Freethought & Rationalism Archive

scigirl · 11-05-2002, 04:37 PM

I admit - we know a lot less about the human brain than we do other organs. We also know very little about how it evolved. But we are starting to understand this subject. Here's just a few examples of the hundreds that popped up when I searched pubmed for "evolution human mind":

<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=112769 03&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">Social complexity and social intelligence.</a>

Quote:

When we talk of the 'nature of intelligence', or any other attribute, we may be referring to its essential structure, or to its place in nature, particularly the function it has evolved to serve. Here I examine both, from the perspective of the evolution of intelligence in primates. Over the last 20 years, the Social (or 'Machiavellian') Intelligence Hypothesis has gained empirical support. Its core claim is that the intelligence of primates is primarily an adaptation to the special complexities of primate social life. In addition to this hypothesis about the function of intellect, a secondary claim is that the very structure of intelligence has been moulded to be 'social' in character, an idea that presents a challenge to orthodox views of intelligence as a general-purpose capacity. I shall outline the principal components of social intelligence and the environment of social complexity it engages with. This raises the question of whether domain specificity is an appropriate characterization of social intelligence and its subcomponents, like theory of mind. As a counter-argument to such specificity I consider the hypothesis that great apes exhibit a cluster of advanced cognitive abilities that rest on a shared capacity for second-order mental representation.

<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=115489 71&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">Mental evolution and development: evidence for secondary representation in children, great ages, and other animals.</a>

Quote:

Recent interest in the development and evolution of theory of mind has provided a wealth of information about representational skills in both children and animals. According to J. Perner (1991), children begin to entertain secondary representations in the 2nd year of life. This advance manifests in their passing hidden displacement tasks, engaging in pretense and means-ends reasoning, interpreting external representations, displaying mirror self-recognition and empathic behavior, and showing an early understanding of "mind" and imitation. New data show a cluster of mental accomplishments in great apes that is very similar to that observed in 2-year-old humans. It is suggested that it is most parsimonious to assume that this cognitive profile is of homologous origin and that great apes possess secondary representational capacity. Evidence from animals other than apes is scant. This analysis leads to a number of predictions for future research.

<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=120978 57&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">Human nature and culture: an evolutionary psychological perspective.</a>

Quote:

Personality psychology is the broadest of all psychological subdisciplines in that it seeks a conceptually integrated understanding of both human nature and important individual differences. Cultural differences pose a unique set of problems for any comprehensive theory of personality-how can they be reconciled with universals of human nature on the one hand and within-cultural variation on the other? Evolutionary psychology provides one set of conceptual tools by which this conceptual integration can be made. It requires jettisoning the false but still-pervasive dichotomy of culture versus biology, acknowledging a universal human nature, and recognizing that the human mind contains many complex psychological mechanisms that are selectively activated, depending on cultural contexts. Culture rests on a foundation of evolved psychological mechanisms and cannot be understood without those mechanisms.

<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=112562 07&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">Intelligence is universal in life.</a>

Quote:

Behaviorists assume that living things memorize random atoms of information (engrams), "reinforced" by success, just as in the neo-Darwinian mutation-selection process. On the contrary we have to recognize the existence of organized and systematic responses in the learning process (Krechevsky). The animals seek desperately to "understand the meaning" of the world around them, by widening its context. Intelligence is not an exclusive prerogative of human mind. The minds of insects operate in the same way as that of man. Even a cell has a sort of intelligence (Cuenot). Consciousness is a state of awareness associated with enhanced mental activity. It occurs also in other "higher" animals (Thorpe). However human themselves are non conscious of their basic underlying motivations. Unconscious or ineffable knowledge plays a great role in shaping our world-view and in determining our influence on the Gaian hierarchy.

<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=109655 48&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">Have dual survival systems created the human mind?</a>

Quote:

This article reviews pertinent psychological theory to argue for two discrete human motivational tracts. These dual systems appear to draw from disparate constellations of emotional energies that normatively become interactive across development. The article stipulates eight premises from the accepted tenets of psychology, development, and pathology along with corroborating evidence from laterality studies, neuropsychology, and the neurosciences. These premises lead to a verifiable hypothesis reflecting Richard Leakey's proposal that H. sapiens emerged from an interpersonal shaping of adaptation across several million years of group living. The totality of the supportive evidence suggests that the flexibility, agility, and creativity of the human mind was abetted by tensions and reconciliations between two disparate hemispheric perspectives, which express as a Personal Self and a Social Self, focused by a lens molded by survival pressures.

So no we don't know for sure how "mind evolved from non-mind." Yet. But we are working on it.

scigirl

Clutch · 11-06-2002, 11:52 AM

Scigirl, thanks for the great quotes.

Andy Whiten is a brilliant cognitive primatologist; I recommend his excellent paper and that of his colleague at St. Andrews, Juan Carlos Gomez, in the final section of Theories of theories of mind (Carruthers and Smith (eds), Cambridge University Press, 1996).

And yet another St. Andrews psychologist, Richard Byrne, won the British Psychology Society Book Award back in '97 for his book The thinking ape (OUP, 1995), which is definitely worth reading if you're interested in the evolution of intelligence.

Dr.GH · 11-06-2002, 12:09 PM

A book that I have enjoyed is:

<a href="http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/g-cziko/twd/pdf/index.html" target="_blank">The Things We Do</a>

Vibr8gKiwi · 11-06-2002, 12:13 PM

Different subject, but with recent events I swear we're going from mind back to non-mind.

Peter Soderqvist · 11-07-2002, 01:42 AM

Take your pick?

Godel's incompleteness theorem!
Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine. A consistency proof for [any] system ... can be carried out only by means of modes of inference that are not formalized in the system ... itself. Godel's results were a landmark in 20th-century mathematics, showing that mathematics is not a finished object, as had been believed. It also implies that a computer can never be programmed to answer all mathematical questions.
<a href="http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Godel.html" target="_blank">http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Godel.html</a>

Is Godel's incompleteness theorem an algorithm, or a non-computational-mathematical insight?

[ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: Peter Soderqvist ]</p>

Corey Hammer · 11-07-2002, 11:39 AM

Hmm. Everything I've seen about the Theory of Social Intelligence is interesting. The big question I have about it is this: Why did we evolve consciousness? Nonconscious processes seem to do most of the work already. The hypothesis I last saw was that consciousness provides a further error-checking mechanism in interactions. I don't if that has been reaserched.

Sci-girl, I think the third article (the one with the abstract starting with "Behaviorists...") may in fact be arguing against a straw man. Even in '93, Behaviorism was dead and engrams shown to be bad science.

Another good question, why do we use Symbolic thinking (i.e., manipulate symbols)? Sciam ran an article discussing it last year. H.sapiens sapiens has only recently acquired that mode of thinking in the last 30,000 years or so. Why then and what are the implications of that?

Clutch · 11-07-2002, 01:11 PM

Quote:

The big question I have about it is this: Why did we evolve consciousness? Nonconscious processes seem to do most of the work already.

One of the more useful hypotheses, IMO, is that consciousness is basically a working-memory notepad that can integrate the output of various modular (hence largely nonconscious) systems. It's quite inefficient in a lot of ways. But it is an upward step in cognitive design space accessible from the neuro-cognitive arrangements of our ancestors. (One expression of this perspective is in Dennett's in Consciousness Explained).

Quote:

Another good question, why do we use Symbolic thinking (i.e., manipulate symbols)? Sciam ran an article discussing it last year. H.sapiens sapiens has only recently acquired that mode of thinking in the last 30,000 years or so. Why then and what are the implications of that?

I think it's plausible that the huge advantage of symbolic thinking is that it allows the extrusion of thought processes out of the head and into the world.

Events in your head manage to represent properties of the world. But your abilities to manipulate those representations, to store them, and especially to reconfigure them into more elegant forms, are all massively increased by developing ways of off-loading representational content into your environment.

That, in a nutshell, is what letters, numbers, pictures and models let you do: they are long-handled symbols that give the quite modest capacities of any single brain a huge mechanical advantage. One of best CogSci quotes I know is from Sean Connery qua Indiana Jones' father: "I wrote it in the diary so I wouldn't have to remember it!"

As do we all; but it's not just extra data storage. The processes themselves become partly externalized. The physical manipulation of physical symbols, in many cases, just is thinking. And because we can do that, we can remember huge volumes of information; and folks like Goedel can perform their novel but very difficult reasoning; and then smart people can repackage his ideas until their original baroque expression has been refined and customized for quick digestion by less remarkable human brains.

galiel · 11-07-2002, 02:35 PM

Quote:

quote:

<strong>The big question I have about it is this: Why did we evolve consciousness? Nonconscious processes seem to do most of the work already.</strong>

One of the more useful hypotheses, IMO, is that consciousness is basically a working- memory notepad that can integrate the output of various modular (hence largely nonconscious) systems. It's quite inefficient in a lot of ways. But it is an upward step in cognitive design space accessible from the neuro-cognitive arrangements of our ancestors. (One expression of this perspective is in Dennett's in Consciousness Explained).

I would just like to point out that "we" didn't "evolve" anything. The way the question is posited implies some kind of purposefulness to evolution. That is not how it works, unless one still believes in Lamarkian evolution.

Consciousness may simply be an emergent property of sufficiently complex systems--which are complex in particular ways. Or, it may be the result of a critical mass of random mutations.

Once it did emerge, it had clear advantages, and we can discussion those.

I felt it was important to be careful about our terminology. As a wonderful recent special abour giraffes pointed out, many people still think they evolved their long necks because of stretching to reach high leaves! (Pure, long-discredited Lamarkian mechanism). Instead, it is widely believed that random mutations created the first, somewhat longer necks, and that, due to the natural advantage os such characteristics, those with genetic predispositions to longer necks eventually dominated, and, through a natural process not dissimilar to the way humans have bred pets with exaggerated characteristics, their necks eventually became as long as they did, and along the way the rest of their anatomy was naturally selected to match.

Given the extremely poor education most people receive in basic evolutionary concepts, they may actually think that asking "why did we evolve" rather than "how did such and such a characteristic evolve" implies purposefullness.

Doubting Didymus · 11-07-2002, 02:55 PM

You really think "we evolved conciousness" implys purpose? I don't think so. Giraffes evolved long necks, centipedes evolved partitioned embryology, and humans evolved brains. None of that implies lamarkism to me.

Clutch · 11-07-2002, 03:05 PM

Galiel, if anyone's mixed up 'viz' and 'i.e.', please go into some detail about that too.

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11-06-2002, 11:52 AM	#2
Clutch Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Canada Posts: 3,751	Scigirl, thanks for the great quotes. Andy Whiten is a brilliant cognitive primatologist; I recommend his excellent paper and that of his colleague at St. Andrews, Juan Carlos Gomez, in the final section of Theories of theories of mind (Carruthers and Smith (eds), Cambridge University Press, 1996). And yet another St. Andrews psychologist, Richard Byrne, won the British Psychology Society Book Award back in '97 for his book The thinking ape (OUP, 1995), which is definitely worth reading if you're interested in the evolution of intelligence.

11-06-2002, 12:09 PM	#3
Dr.GH Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Dana Point, Ca, USA Posts: 2,115	A book that I have enjoyed is: <a href="http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/g-cziko/twd/pdf/index.html" target="_blank">The Things We Do</a>

11-06-2002, 12:13 PM	#4
Vibr8gKiwi Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: CA, USA Posts: 543	Different subject, but with recent events I swear we're going from mind back to non-mind.

11-07-2002, 01:42 AM	#5
Peter Soderqvist Regular Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Sweden Stockholm Posts: 233	Take your pick? Godel's incompleteness theorem! Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine. A consistency proof for [any] system ... can be carried out only by means of modes of inference that are not formalized in the system ... itself. Godel's results were a landmark in 20th-century mathematics, showing that mathematics is not a finished object, as had been believed. It also implies that a computer can never be programmed to answer all mathematical questions. <a href="http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Godel.html" target="_blank">http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Godel.html</a> Is Godel's incompleteness theorem an algorithm, or a non-computational-mathematical insight? [ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: Peter Soderqvist ]</p>

11-07-2002, 11:39 AM	#6
Corey Hammer Regular Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Chicago Posts: 368	Hmm. Everything I've seen about the Theory of Social Intelligence is interesting. The big question I have about it is this: Why did we evolve consciousness? Nonconscious processes seem to do most of the work already. The hypothesis I last saw was that consciousness provides a further error-checking mechanism in interactions. I don't if that has been reaserched. Sci-girl, I think the third article (the one with the abstract starting with "Behaviorists...") may in fact be arguing against a straw man. Even in '93, Behaviorism was dead and engrams shown to be bad science. Another good question, why do we use Symbolic thinking (i.e., manipulate symbols)? Sciam ran an article discussing it last year. H.sapiens sapiens has only recently acquired that mode of thinking in the last 30,000 years or so. Why then and what are the implications of that?

11-07-2002, 02:55 PM	#9
Doubting Didymus Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: East Coast. Australia. Posts: 5,455	You really think "we evolved conciousness" implys purpose? I don't think so. Giraffes evolved long necks, centipedes evolved partitioned embryology, and humans evolved brains. None of that implies lamarkism to me.

11-07-2002, 03:05 PM	#10
Clutch Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Canada Posts: 3,751	Galiel, if anyone's mixed up 'viz' and 'i.e.', please go into some detail about that too.

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