KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA32 (Muller)

Response 5 (to C13 by Ken Bausch)

CONCEPT-DYNAMICS AND TOMASELLO'S RATCHET EFFECT
by Herbert FJ Muller
December 2000, posted 23 January 2001

I am indebted to Ken Bausch for his interesting comment on my paper in his C13, to which I respond in the following, mainly concerning difficulties related to a possible relapse into MIR-thinking. I amplify this argument by discussing some material from Michael Tomasello's recent book on the cultural origins of human cognition.

[Part A]

RESPONSE TO C13

In part A, the paragraph numbers in [brackets] are the same as used in TA32 and C13. Quotations from C13 are in "quotation marks", KB's comments in <brackets>, and my responses in [brackets].

[1] " Momentary ongoing experience is … "given" (i.e., not invented by us) but it is structured by us in its entirety". <"Us" in this context is too specific a term.> "

[ "Us" implies mind-nature experience, not only the subject, but : always the subject in addition to (society + nature). To say that galaxies … "have proceeded by zero-derivation (0-D) in the course of general evolution" can be misleading. Such a statement may lead to concepts like cosmic consciousness, etc, which are a way of talking about subjective mind-society-and-nature experience semi-objectively. In expressions of this type there is always a danger of relapse into mind-independent reality (MIR) -belief. "Us" in contrast includes our doing. ]

" < … We, as individuals, are socialized into those realities and only generate minor variations on themes that transcend our bounded rationality.> "

[ It remains that without our individual structuring there would be no structures, including socially sanctioned structures. This is done within the restrictions given by the possibilities : we structure galaxies, societies, and ourselves. But to structure does not mean to invent. The possible variations in forming structures are small or negligeable in some areas, large in others. Such restrictions apply not only to individuals but to societies as well. ]

[2] " "Thinking does not come from the brain, the brain comes from thinking." <I agree with this proposition in the sense of Maturana and Varela's statement: "Knowing is doing" but only in the context of evolution. The structures of thinking ("brains") develop in living things as they co-adapt (structurally couple) with their environments.> "

[ This interpretation implies a switch from subjective experience (phenomenology, thinking) to objectivity (eg, mind-independent brains, societies, living "things", and also environments). Evolutional considerations are important in an objective-knowledge sense, but not in terms of phenomenology, because we have to structure all experiences. This structuring includes objective knowledge about evolution as a variety of experience (and not the opposite, as is often believed : experience as a variety of one or another area of objective knowledge). ]

" "Ongoing experience encompasses all data." <To my mind, this is a confusing overstatement. Data are objectivated, often mathematicized, facts. There is no way that anyone's experience can encompass the virtually infinite amounts of data.> "

[ All data and facts are created inside thinking, thus encompassed by it, and (as-if-MIR-) objectified in the process. Data can be "objectively" stored in completed and retrievable form, for instance in memory, in books or computers, but only after they have been created inside thinking. That means that data and facts do not exist by themselves (in the latter case they would have to exist mind-independently). The encompassment does not imply that they are always present in experience, actually only a few are. Most of them disappear from ongoing experience after they are stored. But while it is experienced (originally at construction, or at the time of acceptance from others, or else later upon recall) any item of experience (datum, fact, or other), is encompassed by wider experience. ]

[12] " <Where does a subject without pre-given patterns exist? > "

[ … zero-derivation (0-D) … does not mean that in practice thinking takes place without structures, nor that one would have to, or even could possibly, start with an unstructured experience - a la "tabula rasa" - nor also that all structures have to be always created anew (from TA32 [11]) ]

" < We are embodied consciousnesses, inheritors of innumerable processes of pattern-formation that enable our living. As such, we are replete with pre-given patterns. > "

[ Quite true, objectively speaking. The problem with this opinion is again the mixture of (primary) phenomenology with (derived) objectivity, see above. ]

" < … The WHAT is object-oriented and "left brain". The WHERE is context-oriented, ill-defined, and "right brain". This basic part-whole dichotomy is unfolded in our functioning brains. We think by using these pre-structured brains. In this sense, our brains structure our thinking. > "

[ Same problem. For many areas it is quite possible to combine objective and phenomenological reasoning, indeed it would be artificial to separate them. But for some questions this separation is an inevitable requirement if a clear argumentation is desired, for instance when one wants to discuss the basis of experience (thinking, "consciousness"), and its relation to objectively studied events, such as brain functions. The reason is that it is often erroneously assumed that MIR is the start-point rather than a later development, and then the discussion tends to go astray. ]

" < It is not evident … that we, as conscious individuals, construct this experience. The experiences of "self" and "environment" (nature) have their origin in the very existence of an autopoietic organism. "Brains" develop as processing structures that make autopoiesis possible and progressive. > "

[ Without our construction activity there would be no structures, they are not given from outside or from elsewhere in pre-structured form. This is the basic situation; but it does not imply that we do this deliberately or consciously. Objectively speaking there are pre-conditions for this : an autopoietic biological organism, perception, society, or language, and many others. But we can only start from our experience, and we develop (posit, assert) the objective "givens" within it. If we forget this we are liable to end up with one or another quantum-neuro-bio-psycho-socio-linguistic fable (the fashionable term is "narrative"), in which one or the other of these factors (or of course also religious assertions, which many hold to be givens) are claimed to be fundamental, that is, mind-independent. ]

[15] " < Experience (consciousness) is not static. It is different for me now that it was yesterday or when I was an infant, yet it is the same autopoietically reproducing stuff that I was born with. Concepts and other structures are the stuff of that reproductive experience. These structures and concepts are not caught inside experience. They are that experience insofar as we can say anything about it. Without the ongoing structure-making, there is no experience. > "

[ Experience can only function if it is structured. But all structures are created and used inside an ever encompassing experiential background. The form-generation uses neuronal circuits of the organism that I was born with, yet all structures, even qualities like color or pain, are my products : without my activity they would not be there. This point is I think an important difference from KB's formulation. The omission of this aspect has caused much conceptual difficulty, for instance the hard problem of consciousness, or the quantum mechanical conceptual problem. The need for inclusion of subject-activity is the reason for the many historical attempts do away with static metaphysics (MIR), which for some questions is non-functional. Experience is not static, as KB says, but traditional metaphysics is static, and needs to become functional (working) : structures are not given but made and used by us as needed, within experience, which is first, and given, without the structures. ]

[39] " < … my demystified version of this encompassing background is the right-brain world of ill-defined relationships as it is described by Chris Lofting.> "

[ I disagree, see above. KB proposes in effect to replace ("demystify") experience, including the unstructured encompassing part of experience, by structuring it with an MIR-brain-mythology. Such structuring, or structuring with other mythologies, can work for some distance, but is self-defeating for certain questions. They are relapses into MIR-belief, mostly unintended. The error here is the one of wanting a primary structured (and logical) world, as pointed out by Feyerabend, see TA32 [38]. ]

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[Part B]

TOMASELLO'S RATCHET EFFECT AND MEDIATING EVENTS

[B1]
It may be of interest to consider some of these questions from a point of view of non-verbal (that is, pre-conceptual in the terms I have used in TA32[5-6]) experience. Animals are conscious, they experience but have no human-like language, and thus experience per se is not limited to (word-)conceptualized experience. A discussion of experience per se should apply to both verbal and non-verbal kinds, while one needs also to define the differences which language makes.

[B2]
The functions of language are communication, stabilization and communal standardization of human mental structures, and simultaneously identification with others, which occurs largely with the help of shared language symbols. Non-human primates do not comprehend the intentions and mental states of their peers. Tomasello suggests that this is so because they cannot put themselves into someone else's cognitive shoes, they do not imitate others, and therefore do not identify with them, specifically not with their recognized intentions. For humans, shared linguistic symbols play a key role in this function. This he says results in a "ratchet effect" which is crucial for human cultural evolution and historical development.

[B3]
(p.54:) "Human cultural inheritance as a process rests on the twin pillars of sociogenesis, by means of which most cultural artifacts and practices are created, and cultural learning, by means of which these creations and the human intentions and perspectives that lie behind them are internalized by developing youngsters … "

(p.201-202:) " … a species-unique adaptation … arose at some particular point in human evolution, perhaps fairly recently, presumably because of some genetic and natural selection events. This adaptation consists in the ability and tendency to identify with conspecifics in ways that enable them to understand those conspecifics as intentional agents like the self … This … changed the nature of all types of social interactions … so that a unique form of cultural evolution began to take place over historical time, as multiple generations of developing children learned various things from their forebears and then modified them in a way that led to an accumulation of these modifications - most typically as embodied in some material or symbolic artifact. The "ratchet effect" thus produced radically changes the nature of the ontogenetic niche in which human children develop so that, in effect, modern children encounter and interact with their physical and social worlds almost totally through the mediating lenses of the inventors' and users' intentional relations to the world when using them. … "

[B4]
Tomasello also points out (p.23-24) that, in contrast to human children, nonhuman primates are unable to understand physical (non-action) causality. For this the appreciation of "mediating" physical forces and events is needed, which do not directly result from own or others' actions. (MT also discusses psychic mediating events like fear in such terms.) As I interpret this, the observer (the subject) is here by-passed, as-if he did not exist, or as-if the mediating events were the entire reality, and the events (at least the physical ones) may acquire an MIR-like quality. The experience-transcending property of concepts (TA32 [19ff]) is a key element in this development.

The MIR-belief development is secondary to an earlier state in which subject and object were less categorically separated. The transcendence function of concepts has a prominent role in this development, because it tends to promote the notion that the concept-contents have a mind-independent existence. This change was recent on a biological scale : about 2500 years ago as a historical trend, around the "axis-time" (Jaspers), ie, at the beginning of systematic study of thinking and of the great religions in various cultures. Perhaps it already occurred earlier in some cultures, for limited time periods. It coincided more or less with a change from evolution and archaeology to written history. A further step occurred when modern science began in Europe after the Middle Ages. But as I have mentioned earlier, in addition to its functional advantages MIR-belief has the side-effect that objects and objective events (and even ideas) are seen as MI-structured.

[B5]
Hauser et al. found a number computing system up to about five in birds and mammals including primates, but only language provides an exact system for larger numbers. Language also serves as a mediator across different domains.

[B6]
Such considerations emphasize the importance of conceptual structures for human thinking. If I understand Tomasello correctly, his linguistic symbols are what I have called concepts (ie, words attached to pre-verbal mental structures). If furthermore he is right - on the whole this is likely - about the ratchet effect and the understanding of causality, both of them can be understood, among other things, as additional illustrations of the practical power of concept-dynamics. That is, concept-use does not only result in transcendence and encompassment in general, but also in the creation of specific socially sanctioned conceptual realms of reality and truth, both the realms of social-religious fiat and the somewhat later the development of "objectivity".

[B7]
In line with my earlier arguments, static metaphysics (MI-reality-belief) has acted as a stabilizer and standardizer for such structures (eg, for the created material tools, and conceptual tools like words and numbers, including in particular also the communally-sanctioned truths and realities, which have usually been held to be absolute). If we now propose that such MIR-entities are only as-if true, as-if-real, and conditionally stable, this may cause some problems for thinking, because the sanctioned (holy) reality and truth appear less solid.

[B8]
It can help here to consider that in retrospect these MIRs (though they were formerly often seen as absolute and un-changeable) have in effect always been employed as useful fictions. The by-passing of the subject started as a technical manoeuver, in order to better study nature from a distance, as-if it were alone and "seen from nowhere" (Nagel). But the starting position (which included the subject) was then commonly forgotten, and the assumption prevailed, in science in particular, that nature happens without mind. At present, we have to undo this forgetting.

[B9]
Animals do not need such MIR stabilizers, because their functions are less symbolic and more stable on a biological basis alone. They do not depend on communally-sanctioned reality, at least not to the same extent. For animals' experience, the question of MIR does not come up, neither its cultural advantage nor its conceptual side effects. They act as-if the world were MI-real but they do not posit MIR. The challenge for us today is then to take advantage of the cultural-scientific ("ratchet") benefits of the concept-fiction functions without remaining caught in MIR-assumptions : namely by changing from static absolute to working metaphysics, or as-if-MIR.

[B10]
Specifically, in relation to Ken Bausch's commentary, "experience" per se does not imply material or symbolic artifacts, in particular not an MIR-stabilized overall reality or truth. Despite the new development of distancing and concept-dynamic functions, there is no reason to assume that animals' experience is fundamentally different from the human variety. Therefore experience per se does not require objective knowledge, for instance about living things, auto-poiesis, linguistics, sociology, or brain functions. The latter are not relevant when the question is how mental function relates to brain function. Objective knowledge is a secondary development within experience, either with help of objective MIR, or better, of as-if-MIR.

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REFERENCE

Tomasello Michael, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Harvard U Press 1999. See also review by MD Hauser in Science 288, 5 May 2000, p.816.

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Herbert FJ Muller