3 ms·

So are unnecessary complications, or trying to maintain a mystical shroud of fundamental complexity around what is essentially an extremely sophisticated struct

So are unnecessary complications, or trying to maintain a mystical shroud of fundamental complexity around what is essentially an extremely sophisticated structure of very simple parts. I like your use of scare quotes around "reducing" cognition, as though it's irreducible. I'm not sure why people persist in claiming that their brains are the only things in the world that we can't come to understand as a system of simple parts.

paulojreis 12y ago
> So are unnecessary complications, or trying to maintain a mystical shroud of fundamental complexity around what is essentially an extremely sophisticated structure of very simple parts. How can you be sure of that? What if they are complex? Or if only one or two of the parts are extremely complicated? How simple a "part" has to be, in order to be "very simple"? What about the role of the other systems that are part of the same "macrosystem" (the organism)? You can certainly model and, in a way, predict a neuron firing pattern. You can't, however, predict how will my day change if a beautiful stranger smiles at me during my morning commute (even if these reactions and changes are produced by "very simple parts"). There's no mystical shroud here; just acknowledging that emergent behavior is complex. > I like your use of scare quotes around "reducing" cognition, as though it's irreducible. Don't get me wrong: I don't believe it is irreducible. I just believe that a reductionist approach - or "isolating" simple parts - won't take us far in understanding it. "Organic" (I can't find a better word) systems aren't easily reducible to parts as an electronic or mechanic system. Even if they're made of very simple parts, making sense of the emergent behavior they produce is hard. > I'm not sure why people persist in claiming that their brains are the only things in the world that we can't come to understand as a system of simple parts. No such claim was made here. We may come to understand "the brains" as a system of simple parts. However, we're not sure of that; acting as if it was a sure-thing is faith, not so much different from religious faith.
- delluminatus 12y ago
  Quite well-put, actually. I agree that it's a mistake to think of the brain as a "neural network in your head". Biological systems are extremely complicated, and the brain is heavily influenced by the soup it swims in. Having said that, I think we might as well discuss it even if we don't understand it fully. If we're rejecting theories of cognition because they're probably not always right, then we're going to have to throw out the entire field of cognitive science. I do believe that a reductionist approach is critical for understanding cognition -- you could call that a religious belief if you want; I would prefer to call it an expectation based on the unprecedented progress that reductionistic approaches have made in understanding all kinds of things. We certainly have disciplines that examine emergent behavior of cognition -- psychology, I guess, is the prime example. But I think it's also important to try to understand the brain as a computational system, not just as a black box that produces behavior. I think an emergent, behavioral, holistic approach may be effective for characterizing cognition until we understand it better, but that a reductionist, symbolic approach is a superior method for knowing, manipulating or replicating cognition in all kinds of environments, not just a bunch of fatty cells inside a chemical soup. Also, after reading your response, I think that I misunderstood your original comment, which to me seemed vaguely derogatory. So, sorry for that.
- trustee 12y ago
  > You can't, however, predict how will my day change if a beautiful stranger smiles at me during my morning commute (even if these reactions and changes are produced by "very simple parts"). There's no mystical shroud here; just acknowledging that emergent behavior is complex. Just like you can't predict the change in pixels on a screen when some bit is flipped on the network wire. > We may come to understand "the brains" as a system of simple parts. However, we're not sure of that; acting as if it was a sure-thing is faith, not so much different from religious faith. The scientific method has reduced a huge majority of the world (and virtually everything that was once a matter of faith) to a system of ever simpler parts. The meta-theory that everything can be reduced to simpler parts is probably one of the most solid theories in all of science. Furthermore, if you agree that evolution is a thing, then the argument that organic systems are built out of simpler parts is almost a foregone conclusion.
  - paulojreis 12y ago
    > Just like you can't predict the change in pixels on a screen when some bit is flipped on the network wire. Well, you can, as in, it would be a matter of computing a whole bunch of stuff that we actually understand (algorithms, networks). It may not be feasible, but it is doable with what we know, today. Behavior, on the other hand, would depend on computing stuff we don't understand. > The scientific method has reduced a huge majority of the world (and virtually everything that was once a matter of faith) to a system of ever simpler parts. The meta-theory that everything can be reduced to simpler parts is probably one of the most solid theories in all of science. I believe that you're only considering hard science. If you consider anything that contemplates behavior (e.g. psychology, or social sciences such as economics), your claim is only partially true - reductionism has helped, of course, but not in the same way it did with hard/exact sciences. I guess Aristotle still says this better than any new explanation of holism: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts."

paulojreis 12y ago

> So are unnecessary complications, or trying to maintain a mystical shroud of fundamental complexity around what is essentially an extremely sophisticated structure of very simple parts. How can you be sure of that? What if they are complex? Or if only one or two of the parts are extremely complicated? How simple a "part" has to be, in order to be "very simple"? What about the role of the other systems that are part of the same "macrosystem" (the organism)? You can certainly model and, in a way, predict a neuron firing pattern. You can't, however, predict how will my day change if a beautiful stranger smiles at me during my morning commute (even if these reactions and changes are produced by "very simple parts"). There's no mystical shroud here; just acknowledging that emergent behavior is complex. > I like your use of scare quotes around "reducing" cognition, as though it's irreducible. Don't get me wrong: I don't believe it is irreducible. I just believe that a reductionist approach - or "isolating" simple parts - won't take us far in understanding it. "Organic" (I can't find a better word) systems aren't easily reducible to parts as an electronic or mechanic system. Even if they're made of very simple parts, making sense of the emergent behavior they produce is hard. > I'm not sure why people persist in claiming that their brains are the only things in the world that we can't come to understand as a system of simple parts. No such claim was made here. We may come to understand "the brains" as a system of simple parts. However, we're not sure of that; acting as if it was a sure-thing is faith, not so much different from religious faith.

delluminatus 12y ago
Quite well-put, actually. I agree that it's a mistake to think of the brain as a "neural network in your head". Biological systems are extremely complicated, and the brain is heavily influenced by the soup it swims in. Having said that, I think we might as well discuss it even if we don't understand it fully. If we're rejecting theories of cognition because they're probably not always right, then we're going to have to throw out the entire field of cognitive science. I do believe that a reductionist approach is critical for understanding cognition -- you could call that a religious belief if you want; I would prefer to call it an expectation based on the unprecedented progress that reductionistic approaches have made in understanding all kinds of things. We certainly have disciplines that examine emergent behavior of cognition -- psychology, I guess, is the prime example. But I think it's also important to try to understand the brain as a computational system, not just as a black box that produces behavior. I think an emergent, behavioral, holistic approach may be effective for characterizing cognition until we understand it better, but that a reductionist, symbolic approach is a superior method for knowing, manipulating or replicating cognition in all kinds of environments, not just a bunch of fatty cells inside a chemical soup. Also, after reading your response, I think that I misunderstood your original comment, which to me seemed vaguely derogatory. So, sorry for that.
trustee 12y ago
> You can't, however, predict how will my day change if a beautiful stranger smiles at me during my morning commute (even if these reactions and changes are produced by "very simple parts"). There's no mystical shroud here; just acknowledging that emergent behavior is complex. Just like you can't predict the change in pixels on a screen when some bit is flipped on the network wire. > We may come to understand "the brains" as a system of simple parts. However, we're not sure of that; acting as if it was a sure-thing is faith, not so much different from religious faith. The scientific method has reduced a huge majority of the world (and virtually everything that was once a matter of faith) to a system of ever simpler parts. The meta-theory that everything can be reduced to simpler parts is probably one of the most solid theories in all of science. Furthermore, if you agree that evolution is a thing, then the argument that organic systems are built out of simpler parts is almost a foregone conclusion.
- paulojreis 12y ago
  > Just like you can't predict the change in pixels on a screen when some bit is flipped on the network wire. Well, you can, as in, it would be a matter of computing a whole bunch of stuff that we actually understand (algorithms, networks). It may not be feasible, but it is doable with what we know, today. Behavior, on the other hand, would depend on computing stuff we don't understand. > The scientific method has reduced a huge majority of the world (and virtually everything that was once a matter of faith) to a system of ever simpler parts. The meta-theory that everything can be reduced to simpler parts is probably one of the most solid theories in all of science. I believe that you're only considering hard science. If you consider anything that contemplates behavior (e.g. psychology, or social sciences such as economics), your claim is only partially true - reductionism has helped, of course, but not in the same way it did with hard/exact sciences. I guess Aristotle still says this better than any new explanation of holism: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts."