will simply be dismissed, unheeded. Worse, if some arguments of this text are taken up but distorted by defensive mechanisms. It is also difficult when the perception of my text (“offensively crude biological reductionism” or something of the sort) conflicts with the image of the source from which it originates (for example, “Kompyuterr” as a journal for thinking people). In such cases a more or less intense aggression surfaces. How audacious to judge a human, the crown of creation, on the basis of notions about some fruit flies, rats, and frogs! Whoever does this surely aims to humiliate humanity, to undermine the foundations of its morality. Note: I did not say that my texts cannot be debated! They can, but the debate will be useful only if my statements are contested, not the frightening or insulting thoughts that an outraged reader might have about them. Representatives of the natural sciences are accustomed to examining objects of interest, paying little attention to what those objects think of themselves. Indeed, most of the subjects of their research do not trouble themselves with thoughts. Perhaps this is why natural scientists often neglect models of reality and themselves within it, constructed by the objects of their attention. Who knows what they might fabricate about themselves? Anti‑natural (humanities) “sciences” (in Russian they are still called sciences, but in English they are not “science,” which is quite correct) adopt a fundamentally different approach. It seems their proponents truly believe that the most important thing about a person is what he thinks of himself! I recall the shock of my biochemistry colleague, who spoke with graduate students of the philosophy faculty (I won’t name the university). They, without hesitation, assured her that only sinful people are forced to ingest bodily food. Supposedly there is a righteous way of acting that frees one from crude attachment to matter. Its adherents neither eat nor excrete, yet exist sinlessly thanks to subtle energies. Poor graduate students were taught this at the university—obviously at the humanities faculty, not the natural one! Contact between natural scientists and such humanists (and vice versa) leads both sides to shun each other like lepers, then tell jokes about one another. Consequently, results obtained within one worldview cannot be integrated into the other. Not long ago I read praises of Ken Wilber (the same Wikipedia can provide his ideas). I read his texts, first of all “A Brief History of Everything.” Oh dear… The man is undoubtedly intelligent. He invents his own version of systems theory (perhaps because he is not fully aware of what has already been done in the field, from Ludwig von Bertalanffy to, for example, Donella Medow). He discards the biological view of human nature. In explaining why he does this, he demonstrates a deep misunderstanding of evolutionary biology. The smart, highly moral, respectable man fell into the trap of his own scientific illiteracy. Why does he think that natural knowledge, which does not meet the programmatic requirements of the Soviet school, is sufficient to refute whole sciences? A humanist… Here one can recall the principle reflected in a Khrushchev‑era joke, the era of corn planting and the fight against abstract painting. A collective farmer and a painter are talking. The farmer says: “Well, you painters are lucky. At least Nikita Sergeyevich understands painting. But in agriculture…” Remembering this, I am skeptical of judgments about painting (in which I am not strong) when I see obvious errors in the agricultural part. And I would love to find a competent source that would introduce the key concepts of the humanities into the natural worldview! I have not found it yet. If not, let me try to explain here what I have understood so far. I think discussing these matters is useful for learning to manage ourselves. I will begin with rather general and fairly trivial statements. Organisms are biological systems that survive (or perish) as a whole. Usually they are capable of reproducing, or at least of contributing to the survival of their relatives. Characteristic features of organisms are the result of their evolutionary optimisation, enhancing their contribution to future generations. Evolution occurs in a particular environment, with characteristic interaction with it: a specific way of life. The correspondence of organisms to their mode of interaction with the environment is called adaptations. Adaptations may appear in the organism’s structure (its morphology), in the features of its internal processes (its physiology), and in changes in its interaction with the environment (its behaviour). When analysing adaptations it is easy to see that morphological, physiological and behavioural traits work in a single inter‑conditioned complex. They can be separated only rather conditionally. Think how morphology, physiology and behaviour are intertwined in locomotion, feeding or sex. Important differences among morphology, physiology and behaviour lie in the speed of their dynamics and the range of their plasticity. Morphology changes as a result of long‑term processes (e.g., growth). It is relatively conservative, though it depends on the environmental conditions in which development occurred. Possible physiological states are determined by morphology, whereas physiological processes are re‑configured much faster according to the situation. The spectrum of possible behavioural forms is set by morphology and physiology. Yet behavioural change provides the quickest adjustment to the specifics of the current situation. Behaviour initially is provided by a system of simple reflexes (signal–response) set by the organism’s construction. At first they operate separately. I do not think we can speak of a psyche in, say, a motile bacterium. Its movement dynamics can be described as a set of separate reflexes. But as organismal behaviour becomes more complex, different behavioural reactions begin to interact, forming an inter‑conditioned system. That system can be called a psyche. Of course, the greatest attention has been given to comparing the psyche of humans with that of our closest relatives—chimpanzees. Please do not say that we are humans and they are merely animals, and that comparison is impossible. We are animals, and together we belong to the family Hominidae—Humans. We are indeed very close relatives. The differences in our psyches are mainly quantitative. Our intelligence is stronger not because it employs mechanisms fundamentally absent in chimpanzees. We have a larger working memory: the ability to manipulate several items, to hold several values in mind (see Alexander Markov’s work here). Although chimpanzees can be taught language, most of us have a richer symbol system and a more complex syntax. Yet chimpanzee abilities surpass those of baboons, which in turn exceed those of some arboreal monkeys, which surpass, in the quantitative parameters of interest, the psyches of lemurs, and so on, down to extremely primitive organisms. Nevertheless, I think that during our development a very important qualitative leap occurred—a kind of phase transition associated with reflection, the formation of a self‑image. Is the notion of self‑representation available to our relatives? Some, like elephants and magpies, recognise themselves in a mirror (I wrote about this once for “Kompyuterr”). By the way, not all dogs pass this test. I vividly recall a prolonged hysteric episode of our “cogdatoshny” dog, a Russian Spaniel. She saw herself in a mirror placed in the garage during house repairs. Result—endless adulation of her own reflection. But we do not merely recognise ourselves in a mirror. We can mentally view ourselves from the outside without any apparatus. I think other animals are incapable of this. To discuss how such a capacity arose, let’s start from the distant past. Look at the photograph. Indeed, how could you know what the interaction of the objects shown will lead to? [IMG_1] Both we and other animals create mental models of processes occurring outside ourselves. A falcon diving from height at a pigeon does not fly to where the pigeon was at the start of the dive, but to where it will be at the moment of interception. And watch the video fragment from the BBC series Life. [IMG_2] Both the sea lion and the shark maximally employ their abilities to predict movements of themselves and each other. The shark is better armed and incomparably stronger. The seal’s chance of survival is linked to its superior maneuverability. The video shows a competition between individual sharks and individual sea lions. Try to see the evolutionarily long‑term interaction of two populations behind it. Seals hone the shark’s ability to model attacks on their prey. Sharks leave alive only those sea lions that combine agility with predictive ability. What does a billiards player do as training progresses? He refines a virtual model of billiards in his mind. He improves the connection of this model with his muscles. By the way, the model can be built from observation alone, without practice. My father was a decent carpenter. When I tried to repeat his actions as a child, it led nowhere good. Yet I often acted as an observer or assistant, holding something steady. Now I can fairly well anticipate what strike will produce a desired mark on a wooden blank, though I am not adept at delivering such strikes. Working as a technologist in a glass‑blowing workshop, I could propose a fully feasible sequence of actions to the glassblower, even though I had never handled viscous semi‑molten glass before a furnace. When criticized for being overly theoretical, I reminded them: to assess the taste of an egg, you do not have to carry the eggs yourself. As far as I know, we still poorly understand how our model of reality works. Attempts to create a software environment describing the results of physical bodies’ interactions are built on principles different from our internal mental models. We do not compute bodies’ coordinates; our representations are poorly formalised, yet, without thinking about it, we can account for gravity, inertia, friction. Like our relatives—other animals—we incorporated Newtonian laws into our models long before they were consciously formulated and written mathematically. Why was this possible? I think it shows the fundamental knowability of physical reality. In any case, having a model of reality in the mind is an unconditional advantage (though not a free one, requiring substantial brain resources to build and to tune the model). Once such a model appeared in our fairly distant ancestors, the process of its elaboration and expansion began immediately. This elaboration was quantitative, until… …until a self‑image appeared in this model, as seen from an external viewpoint. But that is for another time.