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SECONDARY DOMINANCE
how small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
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Thursday, November 06, 2003 :::
THREE TALES AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
As a work of art, Steve Reich's new video opera in collaboration with Beryl Korot is a work of genius. I've been listening to it just about every day for about a month and it's really magnificent. Anybody who likes his work should order it NOW -- the CD/DVD set is about $15 at most stores. BUT, as much as I love it as art, I have some serious philosophical issues with Act III.
For those unfamiliar with the work and with the style and technique, "Three Tales" is what Reich and Korot have called a "video opera." It's performed by instrumentalists and singers, and has a lot of historical footage and sound recordings, and recordings of interviews that Reich and Korot did on the subjects of the opera. "Three Tales" is about technology in the 20th century -- Act I is about the Hindenburg disaster, Act II is about the nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll, and Act II is ostensibly about Dolly the cloned sheep, but actually covers not just cloning but also artificial intelligence, robotics, and philosophy of mind. The problem with Act III is that it has several chunks of interview footage of really smart people saying things that don't make sense, or are downright offensive.
My first problem is that Reich and Korot very obviously set out to make Richard Dawkins into a villain. Yes, the philosophy he offers is very physicalist and even anti-spiritualist, but it's what he believes, and I doubt he's really a bad guy. He comes across as very sincere, and like he put a lot of work into preparing for their interview of him, and were I him I would be very hurt at receiving the treatment they give him in the piece. That said, even though they try to make him the villain, he's my favorite interview subject by far. He says a lot of really cool stuff, my favorite of which is:
"Once upon a time there was carbon based life, and it gave over to silicon based life. I don't view the prospect, with equanimity. Maybe I'm just sentimental."
Unfortunately, many of the other statements by other interview subjects simply don't hold up under scrutiny, and I think that what's going on is that these people arexcellentet scientists but poor philosophers. I make no claim of having a great philosophical background myself, but if I can explain why they are wrong then they really need to go back and rework their theories.
This first quote is interspliced with Dawkins explaining that the brain is like a computer.
Rodney Brooks: "We've always thought of our brains in terms of our latest technology. So at one point our brains were steam engines. When I was a kid, they were telephone switching networks. Then they became digital computers. Then, massively parallel digital computers. Probably, out there now, there are kid's books which say that our brain is the world wide web. We probably haven't got it right yet."
I don't dispute his history, although I question his interpretation of it, and I think his final remark is a red herring. A Steam engine is not a bad analogy for the brain if it's the best you've got -- it's a machine with a whole bunch of component parts that all work together as a unit. A telephone switching network is a better analogy -- one of the major issues the brain has to deal with is information transmission and distribution. The telephone-switching-network analogy is an improvement on the earlier analogy. The digital computer analogy is even better, although it retains the best parts of the earlier analogies -- the digital computer is a complete unit composed of many sub-parts, and lots of switching-network-like data management and routing hardware and software, but in addition to the distribution of data, it processes data -- it "thinks." Massively parallel digital computers is a better analogy still, because it takes a bunch of self contained devices and has them work together as a unit. Consider Wernike's Area and Brocha's Area -- two areas of the brain used in speech function, and imagine each of the as a computer with the two networked together as part of the "speech" subnetwork. In short, the historical examples he gives are not fad notions later proved wrong, but the best analogy available at the time, and which would later be improved upon. The "World Wide Web" analogy sounds silly, and it is. The historical progression has been toward more and more ability to process data, but the WWW doesn't process data -- it stores it. (The web might be a great analogy for memory, since it stores data, and related data are linked together. The more links to a particular page could be seen as an increase in what psychologists call "boundary strength." But that's now what he claims the authors of kids books are saying.) There's probably a better analogy to be had, but I will be shocked if it's a total departure from the "massively parallel digital computers" analogy rather than an improvement upon it.
Brooks then makes a flawed critique of the Turing Test. (I'm not claiming that the Turing Test is valid or not, just that his criticism is invalid.):
"Alan Turing came up with this idea: if you talked to a computer over instant messaging, and you couldn't tell the difference between whether it was a computer answering you or a person answering you. Then the computer must be intelligent. That leaves out a whole lot of stuff that we do with one another. We look each other in the eye, we smile, we nod at each other."
Steven Hawking has been paralyzed over his entire body with the exception of his eyes and a hand that he can clench and unclench. He can't smile. He can't nod. He can look you in the eye, but that's about it. Would Hawking fail the Turing Test? I doubt it. Have we stopped thinking of him as intelligent just because he can't use body language? When you talk to your old high-school friends over instant messaging do you begin to doubt their intelligence? Body language is nice, but it's not a requirement of intelligence.
The next problem comes when Joshua Getzler and Jaron Lanier start talking about evolution and religion. I'll address them together since they are making similar points.
Lanier: Its a terrible mistake, to think of the spiritual impulse, as arising from cognitive weakness.
Getzler: The 20th century, where religious thinking was abandoned for secular and Darwinian ideology. . . The 20th century was the worst graveyard in human history...and that should give us pause. . .
I object to Lanier's quote because he makes a statement of opinion as i it were fact when the science would ether support the alternate viewpoint or nothing. It's offensive to say that the spiriimpulsempuse comes from cognitive weakness -- which is why I would never say it -- but it's a matter of opinion.
Getzler's claim is far worse. Secularism didn't cause the mass deaths of the 20th century -- we've just become more efficient killers as a result of improved technology, and to claim that secularism is responsible is tantamount to claiming that the non-religious are morally infirm. If Pope Urban had had access to nuclear weapons he would have turned the Middle East into a parking lot during the crusades. Somehow I doubt that the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is the result of all of too much secularism in the region. And I doubt that Northern Ireland would be any less of a mess if people just believed a little more fervently that god is on their side. Religions cause wars. Secularism has probably caused conflict too. The body count isdependentndant on either of those, but rather on other issues of sociology and the strength of the available firepower. My favorite relevant quote on the subject is from William Carlos Williams, ironicallyicaly, is used by Reich himself in "The Desert Music."
"Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant
To know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize
Them, he must either change them or perish"
Anyway, even though some of the interview material doesn't make sense, it's still a great piece.
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posted by Galen H. Brown at 3:33 AM
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